Changed through fire

by Crunchbiter

First published 23rd of December, 2013

An Englishman is lost in the wrong place at the wrong time in a possibly altered reality of his favourite show. He can only be guided by his mental recollection of fan fic... none of which help him deal with a polite, if slightly aggressive, dragon.

The fire engulfed Sammy. He was brought to a world he thought impossible, a world he had watched in secret though a screen, only with a slight variance. He wasn't summoned by a solar goddess, nor brought about for a heroic quest by a purple mare. He was snatched by flame by a dragon by mistake. Apparently, he was the wrong creature to be summoned by a form of dragon magic.

Now he's faced with the monumental task of returning home, though not by the way he arrived. He will question his sanity when faced with a new world, a new gift, one he is adamant to ignore to preserve his shaken psyche. He will have to salvage his once rational mind after his breakdown in order to begin his journey home. A task that proves to be difficult when the closest civilization is not composed of ponies, but is instead diamond dogs.

Maybe he should recollect his civil manner first before he's roasted.

Chapter one: Where do we go when we burn?

He couldn’t really tell when what he assumed was common cold had evolved into a disease of apocalyptic proportions. The nail of a migraine was hammered in, breaching his scalp, sanding his dry throat, and pressing his heart against his rib cage. The swimming heat had left him disorientated from time to time, every cough a jarring return back to reality.

A laptop provided by the college sat before Sammy, a piece of coursework half complete. The college labs were simplistic, white and decorated by factual posters, from periodic tables to di-hybrid bonds. Sammy combed his freshly cut hair with his hand, his hand slipping to the side of his head as he leant on his elbow for support.

A stylish grey jumper embalmed his broad chest and shoulders; he wasn’t a burly young man, but he always thought if he just applied himself he would have a decent body. As it stood, he had to rely on style, what little he could afford. His jeans were a few years old, worn but the indigo colour compliment his charcoal toned trainers.

After another short coughing fit, he leant back on his lab stool groaning before surveying the scene around him with his earth brown eyes. He sat at the base of a ‘U’ shape table arrangement- it was a small class of fourteen, so pooling students together would help the teacher from where he sat at the front- and his gaze fell back to his work.

He had a small amount of facial fuzz growing that shadowed his soft, rounded chin, shaded his defined jaws and connected to his sideburns. The collection of imperfect, un-groomed face fur contrasted his tidied short back and side hair style. Then again, styling short hair was hardly difficult even for someone who cared very little like he did for such a thing.

“Jesus, Sammy, it’s breathe in and out, not breathe in and cough up.” Joe, a college friend he’d known for nearly a year, joked without looking from his new iPhone. Sammy turned, regarding him with a half-smile.

The young man before him had a hawkish look to him, thin in the face, black hair, and dressed the darker shades of the colour spectrum. His black shirt had the imprint of some Dj headphones and his jeans had stains of leaked glow sticks on them.

“Thank you for concern,” he simply stated, quickly turning away to cough into his elbow. “Much love.” He finished with flat sarcasm.

“I know it’s nearly December, and the shops are already putting up the Christmas decorations, but keep it to yourself.” He looked up from his phone, his blue eyes twinkling with mirth. “I don’t want you germs touching me!”

Sammy glanced at the phone before rolling his eyes. Joe was using that Hot or Not app, where women (or men jokingly dressed as women) shamelessly posted pictures of themselves and people could mark them either attractive or not in their tastes.

“Sharing is caring,” Sammy replied, turning back to his work.

“Sharing a pint is caring,” Joe pointed out with a stern look before fiddling around in his bag for a file, “Giving me an apocalyptic disease is biological warfare.”

“What if I cough into a box and wrap it into a bow?”

“I’d give it to a kid and his mates so they can play pass the parcel.” Both of them chuckled, Joe’s being slightly deeper than Sammy’s.

“I’d love to see you running around a playground shouting ‘I’ve got something I want to give you, it’s in the box’." Sammy retorted earning another chuckle from Joe.

“What’s this about Joe stalking kids?” A raspy, yet feminine voice said by Sammy’s other side. Sat on the corner of the ‘U’ shaped table collaboration was Abbie, a friend he had known since nursery. She was sporty, as presented by her netball hoody for the team she coached in a nearby high school. She had raven hair done up in a bun, and the scent of deodorant infiltrated his nostrils as he turned to her. Her cute cherub cheeks rested beneath her vibrant blue eyes, her eyebrow arched as she looked over her laptop at Sammy.

“Well after being friend-zoned by many girls his age, he thinking about going down a league.” Sammy retorted with a smirk, sluggishly gesturing towards Joe.

“Hey!”

“Ah,” was all Abbie said in reply, her flat tone somehow matching her knowing look, “So he’d gone from stalking women to stalking little girls.”

The small session of friendly banter lasted for a few more moments, Sammy’s dry comments and Abbie’s tenacity picking apart Joe. It all came to a stop the moment the ill man began coughing a fit once more.

“I think you should go home and rest, maybe see a doctor,” Abbie commented, wincing and leaning back from what she thought was a picture of un-health. Sammy recovered and gave her a knowing grin.

“Sod that, he should be in quarantine!” Joe insisted, making Abbie chuckle.

“And you should be on the sex watch with the amount you go on about girls,” Sammy fired back, taking a moment to rub his eyes. “Traditional gentlemen may be a dying breed, but hey, I like a woman with class.” His last statement barely registered as Joe looked to him.

“But seriously get yourself checked out,” Joe added with a hint of sincerity. With a sigh, which set of a tickling sensation in his burning lungs, Sammy returned a conceding nod.

Truth be told he only came in because he had to. He had deadlines to meet and a demanding course that was entering its final six months. He couldn’t afford to miss out, he was behind on a particular piece of coursework, an assignment that would identify an unknown sample. With a nostalgic grin sprouting, the times he skipped school with the feigned tummy aches to play on his PlayStation.

“You know, it’s funny how when I’m not ill I don’t want to be here, and yet when I’m patient zero of the zombie outbreak I don’t want to be anywhere else. I’m the same when it comes to my job.” Sammy stated, earning wary glanced from his peers.

Quick as a whip, Abbie voiced her concern.

“Don’t you serve food in a café?”

Joe burst out into up roaring laughter, whilst Sammy simply grinned and shot her a conspiratorial look.

“I’m the secret ingredient.”

“Ew!” she grimaced, her smile still breaking through.

Sammy sat there, feeling a little bit better despite the wave of nausea and heat that struck him. He didn’t need to laugh as loud as Joe did, wasn’t his way. He liked clever humour, the type of banter that could permit him to say ‘apply cold water to burn’ and, yes, certain funny pictures on the internet.

He was still young, and maturity could hit him hard at a later age. Like seventy or until he couldn’t type with a keyboard anymore. For now, however, he could appreciate a joke that brought a smile to his lips regardless. Didn’t mean he didn’t prefer a clever joke.

Before Abbie could continue an odd ringtone echoed throughout the room.

It was uplifting, whimsical, but lacked the lyrics that flooded Sammy’s burning mind. Everyone in the room stared at the source, a small cluster of people at the end of the bent train of tables. One was a cherry red headed girl, soft in features and petite in her frame. Next to her, following her gaze and everyone else’s, was a lad who always seemed to be slouching as if he hid a weight in his shoulders.

‘Maybe it’s the social prejudice of wearing a fedora that keeps him like that,’ Sammy mused, glancing over the nice young man. He didn’t have any quarrels with him in particular, nor anyone in the room for that matter.

“Ste, can I take this?”

'Big adventure… tons of fun…' Sammy mentally recited, looking to source of the ring tone.

The owner of the white phone -which in Sammy’s eyes was more of a tablet- picked it up in his chubby fingers. The song was still playing as the greasy haired, plump man pointed between the phone and the door behind him. He wore an olive green jacket, unzipped to reveal a plain blue shirt beneath.

Stephen, the chemistry tutor, looked over from assisting someone with their work and frowned. He was starting to age, his rounded head having an already receding hairline that barely touched the scraggily beard he had grown. His professional white shirt and tie was only mildly skewed by the chemical stain at the knot. He sighed and nodded.

“Go on, but you have got to stop leaving your phone on loud in lesson, it’s okay to listen to music-“ Looking to Joe, Sammy spotted his ‘are you serious’ stare- “in lesson, but please bring headphones and put it on silent.”

“Yeah, okay,” the large teen conceded, for what must have been the millionth time, and quickly excused himself.

“I’m serious, Jack!” He called after him, but Jack was already answering his phone. Everyone was already aware of his antics; it was after all hard to ignore an overweight eighteen year old who openly looked up cute ponies on his laptop.

‘Hell, that’s not even the worst song in his music collection.’ Sammy mused, joining the many others who returned to their work. ‘Be it immense confidence or stupidity, Jack, you can do something I can’t at the moment.’ Most were used to Jack's fascination with technicoloured ponies, at least by the fifth time he was seen browsing the cartoon equines.

“I really don’t get it,” Joe announced, continuing his work on his laptop. His clacking of keys was silenced when he shifted his gaze back to Sammy.

“What’s to get? A man likes a cartoon show. Family guy is no different in that regard,” Sammy quickly retorted, frowning as his vision blurred. Having reached a point where he felt he was in an oven he closed the laptop and rested his head in his hands.

He felt the burn that embalmed his heart spread further like venom, but kept quiet about it. He just needed to print off his work and he could go.

“No,” Joe started off sharply, somewhat offended. Sammy could understand since Family Guy was his favourite show. “Family Guy has more mature humour and-“

Sammy summoned all his strength to elevate his head from his palms an shoot Joe a questioning look.

“Okay, adult humour, but it’s still miles better than My Little Pony,” he mocked, scoffing whilst shaking his head.

‘Can’t say I agree with you there, mate,’ Sammy thought, thinking about what he watched Saturday and was going to watch on following Saturday as well. He kept that fact to himself. After a brief shrug Sammy rubbed his tired, aching eyes.

“Can’t say I disagree, but hey, we live an era where a person can be whoever they want, sleep with whoever they want, make videos of whatever they want.” He shot a wry smile, his warm eyes glistening through his pale complexion as he leant on his hand. “I’m sure you’re for letting a man watch whatever he wants.”

Joe looked less than impressed.

“I could tolerate it if it was that Japanese hentai crap.”

Both Abbie and Sammy burst into laughter, the tomboyish girl going bright red and Sammy was reduced to yet another coughing fit.

“What?” Joe asked as Sammy recovered.

“Its anime, you dirty sod, otherwise you’ve been watching cartoon porn!” Abbie teased as Joe brought his slender hands to his face in shock. Blood flushed his face, his cheeks betraying a grin that was forming behind his hands. It wasn't long before they fell into another bought of laughter.

“Tell you what,” Sammy started, gulping to clear his mouth to fill it with words, “If you’re admitting to being into that sort of thing, you’ve lost the right to be against Jack.”

“I’m not, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s an eighteen year old watching a little girls show,” Joe remarked before turning back to his work. “Isn’t that like their day time television in japan?” Sammy shrugged, recoiling as he felt his ears pop and throat burn, as if a tasteless spirit had been poured down his gullet.

“My Little Pony is actually a family show, so technically there’s no age limit. You got to remember, if there’s a video on the internet, there’s an audience for it.” He could either feel Joe’s suspicion or his own paranoia kicking in as he said that. He played it smart and called upon Joe’s past time.

“You know how you love airplanes and air traffic control?” After receiving a nod, he continued, “Well, to be fair, you were Ahuawaargh!”

Once again Sammy folded his arms and pressed against his diaphragm, spluttering the first few coughs before his elbow slid over his mouth. He paused and turned to Abbie, his face reddening and his half smile fading.

He could barely manage a strained squawk as he rolled his hand and spoke, “Abbie… tell him a man can watch what he wants and how weird Joe’s obsession with planes is.”

“Firstly it’s not an obsession if it lead to me getting accepted for an aeronautical degree,” Joe was more than happy to correct.

“Look, I’m not exactly comfortable talking about what guys watch on the internet, so could you two leave me out of this, okay?” she replied curtly, raising her hands in the classic surrender pose before turning back to her work. “I need to get this done, so can I continue or what?”

“Yes, please do.”

All three of them looked up to see Steven standing opposite Sammy. His burrowed brow was betrayed the by his sincere stare.

Sammy simply grinned back.

“As for you, Mister Wright, I think its best you go home and get some rest- you kinda look…” Ste trailed off, his round head bobbling as he pursed his lips looking for the right adjective. Fortunately, Joe had one in mind.

“Crap.” He earned a smirk from Sammy, whilst the teacher conceded to the notion.

“Not the words I would have used but… yeah.”

“Don’t worry,” Sammy reassured, “I’m gonna finish and then print this off and then go home.”

Steven shook his head, taking the closed laptop from the table and putting it under his arm. “You need to go home, right now. Don’t worry about the deadline, I’ll sign it off as if you handed it today so long as you hand it in the first day you come back in.”

This was why Steven was the most wanted chemistry tutor in college. He understood what a student needed. Whether or not it was due to experience or a natural talent in both chemistry and teaching combined. Of course, he was strict with disorganised students in order to get them to work to a satisfactory standard, and luckily Sammy always pushed to try and reach the high marks along with all his peers. Being lenient with one piece of coursework in regards to the deadline was a reward he would more than happily cash in at this point.

“I’m going to need my laptop back in order to save and send myself my work so I can work from home.”

He followed through, leaving the class to head home. He greeted Jack warmly and earned a nod is acknowledgement since the big guy was still on the phone. Sammy was curious as to how he could watch such a show and revel in it so openly. He could never do that; Sammy couldn’t see how he could wedge the subject into his everyday life, and it would be awkward to randomly bring it up in conversation. It would certainly be a skill to switch the topic of a talk from identifying Alkenes and reading mass spectrum graphs to discussing the latest episode about pastel ponies.

However, it was mostly the scarring embarrassment he wanted to avoid.

Sammy ignored the aches that was developing where his blue shoulder bag hung in the crook of his arm for a moment. He slung it back over his shoulder and, the weight of his text books settling in, and then he began his journey home.

It was a half hour walk home through the late November weather, winter’s wind mercifully cooling his slowly escalating temperature. He barely noticed, his mind elsewhere as he tried to ignore his already developed symptoms. He clutched himself tightly as he migrated home with a migraine, pricks of pain fizzing in his throat with every suppressed cough.

He hated the retching, it felt vile.

He hated the sweat that was mostly in the pits of his arms.

He hated Movember, and how his itchy beard amplified his dirtiness.

All in all, even though he wasn’t a vain man, he had standards. Gentleman standards. He would walk with his back straight to minimise slouching, he kept his head up and eyes ahead, and even smiled to a few dog walkers. If he was going to feel like a corpse, he could at least salvage some sense of being presentable. Haggard or not, it was simply rude not to return a friendly ‘hello’ from a passer-by.

He finally reached home, a small semidetached house with a white door. Orange brickwork crumbled here and there, brown spots appearing here and there. The garden was separated into two, a grey tiled half that lead to the porch and the square of neatly cut green grass. The blinds were down, the curtains closed, all the signs of the house being empty. He stumbled towards through the gate, his mind catching up with him as he approached the door.

“Going to watch the more recent episodes…” he muttered to himself, keeping his spirits high and mind elsewhere, “Gonna sleep this off before my little brother’s get home, then I’m gonna eat dinner, and then I’m gonna…”

He mouth ran dry, his chapped lips cracking like salt flats in a barren waste.

“Season four…”

The pain had caught up to him, subtracting his feeling of the flat pavement below for vertigo and nausea.

“Bollocks.”

Internally, his core body temperature was sky rocketing as he stepped onto the inbuilt porch. Steam drifted from his form as he nearly fell back, his misty eyes widening with realisation. Through ragged breathes he spluttered the next thought to pass through his mind.

“Not good… need… ambulance.”

