My Little Pony: Finding Faith
Chapter 1 “The Orange Mare”
Gazing up at the clouds above, I let out a contented sigh, picking out vague shapes in the fluffy white objects as they glide over the city, the setting sun casting glorious orange highlights on them. I’m laying down in the grass at the banks of the river that runs past the city center, there’s a footpath for people to walk on that takes you on the scenic route to the city center.
I get up with an awkward sigh, brushing the back of my jeans off. With a glance up as the sun hits the horizon between the skyscrapers, I’m hit with a silent flash of blinding white light. I cry out in shock and double over, my hands rubbing at my eyes, trying to clear my vision of the bright splotches.
Several passers by stop and some cry out in alarm. My vision is returning but what I see is unbelievable. A bright white light, emitting little particles shaped like stars is travelling up from my feet. As the light reaches my knees, the alarmed voices from behind me escalate into cries of horror.
I turn around, the entire effort feels awkward. Looking around at the dozen or so people who have gathered, I notice that several of them have clasped their hands to their mouths. The light has reached my waist and as I look down I realise why they are all in a state of shock. Where, only a minute before I had been wearing a pair of runners and jeans, I can see a white coat of soft fur running down my legs, instead of feet at the ends however, I see large hooves.
Losing my balance as the light passes into my torso, I fall down onto all fours, my fingers curling around blades of grass. The light reaches my armpits and I watch in horror as my arms emerge on the other side, thick with natural muscle, my hands replaced by smaller hooves. The light seems to slip a hood over my vision and I cry out in surprise. But just as suddenly as it happened, with a pop it ended.
I find that I can raise my head despite being on all fours and I turn it, gazing over and back at myself. I'm covered from head to... to hoof in a coat of brilliant white. My gaze drifts further along and I realise that I am looking at... my flank. I can see that I have a black tail, with a grey zigzag stripe through the middle of it.
At this point, I turn back and cry out at the top of my lungs until my voice goes hoarse. Everything just seems so impossible, it can't be real, any of it, the people, the grass, the sky, me... it just has to be some nightmare. That's when I notice two police officers in their hazard vests, hands on their holsters as they slowly creep up to me.
“Keep back!” I croak at them. While I might not trust my own sense of reality right now, I sure as heck don't want to take the risk that it might all be real.
They draw in, the crowd pressing forward on my left, preventing me from even contemplating heading that way, and on the right, the two police officers are getting closer. As they do, I realise that I'm roughly only four feet tall now, barely up to some of their chests.
I wish I was someplace else! I think with such force that I hope some divine entity can hear and whisk me away.
To my own surprise, I feel an immense pressure in my fore-head and I can see a bright red glow just out of my vision. The crowd cries out and the police officers stop short. I feel my arms - no, my fore-legs spread without me even realising it. Now the glow intensifies, red stars sparkle and fade in my vision and there are beams of bright light shooting out from just above my head.
The crowd and the officers seem unsure of what to do now, I can see around the light that people have stopped, on the bridge further down the river, cars emptied of their drivers and passengers to see what the light show is all about, I presume.
I need time to think, to process what is happening and the crowd that's pressed in so close is not helping in the slightest bit, worse still I have a feeling that the light show coming from the top of my head isn't just light, there's something more material about it all.
One of the officers un-holsters his weapon, just as he begins to level it at me, closing my eyes I grunt with an extreme effort and a loud crack fills the air around my ears.
* * *
Opening my eyes, I find I'm not standing on the river's edge, and there aren't dozens of people watching me, closing in. Then I realise that there's not much of anything around me at all, just an emptiness, a void of anything in space.
Naturally the moment goes as quickly as it comes and with a start, I find myself hanging upside down in a tree, a branch wedged between my belly and my legs is all that is keeping me from falling down the several feet to the ground below.
