I sat in the silence for a few hours at least, stewing in my own feelings for as long as I could. Eventually I had calmed down enough to talk again, so I decided to try and get some information out of Twilight again.

"Twilight!" I yelled, opening the door a crack. Quick as a flash she was bolting up the stairs and into the room as I sat back on the bed. She seemed to be dragging so weird metal helmet with her, alongside a large machine on wheels. "Um, you're feeling fine right? I wouldn't want to intrude," she asked, suddenly conscious of what had occurred earlier.

"Just don't mention it. What's that thing?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Well, we need to consider the possibility that you might have some kind of adverse reaction to being present here, this is just a piece of equipment I use to see how magic interacts with your body! All you have to do is wear this, and I'll throw some formless magic at you, then we can look at the results."

"Not just because you want to take notes."

"It's for your health and safety, in which I can also take notes," she grinned and motioned to the machine like a shady car salesman. It whirred and beeped randomly.

"Fine, let's get it over with," I grabbed the helmet from her magic aura and strapped it onto my head. It was ill-fitting, evidently designed for somebody else entirely.

"Okay, just sit there for a second. These spells don't do anything! So try not to flinch when I fire them at you."

"What if something happens?"

"While you're an unknown entity at this point, I'm sure nothing much worse than what's happened so far will occur. Magic is everywhere in Equestria, and we all take it into our bodies, that includes you. I just want to see how you react, and how much you absorb if any at all."

"Well we don't have magic back home." Despite my outward coolness, I was secretly freaked the hell out by the suggestion of magic existing, but it wasn't much of a stretch given that I was interacting with a talking horse.

"Really? How strange," she muttered, scribbling notes onto a parchment, I peered over and noticed a large "further questioning needed" at the very top. She placed the paper down and leant over to the machine. flicking a few switches and causing what appeared to be a heart monitor to come to life. "Ready?" she asked.

I wasn't, but I nodded anyway. With that she released a stream of purple energy at me, with ineffectually flowed around my body. She stared intently at a piece of paper that the machine shat out, nodding and humming to herself. "It seems there's nothing unusual about you, you absorb magic just fine, in fact it's quite fast."

"And?"

"I believe that you've never absorbed magic before, so it's trying to compensate. This is the kind of thing that happens if I use too many spells at once, you get caster's fatigue, and you start absorbing magic at an increased rate."

"So I don't have anything to worry about?"

"Not from what I can gather here. You seem to be absorbing magic just fine, and if it did have an adverse effect on your health there really isn't much we could do. Magic is a universal constant here in Equestria, it's impossible to get away from."

How reassuring, I thought morbidly. If I hadn't dropped dead yet though.

"Great, so now what do you want to do."

"Well, I thought I'd come up here and have a chat about how we should introduce you to the town," she clapped her hooves together.

"Why? Can't I just walk outside and say hello?"

Twilight giggled to herself, "No, no. How do you think they'll react to see you walking through town? This is the same place that nearly had a riot over a Zebra coming through."

"A Zebra? Why did they have a riot over a Zebra?"

"You know what a Zebra is?" she inquired scribbling down notes, "That's an interesting parallel, I wonder what else is similar between our homes."

She didn't answer my question, but I presumed it was futile to chase down an answer. For now she seemed embroiled in the idea of me coming from another world. I shuddered slightly as I reminded myself. She looked back up from her parchment and paused on my face, biting her cheek.

"Um, did your hair always look like that?"

"What?" I asked as she levitated a mirror in front of me. Clear as day my normally dark brown hair had changed, becoming lighter at the tips as if I'd bleached it. It certainly didn't look like that the previous day. "What the hell is this? Do you have a bathroom?" She nodded and lead me across the outside space to a small bathroom. I could see down onto what appeared to be a library floor, with the stairs leading to this elevated section for living space.

The larger mirror didn't really help my cause, just as I'd seen before, my hair had changed colour. Now, coming just after having been told that the magic would have no affect on my body, I wasn't exactly sending much trust in Ms. Purple's direction who seemed to detect so with discomfort.

"Don't look at me, there's nothing to suggest that your hair changing has anything to do with magic."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. I'm the magic expert here."

"Well what do you think is causing this shit?"

"I don't know, doesn't this usually happen to whatever species you are?"

"I'm a human, I've already said this before. And no, not unless you're out in the sun for a long time I guess."

Twilight pouted and rubbed her chin with a hoof. Adorable, but not helping in any way, shape or form. "I could send a letter to the Princess and get her opinion on things."

"Wait, what Princess?"

"Oh, I forgot you don't know much about Equestria. Well, we're lead by two sisters, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. I'm Celestia's personal student."

"Does she know I'm here?"

"Of course," she scoffed, "as soon as you arrived I had a letter sent off to tell her. I had no idea what you were or what kind of trouble you could cause!"

"So what is she doing right now? If it's so important shouldn't she be down here making sure things are okay?"

"Well she is the leader of an entire nation, she can't just drop everything and rush down here when I ask her to. You're not causing any trouble either."

I pinched my nose and sighed, "Can we get back to the point before I die?"

"Well she's lived for a very long time, so it'd make sense that she'd know a thing or two about situations likes this." Somehow I doubted that. Without another objection from me she trotted off downstairs while I turned back to stare at myself in the mirror again. I had a very unsettled feeling about what was going on. She had to be joking, there was no way what was happening to me wasn't planned. I was beginning to feel less like an unlikely guest, and more like a prisoner.

I thought over everything that she had said. I wasn't allowed outside because I might "scare" people, and now my appearance was changing and she doesn't know why? Bullshit. That was too much of a coincidence for me to accept. Thoughts of rebellion and escape were quashed when I realized that I was in a town filled with the little shits, there was no way for me to escape without anybody noticing.

With a sigh turned back and strolled over to the bedroom, I could hear voices downstairs. Curious, I poked my head down and saw Twilight talking to a little purple lizard with green spines. Of course he could talk too, why not? I jumped when a spout of green flame shot from his mouth and engulfed a letter held in his claw. What the hell? Why would they burn their mail like that? The ashes of the letter flew out of the window as if controlled by a supernatural force.

Thoroughly weirded out I elected to sit in the bedroom and hope for the nightmare to end. Twilight poked her snout into the room and informed me that she had sent a letter to Celestia, and that she would come back once she got a response. I nodded and shooed her away, wanting a little bit of privacy after a stressful afternoon.

What the hell was I going to do? I couldn't run away without somebody seeing me, and probably running to Twilight to tell, I was being afflicted by a magic induced illness that changed the colour of my hair, and now the highest level of government in this crazy world knew about me too.

Well, at least I didn't have to work tomorrow...

Despite the absurdity of everything, an unmistakable feeling of alienation began to set in. I didn't know anybody here, my family and friends were gone, for all they knew I could be lying underneath that tree, dead. What if this was a delirious fever dream caused by a sudden stroke, and that every hour spent here was a millisecond spent dying in real life? Would things end eventually, or was I trapped here forever?

I rolled over on the bed and faced the ceiling, track the grooves in the wood with my eyes. It did little to distract me.