Another coughing fit brought him to his knees, his skin starting to redden to a dangerous hue. It was no longer the fever pink that pinched his flushed cheeks, but a red hot tone that spread along his skin. He could feel the heat within reside, giving way to a cooler embrace. His clothes itched. The sensation changed to be akin to his skin being shredded by sandpaper, the rashes being bandaged by thistles.

His hand was not responding properly, making fishing out his phone an incredible feat. His slippery grasp, combined with his sluggish descent to the square stone tiles below, were challenges that were beating him. Every gasp was like having his throat scrubbed by a sea urchin, a salty taste lining his frothing mouth. He couldn’t even feel fear anymore, he simply succumbed to convulsions whilst defiantly trying to bring his phone to his face. That was what mattered.

He held down the home button on his iPhone, seeing the screen through the haze.

He heard the tell-tale beep.

“Siri… call me an Ambulance.”

Dabeep-beep.

“From now on, I shall refer to you as Ambulance,” his phone replied, moments before he collapsed to the floor.

His hand curled into a claw as he gazed towards the front door. No one was in, and his neighbours were likely working.

The world kept shifting, between a fiery gold and dark brown to the view of the first step of his porch. It was mere meters away, and yet whenever the illusion of the flames washed over him, a far wall appeared, complete with a single lit candle. Back and forth his perception of the world shifted, his hand being coated in flame in between. The pain crippled for a few moments longer, until, strangely, his mind came rushing back.

‘Fire.’

It was all over him, licking his form as he rolled over to take the brunt of the impact. Disorientation crumbled as the seconds passed, a terrifying realisation beginning to course through his veins.

“I’m on fire!” he yelped, the intense torture of his symptoms retreating at the sound of his voice. The burning headaches vanished slowly, the pressure in his chest slacking as cool air entered his lungs, and his throat not soothed.

One might imagine why a man may not notice such changed when wrestling with a blanket of flame.

Rolling to his side was an instinctive response, one that helped him ignore whatever he barreled into. The metallic clatter barely registered as he beat the flames on his form into submission. Panicked yelps became more defined screams as his motor control returned, his mind freed from whatever aliment clouded his thoughts and corrupted his body. Whilst the flames may have been present when this occurred, Sammy saw it as an inconvenience… one that threatened to kill.

Sammy bumped into a wall, but still rolled resulting in him propping himself up and looking down upon his burning jumper. He fiercely patted down the lingering flames, coming to a slow halt stop as something caught his eye.

His sleeve was alight, but the air was still cold.

A white-gold flame danced on his wrist, hardly noticed by his skin. It didn’t hurt. It felt like someone was rubbing their finger gently wherever it roamed, but that was the extent of his physical discomfort. Mentally, the fact that he was being alight but not roasted disturbed Sammy, but it left him in awe of the sight.

‘Well isn’t this something?’ he pondered deliriously, waving his arm about until the flame died out. Many questions skimmed his mind. Why wasn’t his sleeve singed? Looking to his whole attire, he asked himself why he wasn’t a smouldering pile of ash. His hand fell beside him and the hard ground greeted his renewed senses.

The floor he sat upon was cool, dirty and littered with stones. More importantly, everything close by was brown. He simply stared at the wall beside him. It was smooth, rounding slightly, but most importantly it wasn’t brickwork. It was stone, or carved earth, but definitely lacking any sign of modern day building material. No eroded orange cuboids but instead a single brown wall.

He could hear a rustling breeze shoot towards him in a rhythmic pattern, steady and as reserved as his quiet breathing. The unusually warm touch of winter’s breathe almost drew his attention as it met his face, but something glistening beneath by his hand.

It was small and round. He shakily swept the up kicked dirt aside to find a coin the size of his palm. Between two fingers he inspected it, finding it may have been coated in actual gold, but imprinted with a strange design.

A Regal unicorn head posed with a proud smile, a number one printed at the bottom. The other side featured a tiara in the centre, the number stamp ‘1006 ADE’ at the top, and the sentence ‘Equestrian Currency.’ Those words made him freeze, both his eyebrows elevating to new found heights. Reaching into his pockets, he dug out and English pound and found the golden coin to be easily triple its size.

“Is this a… bit?” the dumbfounded man asked himself. What else could it have possibly have been with that inscription? He mind, having been restricted by his sickness was working overtime to make up for its shoddy performance, but even his rational thinking could not could determine an alternate answer.

Was it real? That was debatable. It could have been a lost replica for all he knew.

Which would imply someone lost it.

Following that trail of thought lead him to ask a key question.

“Where am I?”

The natural response to investigate his surrounding lasted all of one second.

The first half second gave way to his body’s aching desire to find out what was causing the oddly warm breeze to brush against him from time to time.

So he turned to his left.

The next fifty millisecond belonged to his eyes dilating and his maw dropping.

An incredibly large reptilian snout, as broad as a Land rover, was mere meters away. The hook like nostrils flared with every quiet breath that washed over him. Mint, strangely, filled the air with every exhale. The scales were a polished ivory, glistening with a crystalline property all over the giant. At the other end of the snout, two serpentine slits bore into his soul from their artic blue pools. Where the whites of where the eyes should be, a pale yellow filled in. Scaled brows portrayed the beast’s curiosity, as did the sparkling awe in its eyes. Two spiralling white horns followed the smooth groove of its features, becoming an extension from the back of the head.

“Yes, that is a bit…”

That voice, her voice. It was graceful, not booming but more flooding the room with a resonance of etiquette and loud volume. It made him jump in his seat.

“…And it’s mine.” She finished, sounding unsure.

‘Holy crap she’s a dragon!’ was a programed neural pulse, based upon a dreaded realisation and his mind tossing a file labelled mythological in the air. His mouth did not receive such a message and promptly followed his body’s natural response.

He screamed.

Author's Notes:

Well, after a long break I have decided to write once again. I've been itching to get back to writing stories and now I feel as though I can with this new story.

Comments are welcome. Please give reasons for down votes.

Now then, lets get back to writing.

Chapter two: …Just let it sink in for a moment.

There is a mountain that stands tall between four borders, watching over the distant civilisations from afar. Its peak lanced the sunset skyline, clouds forming around the wound. Very little lived on the mountain, its rocky body once having a trail that had eroded with time, and fed towards a large maw, giving the impression of a silently roaring monster.

Yet, up close, one could hear the faintest scream of desperation.

The echoes bounced between the fangs of the cave, the needle like rockwork within cleared down the centre. Bones of the fallen, clad in armour of ages long since passed, belonged to all manner of creatures that met a scorched demise. They were neatly side swept, but the burnt shadows of the past remained in a few places. They caught the last stance of many, commonly their form helplessly thrown against the side walls.

The screaming only grew louder deeper within.

What they sought was lost to legend or surviving to noble houses whom the dead had once served, but one thing was common: glory hunters seeking shimmering gold and name makers seeking a universal token of respect to instigate awe in all. Both had their motives to take, but what, was something that their end would not tolerate.

A growl rumbled from the back, where the natural light of day died in the narrowing twist and turns of a long passageway.

The next voice to echo through the tunnels was male, fairly deep but laced with overwhelming terror.

“I swear if this is about the Saint George thing, I had nothing to do with it!”

Instantly, the tunnel lost their skewed, oppressive angles and natural formation. The dynamic shift becomes noticeable through the carved arc in the ceiling, the crevices fit for white-flame- torches, and a flattened path. From a natural stone gullet to a hallway fit for a subterranean queen, the transformation is further completed by the replica nightline composed of embedded diamonds.

“Stop running!” an irritated, refined voice cried.

At the end of a hall was simply an open archway, where upon a golden light spilled out from within the next area.

Treasure. Glory. History.

A hoard. A home. A dragoness.

A large dome had been carved out into the stomach of the mountain and it was filled with enough gold to flood the floor. Two ridges protruded out on opposite sides of the smooth, brown walls. On one side was the entrance and only exit, and the other was currently playing host pandemonium.

Amongst the lake of shimmering gold and the odd vessel of jewel-filled-chests, sat a white dragoness whom took up only a quarter of the space. Her shimmering crystal form was sleek, streamlined and currently waist deep. Her wings were twitching, itching to flare open in agitation but remained closed with prim and proper discipline.

“Please, if you would kindly-” her voice echoed with intellect and sophistication, but her words were lost by the primal, panicked yell of an evolved primate.

Her powerful blue eyes were watching a small figure dart between book cases, her head having to be constantly on the move as the biped dynamically shifted and changed direction.

Rather than talk and take a moment to calm down, like the smart and collected young man he once was, Sammy opted for a simply alternative. Fight or Flight was only considered an option for him when challenged by a member of his own species.

Not a three-storey, fire breathing, yelling dragon.

Frankly, any other option seemed ridiculous.

“Where the Hell am I?” he barked, heading towards a hill of gold that rested against the ridge. The golden tsunami wave spilled over the edge, silver trays and gemstones resting amongst the small library of preserved books.

“I can explain all if you would just-“

She tried to reach for him with a claw but he nimbly darted between another set of book cases. Sammy had been doing this ever since he had arrived, his fear gripping him. He was close now, but on his last book shelf. She moved to grab him but he made a mad dash.

With a war cry spurred on by a deep primal fear, he flew towards the gold pile. He spied his escape route, or at least half of it; it was all improvised, and truth be told he was uncertain how he had survived for so long against such odds.

“No! Be still!” she bellowed reaching to grab him. He leapt forward, diving on to serving tray the size of his torso. The momentum carried him forward as his fingers locked onto the rim, his impact causing the tray to bounce up and clear the top of the hill.

There was pause, whilst in the air, as time stopped. Sluggishly it worked its way back to normal pace, but as the sense of vertigo settled in his chest, and as his legs arced up, Sammy had the most profound thought of the day.

‘This could have been planned better.’ He then made his descent.

He hit the steep hill with grunt and a splash of coins, his knees crashing into something jutting out of the ocean of riches. The constant jingle coins accompanied every bit that launched into his face, his fingers being hammered by whatever lay in his path. His scream shifted from fearful to a mixture of painful and adrenaline high.

“That’s it! A ruffian like you needs to learn some manners!”

Sammy only stopped screaming like a mad man when a small gem rebounded off a tooth. The hill levelled out and he was sent careening into the base of a small island of sapphires. The sharp edges nicked his forehead as he smashed head first into the pile. With a groan he retrieved his sunken hand from the pile and got on his feet. Despite feeling dizzy and the warm trickle of blood down his brow, he surveyed his surroundings.

The moment the shadow of the dragoness loomed over him he froze on the spot, his breathe caught in his throat. Her draconic stare bore into him as her nostril flared with an indignant snort. White smoke seeped out as her maw opened, revealing her diamond cutting teeth. Her metallic-sapphire tongue flicked its forked edge at him, knocking him onto the seat of his pants. More smoke poured out the back of her throat, a teal light rising from the back. Terrorised by the first spark, he shook his head and tried to back up hill.

“No! No no-no!”

Her roar seemed to have the faintest hint of whispering to it, words belonging to a foreign tongue lost in translation and cobalt flame. He raised his arm defensively, for what little protection it offered as he fire coated him.

Yet he did not burn.

He heard a cracking, the kind one would hear when walking on the ice of a frozen lake. His legs became ensnared, his thrashing meeting a resistance that tightened his muscles. A crystalline shell formed around him, his pose that of bewildered man caught in a torrent of flame.

‘I… I’m alive?’

He groaned from within the pale prison. He wasn’t scorched but the gem confine was still cooling from an uncomfortable level of heat. His legs were cramping, but the fact he could still feel his legs made his sense of relief temper his shattered nerves. The world was only visible through a hexagonal screen, flat and directed towards the dragoness massaging her throat.

For a while, the two said nothing, Sammy’s attempts to voice any thought coming out as a dull rumble. He couldn’t close his maw, and every inhale made his lungs tingle.

‘Actually… now that I think about it… How am I even breathing?’ It was too much of a curiosity for him to be terrified, his rational mind catching up to him now that he was recovering from an adrenaline high. Perhaps he was simply distracting himself from how he should have been feeling: traumatized beyond belief.

In all honesty, he was just tired.

Recovering from whatever disease spawned from the black lungs of the Devil in an instant had already drained him; spontaneously combusting nearly made him die of shock, and left his mind a puddled mess, and being chased by fire-breathing-crystal-embalming dragon cranked the fear factor up to twelve.

Now that he had a time to pause and ‘breathe’ his body simply needed rest. His mind, however, was free to recover.

‘I mean, as I understand it, I should be choking- Wait, what is she going to do to me?’

Through the small screen that formed over his face, he could see her taking deep breathes, muttering into her claws. With the loudest groan he could muster, he managed to gain her attention.

“I suppose you wish to know of what tragedy has befallen you?” The sympathy in her tone was clear, as was the way her head lowered. An anchor was tethered to her snout, her eyes searching the floor for it. “Whatever you are, it is obvious you are both sentient and sapient. What you are not is what concerns me.”

‘Well that sounded ominous.’ He noted with dread.

He remained silent as her echoing voice diffused through the shell, distorted but oddly pleasant. It wavered as if he were listening to her through water.

“The incantation that summoned you is old, rarely used by my kind due to its nature and cost,” she continued, reaching for Sammy. The frozen human could feel the shadow of her immense claw approached, his vision soon becoming covered in sparkling white. She scooped him up and brought him close, supporting his form like a pebble on a pedestal.

“I do not know if magic is apparent in your realm, creature, but here all manner of arcane forms rule the lands. Every being is touched by it, we live in its ocean, and we all harness it in our own ways. There is no exception. Dragons have our fire, our burnt whispers to ashen points in space and time and disturb reality.” Bringing up a silver-tipped claw, she prodded his casing.

“Summoning and sending, the teleportation of inanimate objects is an early skill. It is as natural as a unicorn’s telekinesis,” she said in an educating manner, turning him to face her immense wealth, “It is vital in our culture to develop a hoard, it determines stature, power, and magical prowess.”

He could see it all from his elevated position. The collected riches of his home could not hold a candle to the mountain floor of gold below him. The shadows at the edges engulfed more coin, hiding it away the young man’s eyes.

“Gemstones and certain metals can soak raw magic far better than most can draw upon, not being bound by manna reserves. They don’t take the magic of others unless enchanted to do so, in which case they stop being a sponge and act as runes. A topic for a less pressing time.”

‘Magic? Unicorns? Manna reserves? There’s no way…’

“As to how this ties into your predicament, you need to understand, I wished to summon a servant, a stone mason to reinforce my power and keep others at bay whilst I work. It could mould my metals to a degree better than anyone, it could be used to concentrate my abilities, craft my tools, and keep intruders at bay. A golem, a stone servant practised in the lost art of geomancy.”

With an unseen burden dropped on her shoulders, her swanlike neck drooped. Her eyes were closed before the same immense blue pools were revealed before him. Sammy could see that, deep within that dark serpentine slit, deep within the sliced window into her soul, her pity was pointed at him.

“It was said to be intelligent, but not living, incapable of speech, and unfeeling. It was meant to be dead on the inside, waking to fulfil a command. Your apparent fear and language, displays you‘re sapience and intelligence. You’re clothes display a point of civilisation. You belong to a clan, perhaps a great empire, but…”

She trailed off, leaving a silence his mind was attempting to shatter.

‘But? But what?!’ He ‘voiced’ his impatience through loud moans, attempting to shake his confines to at least rock side to side. The effects were hardly noticeable.

“The cost was too great, that level of magic unobtainable for years… The gems feed give us minerals and nutrients and we grow and we learn our magic. I learnt that that breathe was a mistake. I have just taken a life undeserving of its fate.”

Before he could gurgle a questioning tone she pointed her snout at him. Sammy once again found himself face to face with slightly parted lips. White smoke trailed out.

“You will need to see the gravity of the situation.”

Sammy flinched as her shimmering flame coated him in yellow an ivory, his world disappearing in a blinding flash. His slipping sense of reality summoning irritation in his lungs and stomach, a pressure building behind his eyes. His body jerked back out of the blaze, but the dragoness was gone.