I wriggle a little, unsure of how to proceed before I realise it's raining quite heavily. The pitter patter of raindrops on leaves an obvious indicator before the first droplet even passes my head through the foliage and splatting on a lower branch. The leafy green colour that fills my vision feels kind of wrong, like it's a bit too... vibrant perhaps. My gaze travels from the section of the branch wedged under my belly and legs, to where it meets the immense tree trunk. The further away the branch gets, the less detailed the bark seems to become, as in the complexity of its colours starts to fade. It's hard to explain really.
Despite hanging upside down in a tree, and not knowing where I am and the sudden change in weather. I find a kind of peace being there. That's when I notice the orange form sitting several meters away, staring into a pool of water. At first I think it's someone in an orange raincoat, but then I realise they can't possibly be, the orange encompasses most of their form with a long, flaring purple tail and a head of drooping purple hair.
“I just wish there was somebody who understands me.” the orange creature says in perfect English. For some reason I feel like I should be disturbed by that, but I'm not.
“I don't know if I can go on...” it continues to itself. The voice is undeniably female but there's a hint of youth in the almost scratchy voice as well.
I wiggle my legs a little, to no avail, I even try and bend all the way around to dislodge myself with my fore-hooves, when that fails I fling back into my upside down pose.
“Hey, um, excuse me?” I call out to her. Waving my hooves back and forth in front of my head as I dangle.
She jumps a little and I notice a pair of delicate looking wings flare out to her sides, indicating surprise as she turns her head, looking for the source of my voice.
“Up here, in the tree.” I call to her. Watching as she gets up onto her hooves and trots over to the cover of the tree and looks right up at me with a quirky smile.
“How in the hay did you get up there?” She asks me, putting a hoof to her chin and allow her smile to widen.
I try my best to shrug, glad that she's smiling despite her previous comment. Something tells me that however I got here, I was just in time to stop something dreadful from happening.
“Say, you have wings, think you could come up and try to help dislodge me?” I ask her, making a show of pointing at myself.
She seems to take a moment to consider it, she looks a little unsure, of herself or me I can't tell. But then the look vanishes, replaced by one of determination as she wriggles her flanks from side to side before charging at the base of the tree trunk. I almost want to cry out for her to stop, until I see she jumps up, her hooves slamming into the base, shaking the tree to its very core, and forcing her higher up into the air where she beats those delicate looking wings of hers. With just a few wing beats, she draws eye level with me and smirks.
“You look even more ridiculous up close than from below!” she exclaims with a jovial laugh.
I give a modest shrug before answering, “I try my best I guess.” She proceeds to grip me around the middle before lifting me off the branch. At first it seems like she's going to carry me down, but I quickly see my mistake, while her wings can support herself, she's not exactly able to carry the both of us aloft, and in true testament to my realisation, I fall down, breaking a branch on the way. She lands on top of me and I groan out, partially winded by the impact.
“Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.” she says, rolling off me and helping me to my hooves while I try and get my breath, and a little of my composure back.
“Don't worry about it... uh well this is a little embarrassing, we don't know each other's names!” I say before pressing my right fore-hoof to my chest.
“I'm Scootaloo.” she introduces herself, holding out a hoof. I presume she wants me to shake it.
Now I'm stuck, kind of at a loss. My memory feels really hazy, like a smog is concealing it from me and it just won't clear. With an effort I try and recall my own name, and find that there are a lot of things I can't recall, like where I'm from and even what I was. I guess that what I was isn't of concern, seeing as I have hooves and a tail, I assume I'm some sort of equine like the orange mare in front of me, Scootaloo. Still at a loss for my name, I cast my thoughts as deep as I can.
“Is everything okay? You're kinda zoning out there,” Scootaloo asks, waving her hoof in front of me.
“Uh, well it's just that... I can't seem to recall my name.” I answer honestly. I struggle to recall it, I can't even remember what day or month it is.
She gives me a quizzical look but allows me to think. After a time I remember something, that wherever I am from, we called a person who has no name, a John Doe.
