I'm drifting in and out of consciousnesses… There's a babble of voices… I can't really make them out… I'm moving… I can see, though it's kinda hazy… Where're my glasses…? the canopy above changing shape… Left leg is on fire… Left arm, not any better… What's going on…?

Was it a matter of hours? Days? Weeks? I'm not sure, but when I come to, I realize I'm out of the forest. The light is uneven and flickers, so I must be somewhere with a fire going. I can smell the smoke so my assumption must be correct to some degree. I also notice that I'm laying on something soft. A bed maybe? No, I think it might be a sofa. My right side is pinned in by a fluffy wall, so it has to be a couch. I can't really move a whole lot. My lower abdomen is wrapped tightly in gauze. I can move my head, so that's how I find out my left arm is bandaged up. I can only assume that this is a fresh swatch. The last I saw that arm, it appeared to have fought a meat grinder and lost.

A quick surveillance of the room around me tells me more: whoever lives here is a civilized being, judging by the coffee table, the tea cups sitting on platters, and the book edging under several sheets of paper. There's furniture all around, but it seems rather small. Am I in a house of a dwarf? Please don't tell me I've gone Snow White here… Oh, look, a fire place! That's where the light comes from. It, too, is rather diminutive, further giving me the impression I'm in a little person's home.

"Look, he's awake!"

The voice emerges from somewhere outside my field of vision. It's a female's voice, of that I'm sure. I listen intently for the sound of footsteps only to be greeted by hoof clops. Since when did a horse get in here? To be honest, I was expecting a person to appear at my side, to check my injuries. To my surprise, it is not. What I see, and it's kinda fuzzy because I don't have my glasses on, is a glob of mulberry topped by a mop of blue, violet, and rose. When it leans in closer, I can see clearly that I am not dealing with a midget, dwarf, little person, or whatever it is the short in stature call themselves. What I see is equine, too small for a horse, too HUMAN for a pony, with eyes of medium violet that are inquisitive and concerned. Something juts out from it's forehead, but I can't focus on it properly; its outside my sight lines.

"Hello!" the pony thing says.

I swear on all things bright, the fucking pony talked. I was… flabbergasted? Agog? Confused? There was a voice in the back of my head that was laughing really hard. It yelled I just got punked, hard. The Mister Ed gag was old, even in this age of digital image manipulation. There is no way that pony talked!

"*AHEM!* Let's try this again," it said, quote-unquote, "Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle. And just might who you be?"

I didn't speak; I couldn't speak. My brain and all it's higher cognitive functions locked up. There was NO WAY that pony spoke. Logic, as little as I typically used, told me that lower level mammals didn't have the mechanics nor the mental capacity to speak a human language. Even parrots just mimicked the sounds of human voices. They didn't actually TALK.

"Fluttershy, are you sure you heard him talking?" the purple pony said, "He doesn't seem to be very intelligent."

Another voice, one well outside of my sight, softly spoke, "W-well, he was muttering while he was unconscious. I'm pretty sure he said, 'explosion.' Everything else I heard sounded like gibberish, but it could be because I don't speak his language yet."

More clopping noises, a mass of yellow and cotton candy emerged on my periphery.

"Given his injuries," the yellow thing said, "he may have been delirious. There was so much blood…"

The purple thing injected, "Well, my healing spell restored his left foreleg almost completely and your casts should allow his right foreleg to mend correctly. His left hind leg is a lost cause, though. An amputation like THAT is very difficult to reverse. All we could hope for is that he is able to walk on three legs instead of four. I haven't seen such a creature before, though. I ransacked the library and none of my books mention anything like HIM. Spike was less than enthused about cleaning THAT mess up!"

The "him" the purple pony thing spoke of was me. I found that rather disturbing. If this was Earth, I would be one of over seven billion people. I would be hard pressed to find a place where there wasn't a human presence, not even in the deserts. Still, the pony-thing was confused about what I was. What, I mused, have you never seen a man before?

"I wonder why he was in the Everfree Forest to begin with," the yellow thing whispered, "especially that part. Harry told me that he's seen wild manticores trudging through there. Oh, Twilight, do you think he was attacked by one?"

The concern the yellow thing used kinda touched me. She was worried that I had gotten into it with a a manti- Wait, a MANTICORE?! I know what it is, but why on God's green Earth would there be a MANTICORE in a forest? Aren't they supposed to be a myth? Like pegasi, unicorns, centaurs and gorgons?

"I'm not sure, Fluttershy. Everything about his appearance is a mystery. Rainbow Dash was the first to see him and she was certain he was dead. I have never heard of any creature taking that much punishment and surviving."

"Are, are you, um, sure your books di-didn't have... anything?"

The purple thing twisted her head slightly. It almost looked like she was reconsidering something.

"No, nothing like him exists in the fossil record. The only thing I can think of that even remotely comes close to his description is..."

I'm pretty sure this pregnant pause is cause for concern. Even without twenty-twenty vision, I can just make out the dawning horror in the thing called Twilight Sparkle's eyes.

"A Human…"

Ever had one of those dreams where everything that shouldn't make sense seems to make sense? Yeah, Steve is pretty sure that's what's happening to him now.