Through his window, the world around him had shifted. Gone was the snow white giant and before him lay the mouth of the cave. His ears popped as the squeak of the crystals erupted all around. He grunted as the pitch fluctuated from low to high, pricking his eardrums.

‘It is like rubbing Styrofoam bricks together.’

With a loud clatter the crystal shell fell apart with him not so elegantly falling to floor shortly after. He suffered from a brief coughing fit, rolling over the glittering shards as they sparkled out of existence. On all fours he took a much needed breathe, gulping the air as a chill met his exposed skin. Whilst panting, he stumbled onto his two feet, supporting himself on a nearby stalagmite.

“That was hardly a pleasant experience,” he commented wryly as he straightened his back, “But what’s to be expected from a dragon blast?”
It was only after looking over his shoulder that Sammy spotted something he was prepared to die for moments ago.

The light of the outside poured through, reaching for him and barely stroking his cheeks. Beyond the fanged mouth of the cave lay vast emerald forests beneath before the setting sun. Streaks of magenta clouds lined the burnt orange sky, slowly darkening as the celestial orb descended just enough to peak into the cave.

He was drawn to blinding light, reaching out to shield his eyes. He trudged his way past the scorch marks of the fallen, spotting sword lodged into the ground, a three-digited gauntlet still wrapped around its handle. He paused, simply looking at the sight.

A cold fact registered in his fried mind, a chilling revelation that left him numb and paralysed. He wasn’t scared that someone’s hand was missing, or that the sword had been ripped from their hands. He was numb now; there was no place in his exhausted state for panic, only rational thought to evaluate what he could see, hear, taste, and smell. The implications of what he was seeing was barely being processed.

“No, no, not yet, can’t deal with that, just yet,” he muttered, shaking his head and continuing his sluggish march. Nothing was going to distract him from getting out. Ever since he had the chance, he’s been trying to get away from it- her, the dragoness that set him alight and paralysed him.

He combed his short hair of the ridiculous notion, a small mow hawk arching over from his widow peak. The world was bright closer to the mouth and he stood at the tip of the tongue flexing his fingers. He raised his forearm as he stood at the edge of the cave. Sammy rolled his sleeve down and exposed his skin to his elbow, pinching the middle hard enough to wince.

“It certainly feels real,” he mumbled, locking his jaw as he tore his gaze away from the world below. A warm crimson droplet crept down his forearm as he lowered it, catching onto his clenched fist. He stole a peak at the ground, spotting another coin.

He took a deep breathe, exhaling audibly through his nostril as he tidied his hair. Sammy had preference for the parted look, but his naturally curly hair would sometimes show him who was in charge. He managed, but stained his hair with a tint of red to match the cut near his brow. Eventually he stopped and simply stared at the ground, steadying his breathing as one would before diving off a cliff.

When he was calm and as prepared as could be, he would look up and would bask in the world before him. He would accept this madness only to treat as another assignment that needed analysing, or a puzzle that would reveal an answer. An answer that would fix everything he feared was wrong.

When he opened his eyes, he hoped all this would come true.

His earth brown eyes had to be shielded by one hand and he soaked it all in.

A jungle rested at the foot of the mountain, quite a small one, but the various shades of emerald only trailed in a north-western direction. A bumpy landmass of green field opposed it before coming to an end out of sight. Where he jungle and the hills divided a barren wasteland filled in the blanks, little to be seen before the distant mountains to the right.

Exotic bird calls were carried by the occasional gust of wind. They cawed and chirped as Sammy side stepped towards the cave wall, never taking his eyes off the scene before him. Black blots would occasionally whip out of the tree line in the distance, the roar of a predator echoing through the wild below. For the most part, between the chaotic cacophonous caws of the birds, an underlying pleasant melody was whistled by the jungle. His heart thundered liken a tropical drum as his simply stared.

He leant against the lip of the cave, his hand stroking the rough mountain rock. He could feel the crevices nibbling his fingertips, bleeding drops of heat from his warm body.

“Incredible.” In truth it was a word he knew could not do justice. Overwhelmed by the sight, he turned to face the other side of the cave.

“W-W-what?!” he barked abruptly, his mind trying to formulate an answer. He was in the dark as to what had happened, and yet stepping into the light only revealed how big his predicament was. His mind went from a confined, dark cage of confusion and terror to being released into the open. He was no better than an animal that had been kept in captivity being released into the wild; the change in scenery and the shift in his daily routine shattering his rational thoughts.

‘Okay… think.’ He pondered over recent events with his head in his hands. From his rising illness to entering college on the brink of death, to arriving at his doorstep and combusting on the spot. The dragoness was no help, no matter what excuses he thought of, he couldn’t justify a dragoness being on earth.

‘Unless I’m not there… and the coin…’

He thoughts trailed off as he pondered that notion, toyed with the idea of landing in a fantasy land. Rolling his head to the right his mind generated a few musing. Equestria, a childish fantasy that he knew a few irrational men would give everything up to visit. He was not one of these men, and scoffed at the idea; being trapped in the world as the only human? Where was the appeal, exactly? Regardless, from what he had seen on the show, perhaps finding help would be good.

A smile crept across his lips, a pathetic chuckle escaping before he erupted into a deep guffaw. It was amusing, to achieve other wish-fulfilled fantasy of traveling to this universe.

Given that I am actually in Equestria,’ he countered himself, looking back to the horizon. ‘That view is not one I have ever seen in the show.’ His head flopped to his left as he regarded the world without emotion, seeking just the facts.

‘Okay, if I were to base this all upon the ridiculous notion I’m here, let’s see what I know so far. The coin refers to Equestria being real, and yet I cannot see it. Either it’s behind the mountain, and this dragon slept through the changeling invasion, or I am nowhere near the only pony who could possible help me.’

His head abruptly shot up straight, his eyes blinking before he snapped his gaze towards the back of the cave.

“But there might be a dragon who can.”

He was about to rise to his feet until a roaring train of flame burst from the back of the throat, nearly scorching him. He recoiled, tucking his feet in, but found that it had done no harm as the white rocket curved upwards into the air.

As the white flames dissipated he could make out a small figure. It looped gracefully over itself in a wide arc, the reptilian wings at full extent. At the apex the creature snapped its wings closed and dove towards the ridge. He watched it spin before the white wings shot out once more, bring control to the dragoness.

He saw a distinct difference; she was still the white dragon that breathe fire unto him, she had the same horns extending from the back, the same seen to her scales. She was still the dragoness.

Only much, much smaller.

She glided without a sound, her claws akin to white feathers touching down. She was sleek and slender and had her wings wrapped around her midsection rather than pressed against her back. The style of tucking made her appear to be wearing a strapless dress, composed of shimmering white snow. With all her female features- save breasts which were absent due to her reptilian nature- she moved and displayed her lady-like grace. Her hips swayed as she took her first step, her tail moving to counter without tapping the floor. Every step echoed like stilettoes in a corridor.

Her claws that made her hands rested upon her stomach, silver tipped and curled in anticipation. Her draconic head was levelled as she looked down on him, her cobalt eyes never leaving him. Her softly curved snout parted once as she stood before him, but closed before she looked to her hands.

Sammy studied her new form, cocking his head to the right as she turned to look to the horizon. She was the one who did this –whatever it was- to him, or so his logic had deduced. She brandished the same flame that teleported him in the first place and moved him here as well. Yet, despite this he offered a warm smile.

‘Play is safe, don’t be stupid.’

“You look different, do something with your hair?” he inquired innocently, well aware of the staggering difference. He linked her new form to how she rocketed out in a blaze of golden glory, as well as her brief explanation of her abilities.

She scoffed and turned back, regarding him thoughtfully.

“I do polish my scales three times a day as a lady should, not many males catch onto such a thing.” she replied softly. Once again her eyes returned to the sunset.

‘Err… okay…’ he thought, not too sure what to make of that.

“Are you prepared to listen?”

He pulled his knees to his chest. With his arms wrapped around his shins, his thumbs rubbing together for comfort, he nodded once and lost the smile.

“I know you have a thousand questions, but leave them to the end. There is much to take in.”

“Then don’t pander me!” he growled from his position. She was barely phased as she regarded him with a flat expression. “Next you’ll ask me if I’m fine, let’s cut the crap, no I’m not,” he added bitterly. His emotion were rolling in a spin cycle, his impatience quickly overwhelming his civil manner. Sammy tried to keep his voice from rising, bearing in mind the possible threats he faced. He couldn’t say he wasn’t justified. For him, turmoil was a new experience as was trying not to believe the insane, and failing.

There was a flicker of compassion, of regret, before her face fixated with a stern glare.

“Let me finish, creature,” she responded calmly, though her teeth were bared at the last second. His heart was racing, not out of fear but dread. He kept quiet but let his features sour into a burrowed frown.

“I am Trixanituia,” she introduced herself as, curtsying slightly, “But many outside my species have taken to calling me Lady Ivory.”

She gestured towards him, tilting her head.

“To whom am I addressing?”

“I am known as Sammy Wright, but most would call me ‘kidnapped’,” he replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes as his head shifted to the left. “I’m sorry if I’m being blunt but please-“

“Stop wasting my time?” she bit back, arching a brow, “Fine then. I wished to ease this revelation upon you, but if you want the facts, here they are: you are no longer where you came from.”

Both lapped into silence for a while, him tilting his head back to bump it into the rim of the cave wall. The dull thud was accompanied by the blunt pat on the back of his head, knocking the sense of reality into the situation. The ache that flashed briefly dissolved as a new question precipitated to the front of his mind.

“How did I get here?” he asked, gulping a pain breathe. He had to take her word, this creature of supposed myth before him. It was a constant reality clash that faded like the roar of a distant riot. Closer to home, where his heart was collecting his emotions, his resolve was starting to tremble and shake.

“I attempted to summon a golem, one who could build, craft, and enchant my hoard alongside protect it. I used an ancient spell my elder had left me from his passing, but brought forth you. Whatever you are,” she finished, her studious glance rotating as she turned her head.

“Human… Category primate, poshly dubbed Homo sapiens for those not bothered by writing space,” he replied automatically. He was busy replaying that last piece of information. She wanted a golem? So she was planning to kidnap one? A dragon wanted a guard and she thought plunging into another universe was necessary?

“What on earth possessed you to do that?!” he barked once more, getting to feet. Lady Ivory was a foot taller but it did little to deter Sammy at this point. He took three strides before standing before her. Seething, he spoke. “Y-You think you can just take a-a living creature and make him your slave?”

The sound of a parasol being opened up by the wind accompanied her wings flaring as she gritted her teeth and growled. A look of utter disgust was directed at him through her harsh eyes.

“How dare you suggest such a thing!” she screeched, indignation shifting her pitch up a notch, “Dragons do not take slaves, such a barbaric act is far below our mighty race! We need not the labour of dozens when we can match that in one claw,” she pointed out, swiftly pressing a curved claw against his throat.

He choked a little and stepped back, rubbing his neck as she spoke.

“You’d do well to remember that, human. Think twice before insulting me.”

“So what do you call this then, oh mighty dragon,” he shot back, pointing to himself. He abruptly pointed to the back of the cave, leaning over with a condescending smile. “I’m guessing my invitation was lost in the mail, right?”

She huffed and whipped her tail, cracking the ground into a small cobweb.

“You were not supposed to be sapient, merely a construct, a tool I could use. I wouldn’t take a life that was not deserving.” With an amused chortle, Sammy snapped his fingers and pulled on his jumper, presenting himself like a grand prize.

“Well you’re experiment has been a great success,” he said, flashing an award winning smile. “Now, Lady Ivory, if you would be so kind as to send me back,” he finished with a thunderous frown.

She fell silent, her head drooping as her eyes fell downcast. Her tail ceased its agitated twitching and lay limp close to the floor. With a weary sigh she met his gaze, her simply saddened stare conveying her answer plain enough.

“Oh please tell me this is joke.” His voice was shaken by disbelief, a dreadful anticipation churning his stomach. His eye stung whilst his throat tightened. “Y-you brought me- look you, I know you can do it.”

“The amount of magic I used had been accumulated over fifteen years,” Lady Ivory replied, revealing her hand to be holding a flawless ruby. He registered its sparkling form, its many sides capturing his quivering features lowering and closing his jaw. He didn’t care for the precious stone, just the deduced fact cycling through his mind like a rat in a trap.

“Dragons eat gems because of their magical properties, which only few can access. I’m afraid that I cannot repeat what I had done for a long time, and I fear you do not have the patience of a dragon.”

“Please, Ivory, this can’t be happening,” he pleaded, stumbling back to the wall. When she gave no answer he shuddered and looked to the horizon.

‘W-What? Why… How do you mix that up? It’s not fair!’ His choked sobs followed as he slid down the wall, folding into the smallest shape he could as he brought his knees close to his chest. The pessimist’s reality hit him hard, and no matter how much he fought against it, he was isolated. He couldn’t accept it.

“My remorse must mean nothing at this time so I do not expect your forgiveness in the future, if ever,” Ivory added, getting to her knees. It eased his neck to not have to look almost vertically to meet her face. He simply huffed and sluggishly shifted his gaze towards the landscape, soaking in the comforting glow of a dying day.

Through a damp, half thoughtful glance he could see the last bright rays of the day rest upon the world. The grand view of a majestic land, diversified by the different biomes, held and artist’s pallet of colours. He took solace in the soothing greens that melded seamlessly, regarding the new light of his predicament with his rolled to the right. It was… tranquil. Surviving his world crashing down was be exhausting, he realized, with what little a calmed mind he could muster.

It helped to simply look, yet, there was the constant labelling of everything as alien. Alien forest, foreign mountains, extra-terrestrial sand.

‘Actually, I’m the alien here, by definition,’ he corrected, had to correct. It was a thought that sprouted a smirk as he remained lost in the dying day. The shadows of an approaching night grew, blackening where the light couldn’t reach. The cave floor was chilling, its touch sapping the lingering warmth along his spine and legs.

‘Never seen a sun set like this before,’ he pointed out, trying to ignore his aches and pains. He just wanted normality at this moment, his private bit of solitude before his family would crash in and either ruin or make his day. It was always one or the other, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sadly, he wouldn’t be having either.

‘As long as I sit here on my arse…’

That thought stirred something in him. A small spark, a flame yet to become a burning determination. He remain silent, telling himself that he would get home. There would be nothing to stop him, he had to get back. A human wouldn’t survive here on self-pity and loathing. His expression darkened as the sun rested behind the distant mountains, the orange glow waving farewell from beyond.

Sammy cleared his eyes of the tears, sighing as his body found even that task difficult.

“You’ve been quiet,” he croaked, his noticing how dry his throat was.

“You needed my silence,” Lady Ivory replied, still maintain that soft elegance to her voice.

“What am I going to do?” He wasn’t exactly certain of what he could possibly do at this point. Sammy wasn’t going anywhere fast, literally considering his exhausted condition. In a much broader sense he a nineteen year old on the brink of despair and with little knowledge in survival, or magic as it seemed.

‘See, if I had devoted my time to outdoor survival rather than My Little Pony then I could at least live until I got back home… somehow,’ he thought before she spoke.

“That depends on what you wish for,” she replied cryptically, offering the ruby. He cast a curious glance her way, uncertainty soon taking its place. She nudged it a little closer and he cautiously reached out. “There… may be other types of arcane arts for you to pursue if you wish to try and return, although I have not heard of other species having the ability to travel between realms." She paused, regarding him with an inquisitive squint, "Other species have other magics, but what of your race, why did I find you? I sought a geomancer for my hoard of diamonds primarily, I just assumed it would be a golem.”

As soon as the stone fell into his palm he felt… a surging warmth. His description of it was limited by his sense of touch, which told him that something stirred in the stone, and bubbled the blood along his skin. Pins and needles attacked his arm, or rather, the numb-yet-ticklish sensation fizzed in his bones. It died at his elbow, but slowly grew in strength the longer he held it.