“I guess, you can call me John.” I say, extending my own hoof to her with a meek smile. She takes my hoof in her own and I feel an almost magnetic grip between the two appendages, she shakes and we separate. I stare at my hoof for a moment before storing the whole thing away, questions like that can come later.
“So, Scootaloo isn't it? What are you doing out here in this downpour? You'll catch your death out here in this cold.” I say, bending my hind legs so that I'm in a comfortable sitting position.
She, at first, seems to be at a loss for words. I assume I may have rushed things a bit too much for her liking and wonder if perhaps I should instead ask something else before she tentatively responds.
“Well... uh, well I...” She pauses, I can see the insecurity in her eyes, those big purple eyes. “I guess it won't hurt to tell you... See, I'm a blankflank,” she turns and shows me her flank, which looks quite normal to me.
At first I raise an eyebrow but quickly lower it and ask, “What's a blankflank? You look fine to me, nothing outwardly strange at all.”
She giggles for a while before resuming her serious manner, “You're not joking?” she asks me, a tinge of concern in her voice.
“No. Actually, that makes me wonder...” I say before turning my head and looking at my own flank, it's just as bare as Scootaloo's but there's nothing outwardly odd about that in my mind. If you asked me for my opinion I'd say that we looked like a relatively healthy pair of equines.
Scootaloo leans over to see what I'm looking at and lets out a gasp of surprise, a hoof coming up to her own mouth to silence it before it drags on. After a few moments of listening to the sound of my own soft breathing and the rain falling around us, she speaks up again, removing her hoof from her mouth.
“You're a blankflank too!” She raises her eyebrows with an incredulous look. “You really don't know what a blankflank is?” I shake my head in response before she presses on. “Well... as odd as that sounds... a blankflank is a pony who hasn't gotten their cutie mark yet, the mark that shows our special talent. I thought I was the only pony around who had grown up and still not gotten their mark, but you're a fully grown buck without one!”
I'm not at all too sure how to take all of that, cutie marks? Talents? My mind races, trying to process it all. I understand enough of it to see that at our ages, we're supposed to have one of these marks on our flanks, and neither of us do.
“We're getting sidetracked though, I was telling you why I'm out here in this miserable weather? Well... you see, I'm an orphan, I have no family and when my friends got their cutie marks and I didn't... we started to drift apart, they moved on with their lives and I was stuck. Worse... I'm a failure of a pegasus, I can't even fly properly.” she finishes, I can tell she's depressed as she finishes, the feeling very familiar to me.
“Why does that matter?” I begin, “Just because you don't have this cutie mark, doesn't mean you don't have a talent. And your friends, if that's what we should be calling them, should have stuck by your side. If you ask me, they aren't your friends if they define their friendship on something so silly as a mark on your flank.”
She looks up at me, with an expression I can't describe. “You're right...” she trails off, her gaze drifting to the base of the tree.
I let out a sigh as I gaze out from under the tree and into the rain that masks the distance from our view, “You know,” I begin, “Life can be hard, kind of like a game of cards, you can get dealt a bad hand of cards that make it hard to win, but you just gotta press on anyway, who knows you may draw that lucky card and scrape a win in?” I look back over at Scootaloo, peering into her sad, purple eyes. “I guess what I’m saying is that, sure, life isn’t the greatest for you, but you gotta be chipper, don’t let it drag you down. Be strong, smart and brave, face the challenge and tackle it.”
“I... alright,” she finishes, a little lamely. I feel that there's a driven person behind this depression, just waiting to come out and do good.
“As for your ability to fly, you did pretty good when I was stuck up there-” I pause to and point my hoof up at the branches above, “-even if you couldn’t support my weight, that’s not lack of ability.”
I finish, allowing the orange mare to mull over what I’d said. Her brow furrows in deep thought and I begin to wonder if it was a little too much, too early. We barely know one another and I think if I was in her shoes - err, hooves - I'd be a bit overwhelmed, heck I was overwhelmed right now in my own position. I swallow the uncertainty and just wait patiently.
