And Did Those Feet, in Ancient Time

Graham Daniels stepped out of the tube station to be greeted by his old friend, the London rain. It was a close relationship, they met almost every day.  He sighed, put on his raincoat in the hopes of retaining some dryness, and began his walk home.

As he walked, he reflected on the day before him.  He woke up, had two pieces of toast with jam, as usual. He read the newspaper on the way to work, and tried to convince himself he cared about atrocities in far off lands he’d never heard of.

A full shift at the hardware shop, and only twice did he consider brutally murdering customers with whatever large saw or hammer happened to be near.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad day for him.

The grey blanket of sky gave no hints to the time, but his watch told him it was 5:43pm when he entered his small third-floor apartment.  Raincoat goes on the rack, beer goes on the coffee table, and arse goes on the couch.

After drinking his beer and watching an episode Doctor Who, where Christopher Eccleston teamed up with Charles Dickens to do…something, Graham went into the bathroom, and looked into the mirror.  Looking straight back at him was a tall, somewhat muscular man of 43 years with a receding hairline and some stubble building up around his jaw.

He spent half a minute weighing up whether to use the straight razor sitting next to the sink, and then left the bathroom unshaven.  Three uneventful hours and one microwaved pizza later, Graham was asleep, another day of his life spent and gone.

__________________________________________________________________________

Charlie Robinson left the vibrantly decorated classroom, and stepped out into the mild sunlight. He whistled tunelessly as he walked to the staff parking of Buckland Primary School.  He got in his car, an average white sedan, and drove towards the ocean.

He came to the end of York road, and saw the ferry leaving for Calais as he turned right into the A20, heading towards Folkestone.  On the radio, KMFM was playing some pop song, indistinguishable from any other put out these last few months.

It wasn’t long before he pulled into the driveway in front of his house. It was a nice enough house for one fellow, but was definitely built with a couple in mind.  There was a bit too much empty space with only one person. Charlie brushed those thoughts away from his mind, and unlocked the door.  Nothing had changed since he left that morning.

He opened up the laptop sitting on the desk near the front window, and logged into Facebook.  A message from Annette, saying they should meet up again sometime.  Maybe soon, the house would feel full.  Charlie smiled at the thought.  He sent off a message saying they’d get dinner on Friday.

Charlie was happy to the point he practically floated to the kitchen.

He made himself a simple salad with chicken in it, took his bowl over to the sofa and flicked on the telly.

It wasn’t the most scintillating of shows; it appeared to be a one hour documentary on plant life native to Cornwall. Instead, Charlie turned his focus away from the show to the events of the day, to his hopeful relationship with Annette, to his life as a whole. After thinking on it for quarter of an hour, he concluded his musings with one statement.

Life’s not so bad, is it?

__________________________________________________________________________

The clock was exactly 4:00am when Graham was woken up by the passing lorry. At least, he thought it was a lorry.  When the rumbling vibrations continued for far more than the time it would take one to pass, Graham had a far more worrying thought.

“Oh bollocks,” he said, “Earthquake!”

Ten seconds later, he was sheltering himself under the doorway into his bedroom. The rumbling got louder and louder, the vibrations increased in intensity. Graham noticed that nothing was moving, despite the shaking and shuddering he felt. It was as if there were earthquakes localised entirely within his body. Stay calm, he thought, close your eyes and count to 5.

One

This can’t be possible!

Two

I can barely hold my balance

Three

This can’t be an earthquake, I can’t hear anybody else panicking

Four

How have I not fallen down?

Five

It’s…over?

__________________________________________________________________________

Graham opened his eyes; it was a bright sunny day, with a few scattered clouds. He stood somewhere in the countryside, surrounded by hills.  This wasn’t right.  He focused his mind, urged himself not to panic.

Follow the railroad tracks; they’ll lead to a town.

He’d been walking for what he assumed to be ten minutes when he met another man on the tracks. He was a young fellow, maybe in his late twenties, with short brown hair, a beardless face, and simple eyeglasses.

“Hello!” the man said, waving. Graham walked over to him.

“Hi there, my name’s Charlie,” He continued, “You wouldn’t be able to tell me where I am, would you? You see, this might sound odd, but I was in bed, when all of a sudden I was jarred awake by all this shaking.  Just as it got too much to bear, I—”

Graham chose that moment to interrupt him “Well, I’m in the same boat as you, it would seem.”

“Ah,” Charlie said, “Well, at least I’m not the only one in this mess. And you are…?”

“Graham,” he answered.

“Well Graham,” Charlie explained, “We should probably find out where we are. I’ve been looking around for a while, and all I’ve seen is countryside, hills, and this railroad, not a single person in sight.”

“Maybe we’re in Wales,” Graham muttered.