At the point when it felt pleasantly warm, his fingers twitched as they curled around the ruby. The feeling in his palm was akin to holding his hand to towards a candle. ‘No, it would be more like a lit Bunsen burner. It doesn’t hurt, but the heats practically bathing my hand.’ His grip tightened and he felt a rush, a spike of energy bolt down his arm.

With a ‘fwoosh’, red flames twirled around his wrist before flying into the air. Stunned and withholding his breath he watched the brief display of fire dance in his palm before vanishing. The warmth was there, ever present. He concentrated once more, straining as the word ‘fire’ played in his mind. Light flickered from his fist as it combusted, not a single sensation of pain in his hand.

His eyes gained an orange mist, small traces of smoke trailing off as he maintained his fixated scowl. His breathing became more ragged the longer he was transfixed by the display. Finally he snapped.

“Nope!” He cried as he bolted to his feet, startling Ivory. With a swift turn and his arm locked back, he catapulted the gem out of the cave. Sadly, he was not in the best condition (nor was he a particularly thrower) and the ruby rocketed to the sky.

Both watched with different expressions, Ivory’s being muted horror whilst Sammy’s was a look of embarrassment. He earned some impressive height, but it was likely due to fire thrusting the gem further into the air. His panting occupied the air rather than a muted silence as the burning stone crashed onto the tip of the ledge, hopping up once to bid farewell before falling down the mountain.

Both shuffled as close as they could to the ridge edge, Sammy not as daring as the dragoness beside him. He saw the faintest of orange whither out before the gem was swallowed whole by the tree line, lost to the foot of the mountain.

“So…” he started lamely, kicking a rock over the edge.

“You have terrible aim,” she flatly stated.

“In my defence my hand was on fire,” he retorted turning to face her unamused stare. ‘Whatever, the bitch hardly deserve my apology.’

“You just lost a three century old ruby. I was saving that,” she snapped. Her scowl would have burnt him alive if it could, but he knew well enough she could do that opening her big mouth.

“And I care… why?” he replied with a shrug. She stepped up to him, emphasising the good foot she had over him. Planting her claws on his shoulders, constricting her tail around his ankle, and pressing her face into his Ivory spoke with a warning growl.

“You never throw away a piece of a dragon’s hoard right in front of them.” Her harsh stare made him contemplate his mistake, after all, he was sure his parents would have been ashamed of his behaviour. Or absolutely terrified of the magical, talking dragon.

“So it may not have been entirely polite,” he said with a hint of nervousness, coughing to the side, “And so I am sorry for taking something of yours and throwing it away.” The words struck them both differently, both seeing the link but Sammy acting on it whilst her features softened. “Imagine how my mother is feeling, or my father, or the rest of my family.”

She released him, pushing him back towards the cave. He tried to stay standing but his worn body had given up. He simply slumped towards the ground, his head bobbing as he crawled towards his spot along the lip of the cave.

“I’m sorry for my mistake, if I could fix it now I would, but I can’t," she lamented. Sammy huffed and turned to lay his back against the wall. “As I said, I may not be able to help you now, but there may be others who can.”

He paused, his bitter stare sweetening with hope as a half-smile formed on his lips. He chuckled before succumbing to a dry coughing fit, massaging his throat.

“It’s getting late, you should rest, Sammy,” Lady Ivory said softly.

“Wait, I have a few questions,” he rasped, rubbing his neck.

“By the sound of things, you only have one before I return to the cave to bring you a drink. Choose carefully, for when I return, I will leave you to contemplate further until you are ready to join me in my cavern. Tomorrow will be the day for questions.” She strolled towards the throat of the cave, her struts marked by each clack of her claws. She looked over her shoulder with eyes that pierced the darkness. “Your other questions can wait, when you are more sound of mind, as for now, you need to rest.”

‘One question?’

His expressions said it all. He felt cheated! How could she deny him that right for answers? ‘Are we not going to talk about how I set fire to a rock? Who exactly are these other races, and why can’t you send me back again? I swear if she is scared of gaining weight I turn her into a scaled handbag.’

“Nothing? Well, I leave you to your thoughts for a few minutes,” she added, flaring her wings.

“Wait!” he cried, causing her to pause.

She looked at him expectantly, an arched brow silently conveying her acknowledgement of his cry.

He had too many choices, too many questions. Is this really Equestria? How does dragon magic work? Why do I have magic? Why me? Hundreds of ponderous queries raced before his mind, answers to which would elude him all night long. He needed sleep soon, and answering but one of the heavy hitting questions would leave out all the others.

“Did you really have to slip into something comfortable for little ol’ me?” he playfully asked, grinning like an idiot as his head fell to the right, “Didn’t know dragons could shrink, to be truth be told.”

‘Fuck it, I’ll contemplate how I’ve stepped into so much shit that I need a Scuba kit tomorrow, as of now… let’s see what she has to say about how she shrunk a few thousand dress sizes.’ He wondered if his curious side might get the better of him, perhaps it would help keep him stable for a while. Maybe he was clinging to a sense of normality through conversation.

She rolled her eyes as she lectured, “Of course we can, how else can mature females lay such small eggs?” She beat her wings, the sound echoing as she hovered. “Now if you’ll excuse me for a second, I’ll get that drink.”

He didn’t even hesitate as he called back, bringing both hands to his mouth to make a cone.

“I’ll take the strongest of whatever you have, please.” His words bounced back, no reply following. He regretted the action instantaneously. His parched throat demanded that he kept his voice down.

For a few minutes he sat, huddled up with his knees pressed against his chest. His steady breathing was all her heard as Sammy leant his head gently against the wall. By now he was haggard and exhausted, but could keep his eyes open for the approaching night.

Soon the cold, mystical hues of blue painted the landscape beneath the glowing moon. Its illumination caught the leaves of the canopy of the jungle, merging the silhouettes of the trees into one dark shadow. As time passed the hills to the right were coated in a ghostly layer of light, the hauntingly beautiful fields spanning of into the dark distance. The still mountains lurked beyond his field of sight now, slumbering in the shadowed distance. The night sky was peppered with silver and pulsating blues.

‘I wonder if Luna is working tonight?’

He’d be lying if that didn’t spark some childish delight, the kind he imagined explorers would get when he was a child. Then again maybe it was his closet brony squeezing out before being beaten back from whence it came. He never liked admitting he found the show enjoyable, the introductory song always made his squirm. He couldn't say that there wasn't an appeal to having a grand adventure, however.

“I think I found decent ground to leave the fandom,” he mused. “Foreeeveeer,” he whispered with a mad glint, a pink pony flashing before his mind’s eye.

Sammy smiled in spite of himself, deciding to treat his fan side regardless as to whether or not he was in Equestria. Morality was important at this point.

‘Well there’s an idea- get to the Princesses! They’d be my best bet… or so the fanfics go.’ Though it was an amusing notion, the thought actually bolstered his faded hopes. His hopes were now based upon his only reference material for this scenario, and all of them pointed to Equestria. Who was he to argue with the general consensus? It wasn’t but a flickering candle of hope in the wind at this point, but with this single hope, he could protect the flame from being snuffed out by doubt.

He crawled towards the ridge ledge, refusing to look up to avoid spoiling himself. He ignored the sense of vertigo as his head popped over the end. He took a shaky breath to calm his frayed nerves and carefully re-positioned himself to hang his legs over. Finally, he looked up.

After he did, his heart sank.

“That… That might complicate things,” he whispered, slouching as he gazed towards the lunar satellite.

Its face shone brightly, littered with craters that greyed out in a distinct pattern. They curved along the edge of the moon, extending out from the upper half. From the extension a spear-like protrusion carried on to rest the point at the other side of the moon. A single white blot sat amongst this darkened patch, an eye upon an equine head.

“The mare on the moon,” he whispered, taking in a deep breathe. He knew what it meant, a signal of a period of time yet to come. It was an additional fact that made his hands gently rest upon his face. Sammy controlled his breathing, reevaluating the situation.

“Okay this is definitely the same world as Equestria, and I’m before the return of Nightmare Moon. Which means that it’s before season one, before ‘The Return of Harmony’ which affects me how?”

He scanned the sky for an answer, cocking his head to the left. He got no response, no epiphany, no added pressure seeing as he was lost. That’s when the revelation hit him: it did nothing for him. Regardless as to whether or not Nightmare Room was back and if Twilight Sparkle was still reading four books at once, neither of the two were a direct influence on his predicament.

Except for one tiny detail.

“Humans weren’t seen in the show… does that mean I can’t interact with them?” he mumbled, scratching his scalp.

After a quick pondering, he groaned and leant back. He rested against the floor, his legs dangling off as he simply tried to fathom the nature of what was going on. He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow.

He simply had too many questions. What was the point in burdening himself at this point, couldn’t afford to pause, and yet, to rectify his ignorance of the situation was lead a mental breakdown. He could feel the dried tears from his unstable state of mind, when true despair poured from his eyes moments ago. With a sigh, he realised that he’d probably not even had the blow hit yet if he was recovering so quickly. The worst was, apparently, yet to come.

He opened his eyes with reluctance, not finding a foreign sky but a newly acquainted face.

Lady Ivory had returned without his notice- something that deeply disturbed him- and she held a dull mug in one claw and a chalice in the other. The golden chalice was adorned with gemstones that held his attention before his dark eyes shifted to the clay cup. Neither fit properly into her claws, being ever so slightly smaller.

“Let me guess, one will give me eternal life whilst the other will make me perish?” he asked wryly, earning a cock of her head.

“I don’t quite understand,” she managed, bewildered. He shook his head, smirking as he straightened up and got to his feet. He was cautious around the ridge edge, making sure to take a few steps away. Then a few more, just to be safe. She followed Sammy, offering both containers.

From what he could tell by the clear liquid, despite the darkness of the cave, was that both contained water.

“Thank you,” he said absentmindedly, eyeing the clay mug suspiciously. He swirled his accepted beverage twice before bringing to rim to his lips. He could fill the rough surface of the cup as he eyes the dragoness who was taking a delicate sip. Tilting back the cup just enough to let the cool liquid wet his lips, he finally took in a small mouthful.

Ivory eyed him up as he stood still, liking his lips. His gaze seemed to wonder everywhere but back to his cup. He appeared to be chewing thoughtfully, his tongue bouncing between his cheeks before his face scrunched up.

“Is something wrong?” she asked with concern laced in her words, “It’s not poisoned if that is your worry and is consumed by many creatures further down the river that runs through one of the smaller tunnels. It’s perfectly safe.”

“Well it appears I chose wisely then.”

“I think we both want some rest for now,” she put forward, nodding to the back of the cave. His lips curled into a silent snarl before he downed the drink. Water escaped and trickled out from the corner of his mouth between each gulp. With a satisfied sigh, he wiped his maw and facial fuzz before giving her a pointed glare.

“I want to go home,” he stated, dropping the mug and turning back. The smash signaled the loss of another artifact of hers, another piece of her hoard.

She held a mixture of emotions, a blend of sorrow for her mistake and how disheveled he was, and anger for the lack of respect her so casually displayed towards her. Perhaps she was angry at herself for making such a colossal error. Regardless, she wasn’t too pleased for his utter disrespect; she wanted to own up to her responsibility because any dragon worth their salt controlled what occurred within their den. Which meant that either she help him, or simply kick him out and be done with it.

Dragons weren’t known for being hospitable to unwanted guests nor were they a fan of the destruction of their possessions.

“Excuse me, human!” she balked, marching up to the man, “I’ll have you know that I don’t have to care for you, in fact, I could shift size and swallow you whole!” Sammy turned and found himself once again being leant upon by Ivory, her burning stare freezing him to the spot. “Dragons may only kill in retaliation for something invading their lair, but you also seem to forget that we can get hungry too. Gems only satisfy so much.”

He frowned but she cut him off, displaying her sharp claws once more

“Talk and I’ll tear out your voice box,” she stated, not giving him time to digest the threat. “Yes it is my fault you are here, yes I am incredibly sorry for what has happened, and I will set you on the best path from this point on, but you will treat me with the respect my species deserve!” she screamed, nearly bursting his ear drums.

“I’m not asking for your forgiveness, that’s ridiculous, but if you think I’ll let you-” she emphasised with a sharp prod, causing him to yelp- “insult me and ruin my hoard by wrecking it, the third worst insult to my kind, then I won’t keep you.”

“What the Hell-” was all he managed, clutching his shoulder. She locked her claw along his chin and dragged his gaze towards her. With a grim tone, she spoke clearly.

“I’ll let you lose in the wilds, where the hydras roam ad the Hikkou bats fly. Something as weak and as lost as you won’t survive the night as you are. Rest and clear your mind.” Sammy tore away from her grasp, her claws scratching his chin. Feeling along, he felt the sting of a wound, along with freshly shaven skin. A slice now cut into his ragged beard.

He rubbed his blood stain fingers on himself, noting how her claws were curling away from the world. They hid as he pressed his tongue against his cheek, subtly emphasising the small gash through feigned habit and pointed stare. She quickly returned her claws to their default station crossed over her stomach, her head turned back towards the throat of the cave.

“Fine. Until I can go, I’ll stay. I'll be as civil as I can given the preposterous circumstance. But I am not going to be doing no crystal magic bullshit,” he stated rather than negotiated. He turned to leave but stopped to start strolling backwards, pointing at her rudely, “Don’t be expecting any apologies from me, and don’t even bother expecting my forgiveness. This is an abduction with the intention of slavery, end of.” He spun around, but the simple act of walking was now becoming tiring. He stumbled forth, quickly staggering until he tripped.

Time slowed as his eyes lay upon pointed stalagmite. His ribs were on a direct course as he was carried over, losing his footing and beginning his descent. His shot out but found no purchase as he stopped moving all together. As if a harness had ensnared him his jumper became taught around his chest and waist. He was pulled back but collapsed as soon as his weight rested on his own legs.

Fortunately he had someone to catch him.

Holding him under one arm, his own loosely wrapped around her side, Lady Ivory supported him. They both shared a long stare, withheld contempt in his eyes clashed with her dutiful compassion. Neither wanted this, but she was willing to help and he was in need of her assistance. For now this would be his best chance.

She helped him along the cave. Sammy’s mind tore him away from her pitiful gaze, lost in what was going to happen the next day. He wasn't happy, in fact on the inside he was miserable. His plan of action was short sighted to the point that his plan was simply ‘sleep’, where little mattered as his body demanded this of him. Still, he had a one thing to say, one thing he wanted to talk about that wasn't a big issue he could tackle tomorrow.

“You’re rather kind for a dragon, if that doesn't sound too prejudiced.” It was true, and it was a thought that plagued him. It was now on level to when he was curious about how she changed size.

“It’s a common misconception that others have tied to us,” she started, an air of nobility returning to her voice. “Our society is complex, our hierarchies shifting with the changing eras and with our long lifespans, and as such, both males and females may get…physical. We don’t, however, endorse harming the other races- it’s not their business, but if they get involved in a dragons quarrel then there will likely be only one outcome.”

“So… about the whole burning cities thing…”

“Well, if someone broke into your home and robbed your riches, your social status, or you if awoke to find a village built over your reserved hoard, wouldn't you be a rather bit upset?” she inquired with a grin. “There’s also the glorious tradition of ending my life, proudly displaying my carcass around the settlement, and in some cultures, eating my slain flesh.

“Oh yeah, you guys have that century long nap,” Sammy remembered. He was more focused on trying to be less of a drag at this point, spurring his legs on to stop them becoming dead weight.

“You seem well informed of my kind, we’ll be having an interesting chat tomorrow,” she said, working that into both their schedules. “Anyway, a few bad eggs, some poorly risen drakes, and few hostile take overs and we are apparently the bane of every civilisation. I can assure you we are not!”

“No, no, I can totally see the appeal in trans-dimensional travel, especially on unsuspecting humans,” he retorted sarcastically. He didn’t need to look to feel her burning glare, but the warm wisps of white smoke and the rumbling growl made him back pedal.