After an indeterminable amount of time, thanks to the lack of a sun, and any kind of device that measures time at all, Scootaloo speaks up, “I... I think I understand, John.”
Giving her a genuine smile, I pat her shoulder with a hoof. She shies away at first and I can tell she's a bit uncertain, but when she sees my smile she returns it.
“Thanks John. Sometimes I just get stuck in a dark place.” she comments before moving to sit beside me.
I turn my head to keep eye contact with her and as our sides meet, I feel that she's really cold and her coat is soaked through. “You must be freezing.” I point out, having been kept relatively dry from the tree, I'm a bit better off and press in close to her, sharing my own body heat. Scootaloo let's out a content sigh and to my surprise, she falls asleep next to me.
“Well... I guess. Um, this is okay. Once the rain stops I'll take her home or something.” I whisper to myself.
My mind fills with questions. Where am I? Am I a pony like Scootaloo? Who am I? Why can't I remember? Do I want to remember? What will I do? What can I do?
But it all boils down and I find the solution, even if it is a temporary one.
I am in the right place, at the right time and for the first time in this new life, I feel a true sense of accomplishment.
My Little Pony: Finding Faith
Chapter 2 “Ponyville”
My eyes take a moment to adjust in the sunlight filtering down through the many branches of the tree above me. As the bright splotches fade, I take note of the mess of purple draping over my shoulder as Scootaloo sleeps, her chest rising and falling in a constant rhythm. I raise my left hoof and examine it, the strangest sensation of something being wrong, nibbling at the back of my mind.
Scootaloo shifts, pushing herself up and rubbing her eyes with her hooves. As her disorientation clears, she turns her gaze to me and blushes furiously.
“S-Sorry! I-I can't believe I fell asleep on you!” she stammers, her voice still gruff from just having woken up and not clearing her throat at all.
I shake my head and a chuckle that begins in my chest causes my shoulders to bounce, “Don't worry about it Scootaloo, it was wet and miserable and I guess we were both tired.” I say in an effort to dismiss the awkwardness she's experiencing.
She still seems incapable of shaking it off but nods all the same. Running a hoof through the grass at her side she begins to gaze off into the distance, her eyes blinking slowly as the grogginess of sleep wears off. I follow her gaze and notice, for the first time, some structures made from what appears to be thatched hay as well as a combination of brick and stone several kilometres away.
I get up and slowly make my way over to the edge of the lake. The surface is still, now that the rain has stopped. My gaze lowers and I see myself for the first time, gazing back is a set of large but soft, green eyes surrounded by the sea of white fur-like hair that comprises my coat. Black and gray locks of hair form a mane that dangles to the left of my horn, my left ear barely pokes out from the mess. I turn my head from side to side, getting a look at myself from all angles before Scootaloo steps up beside me, gazing into the reflection herself.
Scootaloo looks over at my reflection and I begin to pull faces, scrunching my muzzle up, poking my tongue out and even dragging my cheek down to expose the pink muscle that makes up my eye socket. She begins to giggle before it works its way up into an outright laugh. I turn and push her over playfully, her legs flail in the air as she struggles for breath between fits of laughter.
Looking down at her with a grin growing wide on my face, I prod her in the side and motion towards what I assume is a town. “So, do you mind showing me around today Scootaloo?” I ask.
She puts her hoof to her chin in thought for a moment before slowly working up an answer, “I guess I could take you around town. It won't hurt anypony and it'd be nice to hang out with somepony for a change instead of trying to find something to do myself.”
I offer her a hoof to help her up off the ground and she sets a brisk pace, setting out for the town which resembles a village at the moment, but who am I to question a resident of the place? As we trot over the field, I look around, observing the surrounding area and notice a large collection of clouds further out, at the edges of the town with a rainbow peaking over the top.
“Hey, uh, Scootaloo. What's with those clouds over there and the rainbow?” I ask, gesturing over at them with my hoof as she stops to see what I'm indicating.
