Chapter 1 - Complicated Introductions
A Day with a Pony - Lyra
So, here’s how it happened: I was randomly selected, for who-knows-what-reason, to host a pony for a day, and let them come to school with me. Of course, the one selecting was Princess Celestia, who else would it be? In Equestria she held a lottery, one that anyone could enter, and she would pick a name at random. Of course, you get that one crazy pony to rig all of their entries in to it, and who does it turn out to be? Lyra Heartstrings, the human-obsessed mare of Ponyville, of course. She heard, you see, that the lottery was to win “A day with an extra-dimensional being.” She being the mare that she is jumped immediately to the conclusion that “extra-dimensional” meant Human by default. Boy, was she in for a surprise for when she found out her suspicions/psychotic musings were correct!
Our actual story begins at around 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Setting a scene for you, I am in my bedroom, sleeping as you would expect, and Lyra is sitting at the foot of my bed, scrutinizing my sparsely-populated closet. Jumping to first person, I begin my narrative. Enjoy.
I was having a strange dream. I don’t remember it all, of course, but I think the gist of it was something akin to being trapped in a Sewer... or something. I don’t remember. Anyway, I awoke to something that sounded like a teenaged girl giggling, as if she had just met Justin Bieber or something. But it was a bit higher pitched, and far more giddy than that, though. I sat up and twisted my back to relieve the tension of a hard night’s sleep on a C-grade mattress. Imagine my shock when I groggily open my eyes to see a sea-foam green (really, I have no idea on how to describe her coat’s color. Readers, what do you think?) Unicorn rifling through my closet. I did the only thing a rational person who had just woken up from a slumber would do: Rub my eyes and blink really hard.
Nope, still there.
“Urgh... What are you doing here?” I ask in my “morning voice.”
“Oh!”, she jumps, startled. “You’re finally awake! I’ve been waiting here for almost 5 minutes! What time is it, anyway?”
I direct her attention to the alarm clock on my headboard. It read 5:32 a.m. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out many features besides her colour, but I knew that it could only be Lyra Heartstrings. I mean, who else would you really expect to show up unannounced in your bedroom at half-past five in the morning?
“Are you, by any chance, Lyra?”, I ask.
“What? Oh, yes, Lyra Heartstrings. Allow to explain why I’m here: I won a lottery back home, in Equestria -- Wait, how did you know?”
Great, the all-too-cliche moment in every HiE fan-fiction where you have to either come clean on how you know, or lie until it becomes a terrible burden. Eh, maybe i’ll get lucky and get away with it.
“I don’t really know. I just kind of... Know,” I bull-crapped. She seemed to buy it, filling in her own details.
“Maybe Princess Celestia just kind of... gave you my name or something. Who am I to question it? Anyway, I’m here because I won a lottery that promised a day with an extra-dimensional creature that I was promised would bring me no harm. Can I assume that you are a Human?”, she asked.
“Yeah, I am. I assume you know about me then?” I would not imagine that she would, but, ya know, magic.
“Actually, no. When the Princess told me I would be coming here, she only said that you would be the least likely person in your world to harm a Pony. Who are you, by the way?”
“My name is Danny,” I said.
“Oh, that’s an... unusual name. Okay, what’s on our agenda today, Danny?”
With a Unicorn suddenly showing up in your room, would you not kind of forget that you had school that day? Yes? Well, you will understand my next reaction.
“I um... don’t remember?”, I replied lamely.
“Don’t remember? Did the Princesses’ teleportation spell give you amnesia? I’d hate for that to happen.”
“Just... Let me get a shower and get properly dressed. I’m sure my morning routine will help me remember... Oh, that’s right: school. Oh... no. I need to make a few calls.”
Let me explain this one to you: I am a secret brony to my friends. I have a fair amount (read: only three) of friends that are also bronies, and I needed to let them know not to flip their shit as soon as they saw Lyra.
I hurried out of bed to the charging pedestal where my cell phone sat, dormant from the night before. I made the first call.
“Ugh... Dan? The hell do you want, it’s five A.M.!” The first call, you see, was to Devin, the first friend I actually knew who got into the fandom. I spoke in a low voice, “Dude, you are not going to believe this, but someone very special just showed up at my house. They are coming to school today with me, and I need you to not, I repeat, NOT flip shit about it, comprende?” This was serious business. He gives a weary and somewhat startled response, “Okay, whatever,” and hangs up.
It is at that instant I hear a startled scream come from down the hallway, back in my room.
“Danny! What is a Unicorn doing in your bed?!”, she calls. Great, Mom has stumbled into the mess. Suddenly more alert and awake than before, I jogged the short distance down the hall to my room.
“Oh, that’s Lyra. She’s going to be... I guess... Shadowing me for the day,” I said. I’m not sure of the expression, but my mom seemed to believe it.
I guess she wasn't as happy as I was, though.
“What the fu... How did she even get here?!”, she asked, frightened.
“Long story short, the Princess teleported me here because I won a lottery. Can you please stop yelling, too?”, Lyra said, not seeming terribly phased by said yelling.
After all of that, I finally got my shower, and some breakfast. Lyra had packed all of her meals for the day, a snack of, you guessed it, hay included.
As I was leaving for the bus stop, I realized that Lyra might have trouble sitting on said bus seat, being a pony and all.
“Hey, Lyra?”, I started.
She turned and looked up at me. “Hmm?”
“How exactly are you going to sit on these seats? Its really only big enough for two people, and I think you might have trouble standing up or sitting down. Do you want to sit in the back where we can have seats to ourselves?”
Lyra chuckled and answered, “I’ve learned to sit comfortably like a Human. I think I handle this, don’t worry.”
At the bus stop, there are three freshmen that also wait for the same bus. Normally I avoid talking to them, but today it was a bit harder.
“Woah, is that actually a real Unicorn?”, one of them, a girl, asks. No shit it’s a real Unicorn, dumbass. Of course I couldn’t actually bring myself to say that, so I go with a simple “yes” instead.
Her twin brother was kind of all over Lyra, not that she minded. I think she really just like the attention from a being she thought to have only existed in Myth.
The bus ride, as you would expect, went by pretty rough for the both of us. Some kids that were very clearly high started to giggle and laugh at Lyra, while the sober kids were asking her all kinds of annoying, pointless questions.
“What kinds of technology do we have that your world doesn't?”, one of them asked. Pretty much every kind, stupid.
“What kind of music do you like?”, another asked, even know her Cutie Mark was in full view of everyone. I suppose that in their defence, they were probably too stupid to realize what a Lyre was.
One of the smarter girls, a friend of mine, warded off the other kids with scoldings of “that question is stupid, go sit down.” Oh, how I admire her attitude and assertiveness. Ahem, moving on.
Aside from the questions, the bus ride didn't go as terrible as I would expect it to be. I couldn't wait to see what the day would hold.
A/N: Behold, my first fanfic in forever. Hopefully it doesn't turn as terrible and choppy as my other, cancelled one: At My Doorstep. (seriously, that thing was like a failed operation, it sucked so hard.) Other than the terrible writing I had in that story, I discovered that my writing style is distinctly Adolf Hitler-like. Seriously, read Mein Kampf and compare the writing styles. I feel that it seems too similar for me to be comfortable. Anyway, tell me how I should improve the writings in the story; I could use the feedback. I tried to keep this one specifically un-Hitlerlike.