“Last one, I promise.” He weakly chuckled before coughing awkwardly.

“I’ll set up a nest for you to sleep in,” she offered, earning a grunt in acknowledgement. The small talk helped guide him through the tunnel. Learning was beneficial as it satisfied his growing curiosity, but more importantly suppressed thoughts of home. His throat dried as images of his friends seeped into his mind, a tightness in his chest squeezing out ponderings of home.

‘I wonder how it looked from their end. Did anyone see?’

He became limp at that point, barely stumbling along. Sammy could only look away, refusing to let her see a tear.

Author's Notes:

There's a lot to take into this chapter, but I find it fitting. There is a ton to take in, and he asked for the facts strictly. He wanted it all to be pilled on in order to have a better understanding of his situation. His emotions are a wreck and he's trying to take things as they come, causing him to shift between emotional states.

Chapter three: Mountaintop B&B

A dreamless sleep connected a sombre night of depressed thoughts to the awakening haze of a new day. He awoke to a rough, invasive morning that coldly shunned away any form of comfort. Sammy felts the awkward aches of sleeping on the floor, a thin layer of animal skins separating him from the hard ground. Warmth coated his back, about as comforting as a stranger leaning against him. He nuzzled into his impromptu pillow, bringing his chin closer to his chest. A square ring pressed into his cheek, but he was willing to move.

His clouded mind cleared almost instantaneously. Groggy was an apt word for his mood every morning; he hated rising out of bed as the world felt heavy. There was the pointless battle of trying to ease into the early waking hours, the diplomatic move to remain in bed for another five minutes just to be up an about when the minute hand rested upon a unit of ten.

This morning was different in that it was all of this but sped up.

Like a spring loaded trap, as soon as he was awake he sat up. An impression of one of his bag buckles, used to seal the bag, was on his left cheek. His beady eyes squinted as his vision adjusted, never the less inspecting the surroundings.

He was in the ‘room’ he first appeared in. It was more of a cleanly mined cavern, shaped to form a cylindrical space with a hole that served as the entrance. He hardly had time to take get a good look the first time, what with fleeing in terror taking priority. It was incredibly spacious, practically spartan save for the neatly stacked block of bits to the far left.

He noted that he had nothing to do with that, alongside the fact that said block was approximate in size to a car.

In the centre was bonfire with no obvious source of fuel. The white flames swayed silently and provided the stuffy atmosphere that constricted him. He regarded the base of the fire, wincing as his eyes were still yet to adjust, but took note in the wide scorch mark that lead to a spot to his right. It was as if a previous fire had ran off, singing the ground black in it wake.

‘I wonder if I had anything to do with that?’ The first thought of the new day brought him back to the previous night. He was still tender about the instant departing, and the haunting moment of being denied a return trip home tormented him. He rubbed his eyes, vigorously purging his them of crusted sleep.

He shook his head, rolling onto all fours. He couldn’t afford to think like that anymore. No, not true. He was still willing to, but the issue was that he wasn’t sure how much was healthy and how much would hinder him. He simply wanted to move and to get home. He stood on his knees, his hands slowly dragging down his face.

‘Okay, I’m awake after sleeping, meaning that my options are that I was dreaming in my dream or this is reality. A new reality, but real all the same.’ Though partial for the second option, he couldn’t outright cast away the previous notion that this was a dream. He felt pain, from the now dried cut on his cheek to every sharp prod form the dragoness. ’Admitting this is a reality implies that the dragon is real,’ he thought, switching to sitting on his backside when his knees became uncomfortable.

He cocked his head to the left as his thoughts shifted.

If he believed that this was a dream, then he would only need to be shocked into awakening, or to simply wait for his sleep to end. In a way, this would make sense if he was suffering from a fever dream. His last memories of earth were that of a collapsing due to an overwhelming heat flush. But, then what of the pains and the re-awakening’ dream? He wasn’t too sure about how long a fever dream lasted- a logical presumption was that they lasted for as long as the fever did.

‘Are these dreams lucid?’

He bit his lip as he contemplated. He couldn’t remember the last lucid dream he had, or if he ever had one to begin with. He knew that dreams were the salvaged images our memories could collect, but they were random, and he had never dreamt about dragons or My Little Pony.

His head rolled to the right, an amused scoff being puffed out.

‘It certainly is a first, and hardly gentle. Where’s the forest to guide me to Ponyville where I may partake in many a human-pony endeavour?’

Sammy sighed, rubbing the buckle imprint away as his glanced idly around the room. There really wasn’t more to take in, he simply let his eyes wander as his mind wondered.

‘The reality shtick on the other hand…’ he began to ponder with his eyes on the white fire, ‘Being magically transported to another reality means that I can be moved back, I just need to find out how.’ Sammy decided that perhaps a pleasant morning chat with his hostess/kidnapper would be a good place to start. Whilst he had his mind set firmly that this was real, the possibility of waking abruptly circled his mind like a vulture. He could return to his world halfway through leaving the cave. Regardless, that would be an event that would reveal itself in time, if at all.

‘It wouldn’t be a productive use of my time to wait for a miracle,’ he thought with a frown.

‘Where there is a will, there is a way’ can be considered the personal mantra of any ambitious human. Their desires can support them for as long as their hopes are fed, and Sammy’s growing hope was to return home. It was nothing more than a speck of light, but he refused to believe that he couldn’t get home. Perhaps it was simple, nay vague, but he was confident that he would walk the road home wherever it took him.

He just needed to find his first step.

Right after he took inventory.

“Forgot to do this last night,” he muttered, reaching for the bag he rested his head on all night, “Too busy moping.” Pulling it onto his lap, he beamed a smile as he flipped open the lip. With a cheery tone to match his chipper look he said, “But on the positive side I believe I’ve met for quota for now!” His smile snapped back flat as his face took a more neutral expression.

As expected, four books remained: his psychology book on cognitive thoughts and the biological aspects of the mind had a few sticky notes missing, he was sure. His chemistry book was as thick hardback, and forefront in the offense against his face last night. The thick Spanish book had seen better days, the cover dog eared a few pages into the book. Another book was a new journal, essentially useful for his doodles, tracking important dates and being spare paper.

He set them to the side and continued routing around for the other items he believed were still in there.

He found his digital watch, the fact that the cyan backlight worked brought an ecstatic grin to his maw. Sammy had never been so happy to see the sleek, black device in all his days. He pushed a button on the side, and could see the light bulb shine brightly at the top. He had to remove his watch for a practical experiment the day prior to his ‘journey’ and simply forgot to put it back on.

‘I should probably conserve that, he realised as he rolled his grey sleeves up and attached the watch to his wrist. Though the time said it was near eleven in the morning, until he could confirm that, he could call his watch reliable. To presume England’s time zone was exactly the same as where ever he actually was seemed ignorant. He’d need to fix that but it wasn’t a priority.

Delving back in, his hand gripped two items. One rustled in his grasp, the other resisted and croaked as the plastic dented between his fingers. Retrieving his haul, he pulled out a blueberry muffin in the wrapper and a plastic carton of razor caps. He needed to replace the dulled ones for his razor back home, seeing as Movember was finally coming to an end soon enough.

Sammy gave a half smile at his load, idly running his hand over the healed cut on his cheek. He could feel the thin scab line amongst the facial fuzz, opting to postpone shaving.

“It’s all useless,” he whispered, rolling his head to the left. He rubbed his eyes of lingering sleep before reaching for the muffin. “Out of everything here, all I have is a small breakfast.” Seeing as he wasn’t hungry yet, he simply eyed the treat in his palm. “Most people get their phones but-“

His phone! Sammy’s head snapped towards his pockets, the muffin falling as his hands scrambled for his pockets. There were no signs of the familiar, thin cuboid protrusion in his jeans as he patted down. He huffed before frowning, his glance shifting to the charred trail close by. He did a double take as he remembered thinking that the burned spot by the wall may have indicated where he came into this world.

Alas, with his hopes high he looked over for his Iphone, but found no sign of perhaps the most technologically advanced paper weight in this world.

“Probably couldn’t get signal anyhow…” he realised with a sigh. His head tilted the right as he reached for the razor packet by his side. “Apple would probably sue Twilight if she could replicate it anyhow,” he mused, before seemingly brightening up, “Or use unicorns as a more efficient manufacturing process.”

Having collected his gear, Sammy stored all but the squished muffin and watch. He climbed shakily to his feet, his arms reflexively extending a little to offer balance. He managed to pop his back a few times, groaning with satisfaction before popping his neck. With a minimal sense of comfort, in the form of his slightly smushed muffin and a digital watch, Sammy decided he was off to a good start this morning, all things considered.

Then he thought about the dragoness, Lady Ivory as she like to call herself.

His contempt and animosity towards her reignited, surfacing as a darkening scowl pointed towards the exit. The smoothly carved tunnel once housed a large dragon head, as to why she needed this space he supposed he could ask, but the face of the one who summoned him only darkened his mood.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ he brooded, taking a step, ‘I’m here because the overgrown gecko wanted a servant. You would think that magical servants could be bought somewhere, next door to where Harry got his wand or something.’

He decided to give the mystical fire a wide birth, partly due to its creepy arcane nature, but mostly common sense in regards to fire safety: keep a good distance from a fire at all times.

“And that’s why I’m the life of the party,” he said offhandedly, his mind returning him to important matter: the white bitch who did this to him. He couldn’t exactly tell what the reasoning behind was behind magicians deciding to mess with the universe, or as the case was (or may have been if he was dreaming), messing other universes.

Sammy skirted close to the wall, one hand tidying his morning hair. It was proving difficult to part his hair at the front with one hand, but he didn’t mind. He was still contemplating how stupid such a notion was, and how he was going to have to convince himself that said notion was real and happened: a dragon had burnt a human into existence in what may or may not be a fictional universe.

He groaned as he crossed over the room, shaking his head as he began navigate the passageway. His hunger set it, his stomach announcing its distress through a long gurgle. He tore into the wrapper and took a bite, savouring the flavour. He repressed a satisfied smile in favour as he chewed, fully removing the muffin from the packet.

He mulled over his situation as he turned in time with the passage, his head falling to the right. He regarded the wrapper briefly before shrugging and pocketing it. He wasn’t a litter bug, after all, and it was just rude to drop rubbish in other people’s homes.

’Besides,’ he thought, flinching as a wall mounted torch ignited itself with a white flame, ‘That just seems petty. If I want to do real damage, I’ll just throw a few more gemstones out of the cave. That seems to work.’ The journey was short lived, as was the muffin, and so he emerged from an archway into a small library of sorts whilst clearing a few crumbs from his chest.

Here the immense size of the cave sapped all the warmth he had come accustomed to back in his temporal abode. Eight columns of ornate book shelves stood side by side, evenly placed with only a few that were partially packed. Spotting the sight of snow white and shinning gold, he made his way easily through the polished brown shelves. He counted that there were only five rows to each column, but the thought quickly died as he stopped at the edge of the ridge. His eyes widened, not because he was stunned, but because he couldn’t believe he hadn’t acknowledges how massive this hoard was.

It was almost serene, the hypnotic effect of immense wealth and fortune calming him as he scanned the heart of the cave. It was likely the size of his college campus.In the centre was a glistening, ivory mound.

The dragoness had returned to full size, her neck curling against a hill of riches as slumbered. She slept on her stomach, shoulder deep in her glorious collection. Wisps of white smoke trailed away from her snout and her tail writhed from beneath. The fact that she was enormous generated an echoing cascade of jingling coins that he could hear as her tail surfaced. Her wings twitched, a sign of her awakening as countless bits poured from her form.

He watched as her impressive build writhed and stretched beneath the hoard, her head burrowing into the hill she slept against. Finally, her sleek face stirred, a light groan resonating from her throat. Sleepily, Lady Ivory raised her swanlike neck and seemingly dragged her head away from her precious pillow.

Sammy opted to sit with his legs dangling over the edge, estimating it would be a few meters drop from the ledge to the golden ocean. It was still rather difficult to take in that he was watching a dragoness awake. He was no longer feeling melancholy for being torn from home. Instead there was a sense of awe to everything he started to take in. He cocked his head to the right as he regarded the tired dragon before him.

He watched Lady Ivory yawn with grace into her white claw, listening the waterfall of gems crash down from where they slipped off her arm. He wasn’t immune to the nagging sense of how wrong it was to even contemplate putting everything off pause and simply studying this new world. The sense of wonderment came with the backstabbing guilt; how could he even dare to think about abandoning his home for the sake of learning about this world?

‘Because I’m that kind of human?’

The coins he returned to stare at held no answer, but had lead him to a new query, another problem that paled in comparison to the major issue: how was he going to get home? No. This question was as to why he was not sobbing more, why he was even up and about listening to a dragoness shake lose thousands worth of gold from her between her wings?

He needed this introspection, most of last night was all moping and no progress. It was just a blur. He hated that. Being…stuck. It was a constant annoyance of his when he couldn’t quite get something right in a practical experiment, or when he was explained a scientific concept that he needed to hear again and again.

It was… a sign of being incapable. He wasn’t too fond of that.

‘So am I now regarding why I’m up an about because I have nothing else to do, or because I don’t know what to do?’he pondered with his head to the left, resting on his shoulder. It was a disturbing notion, but then again he hadn’t really heard of how to react to such a scenario. He had expectations, he had read a few fan made stories about how a human should react, and the scope covered all kinds of reactions. He did long foe home, a reassuring sign of he wasn’t one for apathy in a time of crises.

‘Now I’m basing my current psychological state on what other people have written about first contact with fictional ponies?’ His musing brought a wry grin as he was once again reminded how absurd his position was. He knew something was off when he bolted up to scan his surroundings as soon as he was conscious, it was as if he was prepared.

‘I need Kubler Ross to help here: what happens when someone becomes aware they may be going through the stages of grief in the wrong order?’ Sammy was aware of the stages of grief, but until a previous psychological lesson he was not aware that one could go through them in any order, sometimes repeating certain stages. Then again, the stages of mourning were for the death of loved one, not being separated from home. How applicable it was something he’d have to determine. Sammy wasn’t aware of what it all meant for him currently, but he took a small amount of comfort in knowing what to look for.

He couldn’t believe what happened to him, he wasn’t exactly pleased with the still stretching dragoness before him, and he had already planned on getting home no matter the cost.

‘Denial, anger, and perhaps bargaining if it was loosely defined. Freud on crack, I’m just delaying depression with distraction, aren’t I?’

An answer never struck him as, upon regarding Lady Ivory one again, he found her arching her lower back and curling her tail over enough to almost touch between the bases of her horns. He was spared of anything revealing, his eyes glancing away to focus on her face instead.

It was rude to stare.

So he made eye contact.

Very awkward eye contact.

There was a long pause as neither spoke a word, Ivory frozen with her backside in the air and him refusing to allow anything but a shaky poker face.

So despite that it was rude, it was somehow compulsory to stare now.

“I wasn’t staring!” he defended, raising his hands. He nearly slipped off, but steadied himself. It was true, he had no interest in that region of her form, a leg was a leg and a tail was tail. That was all he needed to know about down there.

“What?” Her voice bound around the entire cavern, the shock in her tone slamming into him.

“Good morning!” he blurted, feeling the need to break the oppressive silence. Her rump gently descended, her tail protectively curly around her side between the two. She didn’t seem embarrassed, the only indication of it possibly bothering her in that she turned away and found the base of her pillow-hill interesting. He doubted he could spot a blush if there ever was one.

“Good morning,” she returned with her soft voice. The echo of her refined dialect hardly lingered as she brought her gaze back to him. She slinked through the hoard towards him as if it were a pool for her enjoyment. She tilted her head to the side, regarding him with curious sapphire eyes. “Are you… in a better state of mind?”