Her eyes widen and I swear that I can see a kind of sparkle in them as she turns from the clouds and back to me. “That's Rainbow Dash's house!” she says in awe. None too impressed by just the name, I prod for more information.
“So... what does 'Rainbow Dash' do?” I expand the topic for her in an attempt to learn something about the world I know little about.
She shakes her head, I assume to clear the awestruck expression from her face as she puts a more serious one in its place. “She's only the fastest pegasus in all of Equestria! And the coolest of the Wonderbolts!” her wings begin to beat from the obvious excitement I'm putting her in at the mere thought of this Rainbow Dash.
“Oh okay, I never thought someone could make a house out of clouds seeing as they aren't solid. At least, I think they aren't solid.” I say thoughtfully, observing the opaqueness of the clouds that form the 'house' of this Rainbow dash. In all honesty, the clouds look like they could pass off as white walls, if it weren't for the logic in my mind screaming at me that clouds were not solid and were in fact tiny particles of water, in the most basic sense of course.
Scootaloo knocks me playfully with a hoof, “Come on don't be silly! The pegasus city, Cloudsdale is made out of clouds too-” she stops as my expression slowly turns into one of awe. “You're serious?”
I nod slowly, trying to process the information. An entire city made of clouds, up in the sky, with ponies in it. I don't know whether to press for more information that might blow my mind, or to leave it be for the time being.
Deciding that my sanity is more important than knowing, I gesture for Scootaloo to lead the way once more. She quickly turns and we begin making our way towards the town. The rest of the walk is relatively uneventful, neither of us say much more to one another and I manage to keep my questions to myself until we reach the edge of the town.
“Now entering Ponyville, have a nice day.” Scootaloo says suddenly, in what I interpret as an attempt at humour. I quickly give a quiet chuckle and file the nugget of information away. So the town is Ponyville, aptly named I guess.
We come out between some buildings and onto a carefully maintained path. Some ponies are going about their business and barely sparing us a glance, which is fine by me. Scootaloo directs me down the 'street' as I come to realise that's what it is, and out into a larger area with cobblestone making up most of the surface area of the ground. I can hear the hustle and bustle of town life in the area around as I realise there are dozens of ponies, probably even more, talking amongst small groups of themselves, standing at stalls, sitting on benches, eating, drinking and so many other activities that I can barely comprehend it all.
Scootaloo doesn't stop however and ploughs on to the center of the area and turns to me as I try to catch up on the lost ground between us. “This is the marketplace where ponies come to buy and sell goods or just hang out with one another.” She informs me, ignoring the awed expression I'm sporting as she gestures around.
“Most of Ponyville is divided up into 'districts' this one is the market district, over through there is the shopping district,” she motions with a hoof as she explains, “and further that way is the upper end of town where the Mayor's office is, see that tall building? That's the office. And over there you can see the top of Sugarcube Corner.” I follow her hoof as she indicates landmarks and I try to make a mental map of the town which looks more and more like a small city.
“And over there, just down past the shopping district is the bulk of the residential area, and that tree over there? That's Books and Branches, a library that Twilight Sparkle runs with her assistant, Spike.” she points at the top of a tree which I can see some windows in amongst the branches of. I whistle then turn a full circle, taking it all in as best I can.
We begin making our way to the plaza, some ponies stop to wave and say hello, I wave back but we don't stop for long. As we pass more buildings, I spend a moment to observe them a little more in detail. It looks like the roofs are definitely made out of closely bundled hay layered across the entire span. The walls are mostly some white washed material, it's kind of porous like unpainted plaster, but I really have no idea what it actually was. As I come to this conclusion, I realise we're now in the plaza and in the centre is a large building that looks like it should be in a dessert parlour. Wait! That's Sugarcube Corner, one of the landmarks that Scootaloo showed me from the marketplace. So awesome!
Something about the adventure of exploring unknown territory just makes my heart fill with indescribable joy. I physically bounce right up beside Scootaloo who gives me a brief look of concern before casting her gaze around the plaza.