With that, they followed the railroad tracks, making simple conversation to try and hide how unnerved they both were.  After twenty minutes or so of walking, any illusion of normalcy to their situation evaporated at the sight of a bright pink pony. Wherever they were, it was a lot further from home than Wales.

Graham and Charlie had been staring, mouths agape, at the pony for about twenty seconds before it (she?) noticed them and didn’t walk, didn’t trot, but bounced up to them. Graham would have marked that as the oddest thing he would ever see in his life if the pony didn’t begin talking to them immediately afterward.

“Hi there!” she (definitely she) yelled, “My name’s Pinkie Pie and I’ve never seen you before and that’s exciting because I can make new friends and I know you’re new because I know everypony in town but you two aren’t ponies and maybe you’re both some kind of cool new animal and that’d be great because then Fluttershy would get to meet you and she loves animals and I love having friends and so we could be friends and it’d be great and we could throw a party at Fluttershy’s house and all her animal friends could come to meet you and I’d bring everypony in town!” she yelled in the space of about ten seconds.

The two humans were still too shocked to talk, but the pony tried to continue to converse anyway.

“What are your names?” she tried after a while.

“Charlie,” he finally managed to stammer.

“That’s an odd name, but I like it!” she said, “And yours, I hope it’s as fun a name to say as Charlie, ‘cause that’s fun to say! Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! You should try it sometime!”

Graham desperately tried to get himself to speak, to say something.  Eventually, he managed to get one word out.

“Fuck,” he said quietly.

“Ooh! I’ve never heard either of those names before! I like that one! Fuck! It’s so cool sounding! I could trumpet that name from the rooftops!”

Graham blinked, and now the pony was on the roof of a nearby house, randomly alternating between yelling “Charlie!” and “Fuck!”

The sounds coming from the outside caused the person, well, pony, living there to go outside and see what was happening. The pony, this one with a light blue coat, saw the two humans standing near her house, and practically disappeared in the other direction. A few minutes later, the blue pony returned, accompanied by a dozen others, all with frightened or confused expressions.

The pony at the head of the group walked ahead of the others, and stood before the two. She had brownish fur, grey mane, and…was she wearing glasses? After an extremely tense silence, she spoke.

“Hello?” she said, seemingly also at a loss for words.

“All you ponies speak English?” asked Charlie, at the same time as the grey-maned pony said

“You speak Equestrian?”

Eventually, a voice from the middle of the crowd asked if they were some type of exotic animal. A murmur broke out among the crowd, as all the ponies swapped theories on what they might have been.  The head pony turned around and waited for them to quiet down.

“I. . .I really don’t know what they are,” she said to the group, her voice trembling ever so slightly, “I don’t think anypony knows.”

She took a deep breath, hoping to regain some composure. Facing Charlie and Graham again she tried to converse, hoof scraping the ground in what Graham guessed to be nervousness.

“You, you both are here with peaceful intentions, right? Because--” she said stepping forward, trying to be brave, “I am responsible for this town and I shan’t let them come in harm’s way.”

Charlie motioned Graham to speak, so he looked down at the pony.

“I don’t even want to be here and I’m not bloody supposed to be here. . .but,” he said, calming himself down, “This man and I are not here to hurt or harm anyone.”

Some of the crowd looked more relaxed than before, but many continued eyeing the two of them with suspicious awe. One voice from the back piped up and asked “What’s a man?”, prompting more heated debate from the. . .herd, is that what I call them? Graham thought.

Another pony yelled over everyone else “Let Twilight see them!”, which left the crowd silent, looking at the lead pony for her decision. She looked at Graham for quite a while, then did the same to Charlie, before announcing her opinion to human and pony alike.

“These two,” she began, “are creatures the likes of which none of us have seen before. This much is certain. Twilight might be able to tell us more about what exactly they are. Until then I say it is our responsibility as ponies of this town to look after these two until Twilight tells us what she can. They have assured us they are peaceful, and I am inclined to believe them.”

It was immediately evident not everyone was on board with her plan, but enough were that the group dispersed, leaving Graham, Charlie and the pony standing in front of the house.

She gestured to the two men to follow her. They did so silently, still shocked by how unreal their situation was.

They were guided to a small house on the outskirts of a village, presumably Ponyville, and told they were to live there temporarily. Graham got the idea that the ponies were more scared than unfriendly, and one pony even told them not to hesitate to ask for assistance.

Without a word to Charlie, without any attempts to figure out his location, what had brought him here, or even the time, Graham found one of the two undersized beds, curled himself into a ball, and slept, hoping there would be more clarity upon awakening.

__________________________________________________________________________

A few hours later, Graham got out of the bed, and went out to the window. It was dark outside, but there were lights on in the town and lights on in the house. Graham took this to mean there was electricity in Ponyville.