Sammy believed that Ivory was about to ask him if he was in fact, well or feeling better. The truth was his anger for her actions were bottled for his sake, if not hers. A creeping realisation that this was an accident was attacking him, aggravating him. He knew he should be enraged, and that this furry was a good sign, but he wasn’t too sure in what direction he should point his rage anymore. Still, he was simmering, stable but it could be temporal, and he placed all his misfortune squarely on her shoulders.

He wouldn’t be uncivil, however.

There was also the fact that she could barbeque him whenever she saw fit that caused him to withhold his tongue.

“I’m calm-ish. Just started contemplating why I’m not still weeping in the corner,” he admitted, watching her draconic face come to a stop a few feet away. It was slightly off putting to be talking to someone knowing one could fit inside their mouth. He leant back and supported himself on his elbows, gazing toward the ceiling. “I guess I’m just too eager to get back home,” he added with a half-smile.

She closed her eyes and shook her head before exhaling a long sigh.

“I thought I made this clear, I am unable to return you from whence you came any time soon: it would be years before I am able to cast flame that can link to your world, more to time to properly tune it to sending rather than retrieving.” Her expression fell into a forlorn look, guilt shimmering in her eyes.

Sammy remained quiet underneath her watchful gaze, his head leaning forward so that he could observe his kneecaps, as his shins still hung over the edge. He wasn’t certain how to react to that, it was a cold hard fact he heard the night before, and it was still the cold hard fact he was expecting. In a way he was simply double checking before even considering the alternatives. He scratched his chin, his fuzz crinkling as he put the words of his next question together.

“Could you, uh, could you explain where you get your magic from?” he inquired, sounding a little upbeat to mask his disappointment, “It would help me if I could understand how this magic thing actually works. All I heard was you eat gemstones because they’re like magical sponges, and I can only assume something must be preventing you from eating your hoard in order to make up for your mistake.” He finished, regarding her with a small frown that lingered long enough to be seen. Once Sammy was certain she noticed, he contorted his expression to a studious form, his curious eyes staring back at her.

“Your analogy is simple,” she began, as a teacher would to a pupil who was ill-informed, “It is painfully simple.” She nodded before scooping up a claw full of treasure. He then witnessed her scraping off over two thirds of the bounty. “It is in our nature to consume greedily, carelessly. Our magical prowess is determined by what we put in, and to achieve high-tiered flames, we need specific minerals of finer quality.”

He watched her use her other claw to pinch some gemstones before placing them in her mouth. She continued to eat from her claw is if she was routing out her favourite coloured skittles. Sammy’s immediate impression was that she was caring for her figure, and that she was on a diet. As his face darkened, however, he kept his mouth shut and listened.

“The better our diet, the better our magic, and the longer we stick to the diet, the higher tiered flames we can cast. Fire and relocating objects require little for us,” she replied before downing the rest of her meal. She scratched the back of her neck as Sammy contemplated, before speaking up. “Again, even that is another too simple of an analogy. Tell me, Sammy Wright, what are dietary needs of a human?”

“We’re omnivorous, we need a good balance of meats and certain plants. I think it’s either protein or carbohydrates, maybe both that are a big deal for us,” Sammy replied as he pushed himself away from the edge. He sat cross legged as he pondered over what he had stated, realising that unless he could chew metal, he had no source of nourishment.

“Omnivore, so few sapient species are lucky enough to have such a broad diet,” Ivory commented, smiling. “There isn’t a term for one who can devour fauna, flora, and minerals in this tongue, but it’s safe to say that I am a carnivore, herbivore and a mineral-vore, heh.” She paused to scan towards far right of the cave, turning back speak.

“I’m rather interested in how your body uses protein to fuel your magic, it is not something that you would find in any other arcane gifted creature.”

“We can’t use magic,” he replied curtly, “Please listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once: humans are incapable of magic, in the universe- or realm as you said- where we come from.” He crossed his arms and gazed up to her, a stern glare pointed at her. “I’m guessing that is something unheard of here? A completely non-magical being?”

“Yes, actually,” she replied, with a tone of voice that peaked with her interest, “Every creature has grown alongside magic, and it touches our very souls. What is odd is that if you have no magic before, then how did you conjure fire from the ruby?”
As soon as the event from before was recalled, he flinched. Ivory cocked an eyebrow and watched him rub his temples.

“Something the matter?”

“It’s probably just something the powerful, magical, mythical, talking dragon can’t fix…” he replied, with a shrug and pleasant smile. “Nothing to worry about, besides you know, the fact that I set myself on fire because I touched my first ruby.”

“Ah, I thought it was something serious for a second there,” she fired back, smirking as she inspected her claw. Sammy pressed his tongue into his cheek, suppressing his wounded pride from kicking off. She stopped and blinked, before bringing a claw to her chin.

“Hmmm, it would tie into why you, as a human, not you in particular despite the circumstance, were picked out,” she said with a ponderous look. He cocked his head to the side and held a look that simply said ‘please, enlighten me.’

“I wanted a servant who could enchant and manipulate my gems, making them more powerful, rare, and delectable if the story rung true. Perhaps humans where you come from have the innate ability, but without magic it cannot be called upon. Maybe it’s due to how my magic comes from the magic I absorb when I digest a gemstone.” She lowered her head to rest her chin upon the ledge, a few feet to the left. Her snout alone was the size of van, and her remorseful eyes bore into him.

“I’m sorry, I truly am…” She stopped when he raised his hand. He paused, letting his narrowed glare speak for him in the regards to this subject. Sammy was finding it difficult to forgive her for what she had done, his contempt forming solid foundations. Yet, despite how justified he felt in despising her, he could believe she was sincere with her apologies. It was as if this new island of bottled anger was already beginning to erode away whenever he glanced into her cool blue eyes.

However, he doubted he would be in mood to forgive her. Ever. No matter how many times she apologised.

It actually disturbed him.

“I… don’t want to concentrate on what you can’t fix,” he said, ending with a wince. “That didn’t come out right… Look, I just want to get home, and if you can’t help me, then who can?” Ivory closed her large eye and contemplated whilst Sammy sat and waited. He already had a decent idea of who could help him, but he had little idea as to where Equestria was to his current location.

“There are other civilisations with other magics,” she began, her words seemingly spoken with extra clarity, “To what extent of their abilities, I am not certain. There are the Diamond dogs, and in all my years I have only ever witnessed one cast a spell. It was not anything spectacular, but was still a great feat for one as old as he. Perhaps great age and training brings out the arcane gift, I am not certain.” She pointed her head towards the right once more, “They are the closest to my home, one of their larger cities hidden in the mountain along the river I drink from.”

Sammy nodded, contemplating that option. His knowledge of the show depicted them as greedy, almost tribal savages. He doubted it would be worth the time spent traveling to them, but again he couldn’t rule out the option. He wasn’t one for stereotypes or prejudice when meeting with others; he didn’t consider such a thing as a part of the modern age. He still needed to be wary, however.

“Are they friendly?” he asked, earning a bob of the head from the dragoness.

“Fairly- very possessive of what’s theirs, could be theirs, but they are otherwise pleasant,” she relayed with a positive tone. “Oh, and this is what I heard from the last band of adventurers, don’t touch anything in their mines. I believe that you need to be invited into a mine, or kidnapped, and even then you have to do exactly what they say.”

He shrugged and grinned.

“I’m a dog person, I know when I might get bitten.” He gave a rumbling chuckle as she rolled her eyes. When they settled, he found that Ivory was regarding him with an odd stare. If fled, like a comment one was tempted to make but let slip back down their throat.

“So… this river?” he asked, still looking for progress.

“Oh, it runs through the base of the mountain, over there.” She pointed to the right once more, drawing his attention. He didn’t really know what to look for, but a distant shadow formed an arch so he assumed there was yet another tunnel.

‘It’s quite the elaborate set up,’ he realised, ‘Then again if I had centuries to live then crafting such a network of tunnels wouldn’t be that difficult.’

“Is that it?” He looked back to her, scratching his chin, “There’s a river that leads to a diamond dog society?”

Shaking her head, Lady Ivory smiled. “No, this river flows through every nation on this continent. It just starts a bit beyond where the dogs call home.” She brought up her claw, counting from her ‘thumb’ out. “We dragons call it-“

Her voice was lost to low growls, odd syllables and bursts of blue sparks.

“Gesundheit,” Sammy interjected, earning a scowl.

“I did not sneeze, that was the name in my tongue. It does not translate to Equestrian, or whatever language rolls off yours.” She folded her arms and pointed her snout to the air in hoity fashion. “The words of you short lived creatures fail to capture the beauty we can conjure, the light of the fires to our spoken language, the emotion behind every musical shift in our tone. Your language is limited, crippled…” she rolled her claw, looking for the right word. Apparently it was not hard to find.

“…Boring.”

“As a Brit, I’ll have you know we can get quite colourful and creative,” he replied with a playful scowl. Her intrigued, but mostly amused expression told Sammy of her doubts. He was about to give a few examples when realised he was still wasting time. Shaking his head, he his expression shifted to being more austere. “Sorry, we’re getting side tracked, could you tell me the name of the river and the other nations along it? Just give me the gist of a few of these.”

“Certainly,” she started with an inclining nod, “The River Aquillian passes through every nation, and to us dragons it is believed to be the trail of a powerful sea serpent that wished to prove its strength against the land long ago. Now, as for the other species…”

For the next half an hour, Sammy sat and listened. It was all he felt he could do for now. In fact, it was, and he didn’t mind if it kept that sense of comfort in being educated. He learnt that the mountain Lady Ivory had made home sat between the Dog lands behind the mountain, the zebras in the jungle, and the minotaurs who were further in the fields.

The minotaurs were complex society of nobles houses either dedicated to scholarly arts of physical prowess. Upon hearing that pride and respect played a major role in a person’s place in society, his thoughts left him worried for how they would treat an outsider. Either the studious ones would vivisect him or the warriors would beat, if not kill him. Then again, who’s to say they couldn’t be diplomatic? Their territory lay in the forest area he had seen the day before. She knew little about their magic, or even if they could possibly wield it.

Towards the jungle area one would expect to encounter zebras, though having strong tribal routes, have the best mystical medical care in the world. Natural remedies are sought after by other countries, and their economy had long since elevated them from the tribal huts Sammy had expected. Having only Zecora’s lifestyle to go on, which the show hardly focused on, did give Sammy a few presumptions he was beginning to become ashamed of. Especially after giving the diamond dogs a benefit of the doubt. When the mystical art of alchemy was brought up, he learnt that such a profession was their only means of magic. It was still an avenue he would pursue.

His spirits diminished when he learnt that Saddle Arabia not only lay in the scorching deserts, but at quite a distance away. Ivory had little to say about them, save what she gleamed at a sighting a few centuries ago. Old history that spoke of a merchant empire, bartering practically sounding like a hobby of sorts. Sammy wondered if that still resided in aspects of their modern culture, perhaps trading something of value would help him? Apparently not, as Saddle Arabians seemed more akin to earth ponies in terms of wielding magic for agriculture.

Still, he could attain safe passage to the gryphons of the distant mountains. He was told of cliff-face cities, and even of a bridge that actually connected two of the largest mountain cities. Of course he knew he was living in a fairy-tale, but he doubted most had ever imagined such a strange thing. The amount of resources suggested an incredibly wealthy nation, as well as an odd sense of ingenuity; why would an avian species wish to construct a bridge of such magnitude? He was warned of their harsh nature and their strong sense of honour. Should he attempt to seek aid from those in high places, he’d have to impress a few noble houses. Ivory knew little about what magic they could possibly wield, if any.

Throughout it all he would question, feed his curiosity, and feel the seed of hope sprout. He was feeling progress, sensing a direction that would take him home, but above all Sammy found comfort in topical discussion. It was a close resemblance of normality he realised after discussing the gryphons. It left him unsure of what to think, was he distracting himself or had he genuinely slipped back into comfort?

Again he felt rather uneasy about this. He didn’t get time to ponder as Ivory lowered her head to come eye level, her scrutinising gaze sending wary chills down his spine. He showed little sign of intimidation, returning a suspicious glance.

“Beyond the mountain kingdom, across the Great Sea sits another land,” she began, voice waxing into a knowing tone, “One you seemed familiar with.”

He was mute for the moment, only staring back and cocking his head to the left.

‘She knows I know, of Equestria anyway. If I blatantly deny that, she’ll only suspect.’ Knowing that she expected an answer, he flopped his head to the right and rubbed his neck. With discomfort gracing his features, he spoke with uncertainty.

“Equestria? It’s real here?” It was a question that would reinforce what he knew. He merely asked to collaborate the knowledge, a habit he picked up after achieving his the results after a practical experiment. It helped to see the scope of variation, and see I he achieve anomalous results. Alternatively he could refer to the teacher who knew what was correct, similar to what he was doing now.

“Yes, there is an entire sub-species of ponies who manipulate the magical arts far better than others,” Ivory responded, closing her eyes and bringing a claw to her chest, “Save for the dragons, of course.”

As tempting as it was to point out her most recent magical blunder, Sammy kept his mouth shut. He needed this information and speaking out would be counterproductive. No matter how satisfying.

“I’m sure that’s what you wanted to hear, was it not? Equestria, home to the only alicorn, she who raises both the sun and the moon?” Her cold, critical gaze returned, her pointed teeth becoming unsheathed by her knowing grin. “But you must already know something about Equestria, having recognised the currency. So tell me, stranger from another world, why is Equestria familiar to you?”

“It’s just a story to us,” Sammy responded, having contemplated an answer he saw fit as she spoke. He leant forward, support his head on his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. He idly glanced towards the coins beneath before looking back up to her.

“A sort of fairy tale. We’ve created the idea of magic to bring wonder and fear, I suppose. It was mostly a way of explaining the unexplainable, or to create fantasy. Our magicians are all smoke and mirrors, but the good ones don’t need a stage. I’m an avid fan of street magicians, they do miracles not magic. I know it’s not real, but I’m always convinced for a moment that magic is real with street magicians.” He took a deep breath before moving on.

“Equestria was this place of magic, a land of unicorns and pegasi. To us, it was place of harmony, friendship, and almost utopic land. Almost,” he added with a smirk. He recalled Discord, Chrysalis, the xenophobia Zecora faced, as well as how the simple emotion of envy corrupted a princess many would assume were a demi-god.

“Stories say it’s a great land, the rulers said to be fair, just and of great power. Between the ideals that define a great human being, the fact that we’ve heard stories of trouble times made it seem more realistic. A story that could become real. Heck, our older civilisations used to believe a god moved the moon and sun, a similar story I believe to what happens here. Such a thing wouldn’t be possible where I’m from, we know this now, but it was once believed to be at one point.”

“How so?” she asked, confused if not intrigued by the statement.

He was about to answer when his stomach announced a pressing matter. The gurgles silenced the conversation and brought an awkward chuckle from his lips.

“Pardon me, heh.”

She waved him off, seeming to understand.

“There is no need for apologies, I’ll see what I can fetch for your consumption, is you diet really so broad as to being able to consume all manner of meets or are there some that are best avoided?” she asked, starting to move towards the far right. She stopped to look over her shoulder. He muttered to himself about the possible dangers of consuming foreign meats. He could have an allergic reaction or be completely unable to process his meal.

“I’m waiting~” she sung, the melodious tone gaining an answer.

“Just make sure it’s cooked! We’re not good at eating most meats raw, or if there are some meats we can eat raw, I don’t know them. I didn’t watch enough Bear Grylls!” This seemed to take her by surprise given how she blinked and tilted her head.

“A meat eater that can’t properly eat meat? How strange,” she stated, watching him try to come up with a response. Left like a gasping fish, Sammy could only blame his ignorance on the subject.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of things we can eat raw, I mean, we can’t have really lost that ability, right?” he muttered to himself, scratching his scalp. With no answer he puffed a resigned breath and watched her wade through her hoard with ease.

“If cooked meat is fine, then I’ll see what I can find in my preservation chamber. I know it’s a bit early, but would you mind some manticore?”

Chapter four: Hand on the hour glass.