I spot a minty green pony slouching back in a chair out the front of a building, likely a restaurant, with a cream coated pony opposite her, giving the minty one a dark glare. With half a mind to go over and introduce myself, I stop that thought when Scootaloo gasps sharply before ducking behind me.
“What?” I ask, a little surprised by the sudden change in mood. Scootaloo tries to minimise her profile behind mine and I turn to look in the direction she's hiding from.
I see two young girls, or I should be correct here and use the term 'mares', one cream coated with red mane and tail, a bow at the back of her mane. Another with a white coat and a light lavender mane and tail that are brushed into some sort of style which I assume is the current fashion. The two are roughly the same height as Scootaloo, who comes up to my chin when we stand up at our full heights, and both of them, I realise, have cutie marks. The deep cream one has an apple slice in a glass cutie mark and the white one bears an easel with a blank canvas propped on it.
“Is it those two?” I ask, pointing a hoof over at the pair while they make their way towards a shop with a sign indicating that its some arts and crafts store.
Scootaloo nods but doesn't supply an answer as to why she's avoiding them, they don't seem like bad peop-errr, ponies, at a glance. Of course I could be entirely wrong since the saying goes, don't judge a book by its cover, right?
That's when I notice Scootaloo is slinking away to the other side of the plaza. I trot up to her and give her a quizzical look before she just shakes her head and we trot through Ponyville, ending up in one of the parks scattered throughout the districts. Scootaloo stops at a water fountain and peers into it, her features are hard and I gather she's not a happy chappy.
“What's the matter?” I ask her. Falling onto my haunches beside her as she dangles a hoof into the rippling water of the fountain. My gaze travels up to the peak where the water spurts out and falls back down into the basin.
We seem to sit there for a while, I don't press any harder for answers, a gut feeling telling me that if she is going to tell me why she acted the way she did back there, she will do it when she's ready, and more importantly, if she's comfortable with talking about it of course.
I turn away from the fountain and gaze back at the town and skies above, watching as a pegasus bucks some clouds on the far edge of the town. The clouds vaporise under the hooves of the pegasus and they move on to some other clouds to repeat the process.
Everything I've seen so far gives me this sense of... security that I don't think I've ever felt before now. Everything just works and it works well, harmoniously in fact. The resident ponies are polite and welcoming, and if I could say so myself, were rather cute. A small, dark corner of my mind tried to nag at me, telling me that I don't belong here and that it won't last, something will go wrong at some point, but I dismiss it. What does that voice know anyway? Seems like it just sits at the back of my mind and moans whenever it feels like!
Much to my surprise, Scootaloo turns to me, “Ugh... they were my old friends from when we were fillies.” she starts, her voice downcast and her eyes unfocused. I honestly hadn't expected her to open up like that, but I nod and go along with it.
“We grew up and when they got their cutie marks and I didn't... we drifted apart.” she added. There was a little more to the situation than that, I feel, but I don't ask or comment on that thought. I just nod along, accepting what I have so far as an explanation.
We sit in silence for a while more, I'm mulling over the day so far and trying to think of a way to cheer Scootaloo up a bit, and I assume she's just running over the past in her head. I get up on and turn to her, “If you want some advice? Try not to dwell too much on the past or it gets in the way of the future. I'm going to go and explore more of Ponyville now that I have some bearings on where to go, so take some time for yourself and think about stuff.”
Scootaloo looks up at me, startled by the interrupted silence. So I give her a reassuring smile, I like her and I want to help her feel better but she needs to be able to carry her own doubts and misgivings on her own, that's what makes a person, and I assume a pony, stronger after all and she needs to be able to carry it herself without someone there all the time.
She nods, accepting the announcement and picks herself up off the ground before walking slowly through the park. Part of me wants to chase after her, but I subdue it and focus on my own needs for the very moment, the here and now. I should become acquainted with the town and its residents, see what I can learn or do to become familiar with the way things work here and perhaps maybe to jog my memory shirk that haze.