He walked into what seemed to be the living room, and saw Charlie sitting awkwardly on a sofa too small for him, drinking from a mug.

“It’s just water,” said Charlie, noticing Graham’s look, “There’s a kitchen back there. They’ve given us water, along with some vegetables, and even a few cupcakes. I tried one; they’re really good.”

Graham just grunted in response. He didn’t like this at all, and found it more annoying that Charlie seemed able to adapt so easily. The silence was cut by Charlie talking again.

“I think tomorrow we should find out more about where we are, what’s happened to us,” said Charlie.

Graham couldn’t disagree with that, so he answered

“Makes sense. This place is a town; they should have a mayor or something. Maybe we could find out about their culture and—” Graham stopped himself. “No,” he started again, “This is ridiculous, all this is ridiculous. We’re surrounded by talking ponies! We are in a town named Ponyville! This whole thing is insane! I must be dreaming, or in a coma, or something.”

Charlie still just sat there calmly, as Graham ranted. Once he was done, Charlie simply said,

“Of course this is insane, but going insane from how insane this place is won’t help. We just need to stay calm and work something out, even if it means accepting the fact that we will have to deal with multi-coloured talking unicorns.”

Graham begrudgingly accepted his statement, and then went to the door to the bedroom.

“There are beds here,” he said, “It seems like night and it’s probably better if don’t end up getting jetlag from warping to bloody Ponyville or whatever happened to us.”

With that, he left the room, curled back into the small bed, and dreamt of earth.

__________________________________________________________________________

It was 7:27am when Graham woke up this time, and he knew, because there was a clock in the hall, and these ponies apparently used human time. His stomach picked up the idea that it was time for breakfast, so it growled as Graham walked into the kitchen.

Just as Charlie had said, a plate of cupcakes sat on the counter. With slight apprehension, Graham tried one.  It was delicious, far better than any bakery he’d been to.  Maybe Ponyville did have its upsides.

However, good baking wasn’t enough to make Graham forget how greatly he wanted to be home, so he went out the front door and headed towards the town. Everybody (Graham couldn’t get himself to think Everypony) turned to look at him as he passed them.

Nobody pointed, or screamed, or ran like yesterday, but his presence was an anomaly, he was something strange and new, beyond their imaginations. At least Graham had the ease of Unicorns and Pegasi and talking ponies appear in fiction back home. Graham got the feeling humans hadn’t ever existed to them, or hadn’t even appeared in the Pony’s fiction.

The town itself had some human features, cottages with timber frames and thatched roofs. Most of the buildings seemed as though they would fit in well if dropped into rural Shropshire in the 1800s. Graham crossed a bridge over a small river, and ended up seeing what was easily the tallest building in the town, a cylindrically shaped tower of three stories, with two balconies and an impressive spire almost as tall as the building itself. Graham wagered this would be a town hall or some other administrative building, so he boldly walked in.

A drab brown pony who managed to give off the unmistakable air of a bureaucrat looked at the giant creature standing before him with shock.  He went into a back room, and returned a few minutes later with the same pony who’d guided him and Charlie to the house yesterday.

“Hello again,” she said, far more composed than their last meeting, “I do hope you’ve gotten settled in now. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mayor Mare, and this is the town of Ponyville.”

Upon seeing Graham’s blank look, she said,

“Although I have a feeling you may need more explanation than that. You are clearly not of Equestria, and nopony has ever seen a creature such as you.”

“I’ve never seen talking ponies before, you know,” Graham said, “And you’re right about not being from Equestria, I’m from Earth, I’m a human.”

“A human?” said the mayor, puzzled, “I’ve never heard of such a species. How did you learn to speak Equestrian?” she asked.

“It’s not Equestrian, where I’m from,” said Graham, “It’s called English. It’s one of many languages humans speak and I’m rather confused as to why everybo—as to why everypony speaks it.”

“This the language everypony in Equestria speaks,” she said, now looking extremely puzzled, “But I’d like to change the subject.  Ponyville is just a small town; we don’t have the amenities of Canterlot or the other cities. But living in our humble town is one of Equestria’s brightest scholars: Twilight Sparkle.  Unfortunately, she will not be back for quite a few days, as she is at the archives in Manechester.”

Manechester! The mental image of these ponies speaking with oop north accents brought Graham a little smile. He continued listening to the Mayor.

“Once she returns,” She continued, “She can hopefully tell us more about what you are.  After that, you will probably be sent to Canterlot, to meet the Princess.”

Unicorns, Princesses, Ponyville, the whole thing was starting to sound like a kid’s cartoon. Graham might’ve found it funny, if he weren’t the poor sod stuck in Equestria. So instead he thanked the Mayor for giving him and Charlie the house for the duration of his stay, and returned back to tell Charlie what he’d learnt.