Midday sun had crept over the mountain peak, the light bringing out the rich chocolate tone to Sammy’s hair. Once again he found himself parting it as he leant against cave wall, this time standing out of the cave.

He could see a worn trail lead away to the left, in a counter clockwise direction along the ridge he now stood upon, dusty and hardly travelled. He could guess from the missing pieces of armour, as well as the scorch-shadows of humanoid proportion show that those that did follow this path didn’t return. For a while he was tempted to investigate the small bones and odd skulls, a morbid curiosity that he felt wasn’t best to pursue before dinner.

Breakfast had been an interesting affair; Lady Ivory was adamant in preparing something as she rarely had guests that didn’t want her treasures or her life. He didn’t mind be served the leg of a boar that cooked well enough by her flame. Supposed it made all the more exotic. He didn’t know if it should have tasted like cinnamon, but kept quiet about, and insisted on a small portion to not leave any on his silver plate. Leaving left overs was rude.

For most of the day, he just stood outside sensing the world around him. Sure there were books for him to read, but where to start? The non-fictional tomes were a gold mine of knowledge he could use, but they were dated as he found out. A majority were written in gryphic and Zebrican, as he found out, but evidently involved basic alchemy and smithing. Not that he would be taking up either any time soon.

So he waited outside the mouth of the cave, ignoring the minotaur skull caught in the teeth of stalagmites and stalactites. He just observed and recollected himself. He was in constant need of keeping a logical, sound mind in how to tackle this immense challenge. With his arms folded over he hugged himself to brace against the foreign chill, standing in the light to soak up what little warmth he could.

Sammy could smell the mountain laurel with every fresh breath, cleansing his mind of the cascade of questions. The echoing sonnets of distant birds were carried up the mountain. Whilst the jungles and forests sung to one and other, he regarded the immense variety of greens with stoic intrigue. He was looking for the River Aquillian. He couldn’t see a single sign of picturesque blue or a coursing path of water. He could only assume it was hidden. Perhaps deep within the jungles or behind a hill?

Despite the need he had to avoid worrying too much about his predicament, he was constantly pondering about his next course of action. So far he had been successful, but talking to the dragon was hardly a skilled feat and not having to acquire his own food was a stroke of good luck.

With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose and cocked his head to the left, watching the now skewed mountains.

‘I’m not built for this world,’ he noted with concern, ‘I can’t hunt, I can’t read a map, I’m a first world kid that wouldn’t last a week here.’ Sammy groaned and checked his watch out of habit, finding it to read three O’clock. Having told that it was close to noon, he changed it to being a few minutes after midday, to count for the lost time being informed of the hour.

‘The closest thing to civilisation are Diamond dogs, who are up river. I could just wander along, but I have no idea what I’d encounter. One manticore and I’m dead. I’ll need to be careful about this.’ His nerves were starting to unwind, his concentration no longer on the beautiful surroundings but instead homing in on his problems.

With every passing second the questions fell in line, marching in single file.

‘What’s the point in going to the Diamond Dogs if only the old can learn how to use magic, and little at that?’

Sammy had cancelled out the avian choir offered to him by this strange world. It’s soothing serenade lost to his thoughts. Only the sound of his voice filled his head.

‘How soon can I leave? As eager as I am not to be stuck, am I simply running away from this problem? No, I’m just searching for a solution. I need to keep moving… but I can’t leave unprepared, so what now?’

With a deep breath he missed the enticing scent of crisp mountain air. With the exhale, he could only feel the warmth of his chest escaping through his mouth. The second breathe was cold and chilling.

‘I can’t take too long. Fuck, the longer I’m gone the harder it will be to explain all this! What can I even say about where I went?’

Sammy’s eyes clamped shut and he ignored the bright world beyond, blackness masking his vision.

‘What if this takes months? What they hell am I going to say?!’

He tore a hissing breathe, breathing out hot air through his grinding teeth. His palm shakily rose to comb his short hair, locks slipping between his fingers.

‘I can’t say that I’ve been here. That I was in Equestria. I’ll get chalked off for having either a mental breakdown or for tripping so hard that I vanished for a few months, maybe a year!

His shaky breathing kept in time with his rapid heartbeat.

‘Years…’

He brought his hands to his face, peaking between his fingers. His anxiety was getting to him, tightening his chest with a sickening grasp.

“I actually think all this would have been easier if I woke up in the Everfree. I’d either be dead by now or hog tied by Apple Jack- wouldn’t mind if she was the human version.” It was an attempt at humour akin to firing a flare in the dark; it brought a warm chuckle and a sense of security for a brief moment, banishing the dark, ever-creeping cruel reality for a moment.

“Are you okay?”

Sammy gasped and turned to face the mouth of the cave. Though startled, he gulped down a breath and hesitantly nodded.

“Peachy,” he replied with a faux-cheerful tone.

Lady Ivory stepped out of the shadows in her smaller form, her crystal white scales shimmering in the light. Her wings caught a polychromatic sheen as they remained wrapped around her form as she strolled over with one golden platter and another of silver.

As was custom, he would get silver, considered a less precious metal here. It was a social tradition amongst her kind that did engage with other species that when in someone else’s home, they don’t get the finest china.

Then again, such meetings were rare.

The succulent scent of roasted meat danced with his olfactory sense, teasing him with phantom tastes. Being five foot ten left him at a slight disadvantage to her seven foot, so when he was offered the crispy brown meat he had to lower the platter from shoulder height. He got an eyeful of what appeared to be a rib platter of sorts, dry and without sauce.

Not that his hungry stomach cared. It never looked a gift horse in the mouth, after all.

“That is a terrible lie,” she said walking toward the ledge. Upon sitting down, she looked over her shoulder and patted the ground next to her. “I could see you fretting, you are not as sound of mind as you claim to be.” Looking between his meal, a forearm’s length of ribs, and her cobalt eyes he found he couldn’t deny the request. He couldn’t deny being caught red handed amidst an anxiety attack.

Sammy walked over and took his seat beside her, putting the platter on his knees. After a moment of pause, he sighed and started to remove a rib.

“Okay you got me,” he started, pointing to himself with the rib, “I’m just trying not to freak out, take everything as it is. It’s kind of how I’ve always been- there are times where I can’t afford to sit still and wait and that’s now.” He offered a shrug and waited for her to take first bite.

“Is it?” she questioned with an arching brow, “Or have you all ways put up a brave front and suffered? There’s a difference between taking everything in your stride and sheltering yourself from the storm. One will get greatly aid you, the other with destroy with your false security.”

“So I ask again, barring the obvious, is something the matter?”

He chewed his lip looking away. The distant fields held his gaze as he contemplated what he had been told. His zealous need to return home had practically made the day a blur, his plotting of getting home treating the whole ordeal as a road trip rather than what it actually was: a journey that might stretch into years.

‘What could I say if I returned? I went missing because… I got lost? No, that’s stupid. I was kidnapped? Urgh, that’s just as equally ridiculous, I couldn’t tell a lie that big nor could I make it convincing.’

Regardless, getting home was his priority. He could minimise his time here by setting off as soon as possible.

With a steeled gaze and a bitter tongue he turned back to her.

“Yes, there is. Today has gone by rather quickly, everything has.” He put his meal down to the side and then combed his short hair to soothe his mind. “I need to find a way home, and I was contemplating going to the dogs but if there’s little for me there, then what’s the point? It would be a waste of my time!” He turned back to the view of the horizon, his head cocked to the left.

“If they have little to no magic then that makes them one of the least ideal places to go, but with it being the closest.” His head rolled to the right. “Alternatively you said it’s the closest, and if they can be friendly then I could ask for a guide to a zebra settlement.” He stopped to chuckle. “Given I’m not used a chew toy of sorts.”

“Ah, so you fear that time is not your ally,” she said in a sagely manner, nodding slowly. “And why is that?”

“Because the longer I’m gone, the harder it will be for to explain my disappearance.” He sighed, massaging his temples. “I can’t say that I was conjured by a magical dragon- I’ll be tossed into a looney bin.”

“Pardon?”

“…Mental institute.”

“I see,” she replied sagely. Sammy turned to her, expecting her to continue but was instead greeted by the sight of her feeding a rib between her lips. Ivory then gracefully whipped it back out, shaving the bone clean of meat in the progress. The white bone was then placed neatly back on her golden platter as her claws came to rest on her stomach.

Gesturing with one hand, she pointed to the landscape, “It is understandable for you to be afraid and overwhelmed by this- where to begin, oh, where to begin? The closest creatures of any sapience are nigh non-magical, and who’s to say they will help at all? No, you’d be safer sitting here with little, old me, spending your remaining years here under my care.”

She blinked before shooting him a quick glance.

“Your kind don’t live for centuries, do they?” His shake of the head earned a prolonged sigh.

“So I guess I’ll be sharing my den for a brief period of time with an exotic male…. typical.” She sighed mockingly, longingly looking towards the sky.

“Who said I was staying?!” he barked, nearly knocking his meal from his lap. “My problem is that I won’t be going home soon enough for my liking!”

“Oh, so time is neither against you nor with you?” she quickly retorted, leaning her face closer to his. “You’re anxious, if you’ll pardon the expression then you’re on edge.” She earned a flash of smirk before his expression fell once more. With her other claw she pointed to various spots in the distance, naming capitals in respectively, “Then go, go to the Drakalin of the minotaurs, where the king resides. Go to Muktal, the Zebrican capital. The Saddle Arabians have their sultan for you to seek council with, and the gryphons have their king.” She turned back to him, a shimmering glint in her eye.

“Beyond that is Equestria,” she said in more hushed tone, “the land your kind had stories of. My advice would be to try there, which I know you will.” She spared a sad smile before turning back to her meal. “You’re scared of being unable to do anything because you know not where to begin, or which nation will yield a way home for you in the quickest time. None of them do, I’m afraid.”

With dejected look he stared into his silver platter, moving the ribs to the side. Beneath the charred flakes of unknown flesh he could make out his hazy outline. Try as he might he couldn’t find his gloomy expression in the reflection. It was a waste of time.

‘Just like anywhere I go for miles, save Equestria and maybe Zebrica. I’m not going home soon.’

There was a moment where that thought drifted through his mind, the darkest cloud of worries amongst the storm. He couldn’t immediately accept this fact, that he’d be too late when he returned home. Still, what she had said had brought a clearing amongst the storm in his mind. Perhaps her words could help it pass; prioritising the challenge of returning home seemed to be better than adding a steadily pouring hourglass to beat.

“So because I can’t get home soon enough, I should only focus on getting home?” He breathed deeply through his nose before exhaling. Looking to the tranquil horizon, Sammy scratched his chin. The frizzling noise stopped when he was answered.

“Would you rather return to racing ahead and be slaughtered by the wilds? No offense, but you seem to lack natural defences; no claws, no scales or chitinous armour, you’ve not shown signs of incredible strength- what do you have that gives you an advantage?” He noticed her shift in tone, from scholarly criticism to innocent suggestion, “Save perhaps your new found talents.”

“No,” he began, calm but with warning, “I am not going to be using magic. Nothing against it, but there are humans that can survive in the wilds without flaming rocks.” He folded his arms and grinned, faltering to rub the back of his head. “Well, they’re the guys who’ve had years of experience,” he muttered.

“Years you’ll no doubt master, these arts of the wilderness can be learned in less than, what, a day? Week? A month or two?” she retorted with sarcasm, reaching for another rib.

“For all you know I could!”

“Can you?”

“No, so I’m going to need a hand.”

“So why not attempt to harness what you can? Why put yourself at a disadvantage?” she inquired with genuine curiosity. It did seem rather foolish not to take advantage of what he now had. He looked to her with a furrowed brow.

“I… I… never mind.” He didn’t want to say he felt less human with this, he didn’t want to say that the struggles of his people made them stronger because they had nothing but their mind to rely on throughout the ages. Beside that point he had to retain some semblance of normality. That odd sensation that… corrupted his arm with heated power was not meant for him to tamper with; surely he’d be no better than her for blindly using magic she had no clue about? Right?

His head cocked to the right as he reached for his meal.

‘Then again, we, as humans, take advantage of our surroundings, mould them and adapt them to suit our needs. Maybe learning a few tricks wouldn’t hurt. I’d only need things that were absolutely necessary, and starting fires with gemstones in a forest at night could be useful. Dangerous, but useful.’

The thought of making arson and jewel collecting a part of his new hobbies brought smile to his face. His expression evolved into something else as a realisation crept in, not degrading into a false mask but changing into one of genuine gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said, “For helping me back then. I, uh… I was in need of advice. If diamond dogs are the closest and I can gain their trust then I’ll be able to get the help I need. If not, maybe I can safe passage into the zebra lands.” They shared a smile before he shrugged with an apprehensive grin.

“I guess I can wing from there, but thanks.”

“I will help in as many ways as I can,” she muttered as Sammy picked up the rib he had previously put down.

“I can respect that, I’m not forgiving you… but I can see you’re trying.” He took a bite from the oddly tender meat, finding that it had an odd sweetness to it. There was still the strange cinnamon aftertaste. “You know, for something a bit on the dry side this is really pretty good. A bit of honey barbeque on this and it will be spot on,” he complimented, looking to her. “What is it? The same boar we had for breakfast?”

She shook her head and smirked.

“No, it’s left over diamond dog.”

He stopped his merry chewing, slowly turned to look her in the eye whist pale faced. He could only see the glint of mischief in her vibrant blue eyes.

“You’re joking,” he commented light-heartedly, waving her off. He maintained his polite grin. “Right? It’s not another sapient thing, is it?”

Her eyes refocused on the distant mountains, her smirk peeling up to reveal her fangs.

“Okay, joke's over.” He hadn’t earned another response.

It appeared that his cries had fallen on deaf ears.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The evening rolled on by, but neither were outside to witness the sky glow orange. Ivory, back to her full size was passing through a large tunnel, descending as she continued her journey. Small lights from flickering arcane torches sprung to life and caught the wet sheen along the cavern floor. The floor was complete clear, save for the odd puddle rippling in close proximity to her mighty strides.

A roar of water could be heard bouncing along the cave walls, dulled by distance and noticeably growing louder the longer the trek went on.

“Never seen a dragon’s watering hole before. You know, this would be an even greater experience if I was perched on your head… or you know, outside,” Sammy commented from his seat in her open palm. His glance fell to ground as he peered between her claws. “It can’t be easy for a quadruped to walk on three legs.”

“We live and learn,” she relied with mirth, “And my apologies for not making the trip to my water supply an exciting ordeal.” Sammy grinned as he looked to see Ivory rolling her eyes before cocking an eyebrow in his direction. “And quite frankly I don’t know you well enough to allow you the privilege of placing your backside upon my scalp.”

“I could stand between your horns, if that’s an improvement.”

“It isn’t.”

“So,” he responded, his tone elevating as he shifted the subject, “This is the river that will solve my navigation problems?” He nodded ahead without breaking eye contact, though all it gestured towards was the ever bending wall.

“Maybe. Until you learn to properly read maps, the river will at least drop you off close to settlements, but not all capitals,” she replied, having to move her head to side as a bump appeared in the ceiling.

“Well you could do that for me,” he added, inspecting the tip of her claws. He ran a finger along the smallest claw, which incidentally was the same size as him, and hissing as he cut himself near the top. Ivory giggled as he began to nurse his finger in his mouth, earning herself a playful scowl.

“Careful, I sharpen them every day around this time. A female must look and be at her best at all times, no?” she inquired with an innocent bat of her eyes. He gave a conceding nod, not wanting to argue about how women- or dragonesses- should look after themselves. That was an unwinnable war in his books.

“And we’ve been over this since lunch, I can’t ‘drop you off’- no matter how tempting the promise of such a sight would be- as it would more than likely scare off those whom you seek aid from. Not to mention attract the attention of other dragons, some of which may not take to kindly to us in their territory.” She sighed, shaking her head. He was rather adamant about cutting the time between traveling short with her flying him wherever he needed to go. She had her reasons for declining, some he wasn’t inclined to agree with.

“Okay, I can get that flying to Equestria would be both a risk, to your health as much as mine, and I get that you’re worried about your immense hoard being chipped at,” she scowled at how Sammy had phrased that, “but the diamond dog den? It’s must be what, a few miles away?” He raised both his hands. “I could probably count how many on my fingers, can’t I?”

“A few miles,” she replied, bringing her stiff upper lip with her as her snout shot to the ceiling. “But I would rather not call attention to myself, lest more try to invade my home. But of course, that is of little concern to you if my life is jeopardised and my source of nourishment is mined from beneath me by tunnel digging canines.”

Frowning, he stood up and folded his arms as he spoke.

“I’m sure it must be difficult for you to cook a guy in armour.”

She responded by abruptly shaking her hand, just enough to him to fall onto all fours in her palm.

“Reeaaaaal mature,” he drawled, climbing back onto his feet.

“Being a few thousand years old teaches one to be as such, though I hear it’s supposed to come easy to many of you short lived creatures,” she said sweetly, adding a sly grin. Her expression turned ponderous as she regarded the world in a new light. “My mistake.”

As tempting as it was to automatically blow a raspberry in her direction, he simply scoffed well naturedly and looked towards the front. Finally, he thought, they had arrived.

Lowering her head to avoid a confrontation with a blunted stalactite, Ivory stepped out into what appeared to be a cavern. What light was available came from several large fire pits sparking to life with a white and gold flame, each set a fair distance apart. He could see river merge from the dark with an aqua glow as the fire pits lined the embankment. The thunderous growl of a waterfall pouring into the large cavern from the far left was slightly overwhelming. Opposite, and far to his right, the coursing river migrated further down a tunnel, its body becoming shadowed where the torches could not reach.

Lady Ivory lowered her hand to ground and he immediately stepped off, inspecting the entire ordeal further. The walls had been smoothed, and not just by natural occurrence if the small archways holding torches were any clue. It felt a bahzaar of sorts, following the shape but completely devoid of produce save perhaps a surplus of evenly spaced fire pits and water flowing through an enormous channel. It was once again a testament to how lived in this mountain must have become.

He tried shouting up to Ivory, but he couldn’t even hear the sound of his own voice. Not that she was paying attention, having started to stride towards the river. She lowered her head, and like a knife through the water itself, effortless slid in with surprisingly minimum splash. Her head craned back out, water cascading down her scales and swan-like neck. She began to wade towards the waterfall, looking back to Sammy and nodding towards her intended destination.

He had a fair distance to walk, but he caught up as she stepped into the large shower. Water pelted her sleek form but she paid no mind to it, instead she seemed to enjoy it all the more. A serene smiled sprouted as she exposed her back, catching the water between her wings.

“This is where I collect my drinking water,” she called, her voice on par with the roaring water. He had to shield himself from the torrent of water raining down upon him, raising an arm over his eyes. To his surprise, the water was delightfully warm. “I collect it in larger basins before boiling it, as well as before stepping into here to bathe.”

He tried to call something out, but gave up, instead gesturing between him and waterfall. She blinked, out of confusion and due to the rushing water pelting her horns before reaching her sapphire eyes. She brought a wing over her head, but the waterfall then rolled over it as rainwater would to an umbrella. Moving his arm away, he looked ready to shout his issue. That was when they both noticed her wing ended right above him.

Instinctively he looked up and was met with watery regret.

Caught off-guard, one of the many columns of water decided that it didn’t like the spot he stood on in particular, and fell onto him with as much crushing force as it could muster. He was forced onto his backside by the down pour. He flailed and spluttered before decidedly rolling out from beneath the unrelenting pillar of water. Water sprayed from his mouth as he rejected it vehemently, splayed out on his back as he was still bombarded by the treacherous liquid.

Sopping wet, he propped himself up by his elbows and bore a deadpanned expression directly at the shaking dragoness. She had balled her claw into a fist and was biting the knuckle, her eyes shimmering with restrained delight and amusement. He didn’t let up, slowing, mechanically, turning to stare at her sluggishly retracting wing. Droplets weaved between his patchy facial fuzz, his hair matted and becoming a darker shade.

Turning back, he found her still shaking, the water seemingly having no effect on her small sniggers that rung out throughout the cavern.

“Go on… let it out… I dare you…” though unheard, she could read his lips. The dam broke, and she unleashed a bout of laughter. Her soft, crystal clear voice combined with the naturally loud nature of her size gave her laugh a harmonic ring… though given it was at his expense it served to amplify his sullen mood.

When her laughter died down, she leaned down towards him, her features contaminated by dying mirth.

‘If she’s trying to look apologetic she’s failing,’ he though, a small smirk starting to form.

“Oh, I’m d-dreadfully sorry about that,” she began, straining to prevent a smile from sprouting, “I fell into habit and forgot the reason why I don’t have many fire pits on the ground this close to my shower.” She licked her lips and tried to put on an innocent look, but with her eyes and features being so large, it was easy for him to see through her façade. “Now, what were you trying to ask me?”

There was a short pause as he removed his jumper, revealing a sapphire shirt of intricate design. It was short sleeved and patterned with fine stitching of filigree that caught the light, but had become soggy and darkened. Whilst rinsing is jumper, she caught sight of him chuckling.

With a half-smile he yelled, “I was going to ask how you expect me to wash myself,” before pointing towards her and adding, “I guess you just fixed that.”

For the rest of the evening, he spent his time drying off by a fire pit, his back to Lady Ivory as she showered. It had taken her five minutes to walk down from the main chamber, and he estimated that it would probably take him between ten to fifteen minutes. All the while he had been inspecting his surroundings and couldn’t help but wonder how long it had taken to bring some semblance of architecture to the surroundings.

It was strangely soothing for him to be drying off. Maybe it was the small moment of mirth he shared with the dragoness, but he was gradually perking up. He was sharing food and a cave with a dragoness, he thought as his inner child bounced off the walls with unsurpassed glee. He was (sort of) in the fantasy land where technicoloured ponies frolicked and played, where the streets were pathed with friendship and shops of sweets!

Then the shadowy figure that stood in the doorway, ‘Reality’, would walk in and inform the child what the world actually consisted of: monsters, isolation, and perhaps the only familiar concept within this planet and his, unachievable goals. Cold, it was, cruel, maybe; Reality was neither in truth, but realism was a reigning regime in Sammy’s mind and it said it was time for his inner child to quiet down whilst he worked on returning home… however long that took.

He wasn’t exactly dry by the time Ivory had decidedly finished, but at least he was warm. Ivory lay onto the embankment, her arms resting between two fire pits as her lower half remained submerged. Sammy stood to her right, his jumper tied around his waist as he stood with his arms crossed.

Upon hearing the sound of wings unfurling, he glanced up to find her forming a shielding dome with her white wings. A gap at the top allowed her head to fit through whilst all the while managing to reduce the roar of the water fall into a distant thunder.

“Feeling any better?” she inquired, sincerely. He was left puzzled for a moment or two before his mind caught up with him.

He nodded, sighing before speaking up, “I suppose, I’ve had my worries washed away for the moment. They’re not gone, mind you, I can’t do anything as of right now and panicking won’t solve anything, but I think I can survive one more night.” He looked himself up and down before firing a scowl in her direction, the smirk betraying any sense of true animosity. “Though it’s likely I’m going to be focusing on how drenched my clothes are before bed.”

Ivory beamed a smile, shimmering fangs catching the light of the fire as her eyes shut.

“Cute, really,” he added, sarcasm causing her to emit a tinkling giggle.

“I said I was sorry,” she added, turning her head to the side in a coy manner. It hardly made a difference to him, she was still in trouble. Though the only method of revenge he could think off was to splash her, an act rendered ineffective when she’s half submerged. Instead, he pretended to take the high road, huffing as his eyes fell back onto fire pit. “Honest…” she added, sickeningly sweet.

“Lies!” he accused, pointing towards her.

“You could always take your clothes off.” Caught off guard, his eyes widened but he otherwise remained collected about the comment. It was likely due to the innocent nature of her tone, her voice laced with natural curiosity. Gauging her studious expression left him with more comfort than discomfort. “But seeing as you haven’t already I sense you have your own reasons.”

‘A natural query, I suppose if one does find themselves here then they would have to explain why they need clothes.’

“Save for the little detail that these are the only clothes I have, humans generally keep themselves wrapped up.” He began, extending an arm to turn his palm upward as if the answer was written on it. As he listed his answers his hand continued to gesture, bouncing between points. “We cover ourselves from chest to toe commonly, primarily for modesty but we do have a taste of fashion, though I’m hardly a shining example.” He watched her lean closer to insect his clothes, eyeing the designs on his chest.

“That’s a rather intricate pattern. It’s actually quite nice,” she complimented earning a quizzical stare. Noticing this, she backed her head away, “Is something the matter?”

“I’m surprised you could make it out, must be difficult having such large eyes and me being so small- spotting details has got to be a nightmare.” She shook her head as her reply.

“Actually, dragons have incredible eyesight, and whilst strenuous, I could probably spot a single plant at the bottom of the mountain. Or a ruby.” She rubbed her eyes, blinking before continuing, “Though we use the ability during hunting, otherwise we can damage out eyes.”

“Huh,” he commented intelligently, “the more you know.” He waved her off before pulling on his damp shirt. “Anyway, as you may have guessed my kind isn’t blessed with a fur coat, which can make staying warm a nightmare in certain conditions. Hence, clothing!” he finished dramatically. “One of the many great inventions now ridiculed by fashion companies using them for their own advertisement by stamping their name across an otherwise perfectly good piece of attire.”

“Save for the last part…” she started with a hint of uncertainty, “I can see why a furless species would be in need of clothing.” He cocked an eyebrow as he witnessed the dragoness bring a claw to her chin, looking off into the winged dome with a ponderous expression. It was somehow surreal to witness such a spectacle. “Do you always wear clothes, even when warm? I’m certain that I recall a few minotaurs layered with thick clothing during the winters, but I can’t see them wearing the same attire for summers; if it’s too hot you remove layers of clothing, no?” He nodded before she continued.

“And yet… even when your clothes a soaked you keep them on. If you are trying to get warm then shouldn’t you remove your wet attire?”

“As the first cave man said to the other: I have fire!” he replied, using both hands to gesture towards the fire pit before folding them back to his chest. “Of course I probably paraphrasing, but I don’t think I need to remove my clothes due to the warmth. Besides…” he started, now feeling the twinge of discomfort. He rubbed the back of his head, sucking in a quick deep breath before exhaling.

Once again, a hand uncoiled from his chest as if he was reluctantly handing over this piece of information, “Besides… it’s kind of a taboo for humans to stand around naked in public.” He wasn’t exactly embarrassed by the statement. He had a naturally curious mind, tempered by years of learning the scientific method and the yearning to learn of other cultures. It was simply culture swapping.

Yet, her sprouting sinister smirk made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, almost growing in an attempt to escape her narrowing eyes.

“Really… interesting…” she said slowly and methodically.

“Before you ask, it’s considered common decency and polite, especially in front of the opposite sex, to minimise exposure to certain…assets,” he added, chewing on the final word. “Genitals and breasts are to be kept out of sight.” He paused to bring his finger to his chin as he cocked his head to the right. “Funnily enough, it’s only considered a faux pa if the nipple itself is showing, for females anyhow. Then again there are a ton of skim- why are you looking at me like that?”

His train of thought was cut off when she began regarding him like a meal, Lady Ivory’s cold eyes withholding frozen sadism.

“I’m just storing this information away for the next time you behave in an uncivil manner, or decide to start lobbing my hoard off the mountain face.”

“That…” That was immensely clever, he thought, “Is quite an overreaction,” he said. He almost wilted beneath her gaze before her stare softened to one of mirth. Her grin retracted into a softer smile, her fangs sheathing beneath scaled lips.

“I would never do such a thing out of pure malicious intention, nor do I desire to disrobe you any time soon,” she said as she brought a claw to her heart, “I’m rather offended that you believe that a lady such as I wish to see you squirm, even after you threw one of my prized possessions out the door.”

His eyes narrowed as he marched up to her, or at least, close enough to reach out a touch her large snout if he wished.

“Humans don’t go around naked and especially don’t want to in front of females in public because it has sexual implications… seeing as males and females don’t have covers or whatever.”

There was pregnant pause after she made an ‘oh’ face, realisation striking her as she studied him once more.

“All your males are circumcised? They have their sheathes remov- oh, you actually mean that you are born without one?”

“Yes,” he instantly retorted. He would rather not define what circumcism meant where he came from. The conversation had already taken an odd turn. “So to conclude,” he swiftly added, counting on his fingers, “We wear clothes primarily for warmth, secondarily for the sake of modesty, and tertiary to show how much we earn. The more stylish and extravagant, the more notes stuffed into a person pocket.” He chose to ignore the nagging feeling to mention human nudists, despite wanting to explain as much as he honestly could.

Sometimes it was simply better to keep his mouth shut.

“Okay so I might be over simplifying but that’ the general gist.”

He folded his arms and quickly turned to face the fire pit, focusing on the magical burning white orb that didn’t touch the bottom of the small basin. It was an odd spectacle, but had slowly started to lose its awe factor. In turn, this meant that when Lady Ivory craned her head around to face him from opposite fire pit, she immediately caught his attention.

“Oh you are just going to love the natives around here,” she said before tittering, “I know what pants are, and few species wear them… many societies being nudists and all.”

He couldn’t keep eye contact as a flash flood of images poisoned his mind. He burrowed his brow and groaned, banishing the mental pictures with by massaging the bridge of his nose.

“Perhaps I should start collecting clothing to make things more comfortable for you, no?” she asked with a teasing smile. After a quick grumble from him, Ivory chuckled before sobering. “Well, I appreciate the gesture, seeing as in this realm clothing is commonly a luxury, and even though yours is more for protection, most would either see it as a sign of trying to up your status or as a sign of respect. I, myself, sit with the latter.”

She leaned back, pulling her head away and withdrawing her wings. The effect was immediate as the enclosure of warmth was swiped away by cooler temperatures. The dulled cacophony of the waterfall returned with a roar. Sammy moved closer to the flame pit, but had is attention stolen by the large claw landing beside him. He looked up to her.

“Thanks for the talk,” she said, her voice clearly heard.

“No problem,” he yelled back to little effect, “Are we leaving?!” he added, cupping his hands around his mouth. She nodded and Sammy leaped into her palm and stood in the centre. Moments later it was brought a full storey off the ground as she departed from the water. Lady Ivory made her way to the exit, water pouring off her shimmering form. She paused before the tunnel, looking down on him as he gazed up.

“Feeling better?” she inquired once more.

Sammy looked to his soaked trainers, tightening the soggy knot of his jumper around his waist as his head slid to the left. He hadn’t actually gotten any closer to figuring out how he was going to get to the diamond dogs, much less how he was going to convince them to aid him. On top of that, the surreal world he found himself in attacked his mind every time he looked at his host, the one responsible for tearing him from home. To finally top it all off, he was only partially dry and would likely be damp for the rest of the night.

Looking back up to her, his head switched to the right, a half-smile sprouting.

“Much better, thank you,” he said. Knowing he hadn’t been heard he simply gave a gracious bow before nodding, earning a pleasant smile from the dragoness. He couldn’t ignore that she had kept him somewhat stable, the semi-pleasant conversation about clothing was a decent distraction as he acclimatised. It wouldn’t last long. He knew it. By tomorrow, his second day, he’d likely still be harbingering a flicker resentment at what she had done. The following days after, though, he had to wonder if it would be worth keeping this anger as he gaze up to the pleasant dragoness.

For now he could be pleasant. For now he wouldn’t let the ‘accident’ get the better of him.

Not yet anyhow.

‘At least she’s trying to help.’ Was all he could think on the subject. And for the next few days that followed.