The first hint of fall filled the air. It filled Stennulf Greybourne with worry. After fall would come winter, and with winter would come the proof of his preparations. He had been busy all spring, through the summer, and now, fall was beginning to make its presence known.

He had been busy. A small squat cabin had been constructed. It was crude, but it was functional, and he had even blocked out most of the wind by slathering mud into the spaces between the logs. A small wood stove had been recovered. It was slightly rusty, but serviceable… and it had been the last time he had spoken to his own kind, way back when it was still spring. It had taken him almost a week to drag the heavy cast iron wood stove back to his homestead.

He had food stored up, dried smoked fish, jerked meat, and canned goods that he had recovered from his last home, a small camping trailer that he had abandoned. It was in poor repair and it hadn’t been far enough away from what he desired to be away from most.

Stennulf scratched at his reddish beard and surveyed his work. He had been tapping maple trees and had dried maple syrup into hard crunchy bits of something almost like candy. It was a good source of energy, and he had eaten a few this morning. There was a lot to get done. He didn’t know how much firewood he needed to get through the winter. He hoped to err on the side of caution.

The second cabin he had constructed stored his food. It was much smaller, but solidly built. He couldn’t stand up in there, but he really didn’t need to. Much of the cabin had been built down into the ground to act as a root cellar.

All of this hard work was a small price to pay to be away from what he hated most. Humanity. Stennulf had grown tired of his fellow humans, burned out by the world around him. And so he had retreated to a place where humanity wasn’t, and his outlook on life had vastly improved. His constant hard work had burned away his lingering constant depression. He struggled with his solitude, but it was easier to deal with his solitude than it was to deal with his fellow human beings.

It had taken quite a bit to motivate him to go to these lengths to get away from it all. The last human being that he actually valued, his mother, had died last Christmas. She passed early on Christmas morning, after spending half a year being devoured by cancer. A long string of girlfriends, all of whom who had cheated on him, had left him burned out and bitter. The worsening economy and the inability to find any sort of meaningful employment had destroyed his sense of self worth. The final straw had been in the early spring, when he had discovered that his next door neighbors had been molesting children in their unlicensed daycare. He had simply walked away from everything.

He had to admit though, he was starting to miss the sounds of other human voices, and he spent an awful lot of time speaking to himself. There was also a new worrying sense of fatigue that he always had, a feeling of being constantly tired. He worried if he was missing something in his diet. He tried to eat well, given what he had to work with. He felt constantly tired and short of breath now, and his bowel movements had been a little runny.

Stennulf wrote it off as his body adjusting to eating real food rather than all of the usual processed stuff his diet had consisted of prior to abandoning society. It seemed like a reasonable assumption.

He grabbed a crude wooden yoke he had carved, it was designed to go over his shoulders and allowed him to carry two large buckets. It was time to collect water, which meant a bit of a walk and a lot of effort. He shouldered the yoke and the empty buckets, both made out of plastic, each was a five gallon bucket that had once held laundry detergent. He had found both in an abandoned campsite that had been completely trashed and covered in litter. Stennulf suspected that the campsite had been used for meth production. He had salvaged quite a bit of stuff from the site.

As he began his hike to the lake, he wondered what he was going to do about boots when his current pair wore out. He might have to kill a deer and make moccasins or something. He wasn’t quite sure what to do actually, but he was mindful that there was a problem and he supposed that counted for something.

After a bit of a hike, he was huffing and puffing a bit, but determined to keep going. He didn’t even have his water yet. Going back would mean a heavy load and walking uphill. He pressed onwards, feeling a burning sensation in his calves and stabbing cramps in the bottom of his feet. He wished that he had access to the internet. He seemed to recall something about burning calves and cramps in the bottom of your feet… something to do with bananas or something ridiculous.

After a long hike the lake finally came into view, and he veered off the path, heading to one of the many springs that fed the lake, a small pool of relatively fresh and clean looking water that formed in a natural rock basin.

And it was at about this moment that Stennulf Greybourne wondered if he lost his mind. Skipping around the pool was a little pink something. It looked like a horse. Only smaller. It was singing to itself, er, she was singing to herself. His yoke slipped from his shoulders and his buckets clattered to the ground.

The pink creature looked at him.

“Hi!” she chirped. “My name is Pinkie Pie!”

Stennulf froze. He had been alone for too long. Now, he was seeing an imaginary pink miniature horse that talked to him.

The small pink creature glanced at the pool, and then looked nervously at Stennulf. She was still smiling, but now looked a little spooked.

“Hello,” said Stennulf, wringing his hands together. “My name is Stennulf. Am I imagining you?”

“I don’t know, I think I am real, but I have no way of knowing for certain,” Pinkie Pie replied. “I came through the mirror, and I found myself here, wherever here is. What are you?” she asked.

“What am I?” Stennulf repeated.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like you,” Pinkie Pie quipped.

“I… I am a human being… what are you?” Stennulf returned.

“I am a pony, but not a bean,” she chirped.

“Mirror?” Stennulf questioned.

“Well, you see, I was out exploring the castle of the Royal Pony Sisters and I found this hidden room which wasn’t hidden very well because my Pinkie Sense told me there was a hidden room and then told me there was a hidden switch behind another hidden place, and then I found the button to open that hidden place hidden in plain sight, it was one of the jewels on a statue of Celestia, so I pressed it and it opened the hidden compartment where there was a bit of a puzzle and I had to press things in the right order, and my Pinkie Sense told me what to do and when, and then another passage opened up and I followed it to a secret room and there was a mirror on the wall, and so I checked the mirror out and I saw everything here, and then I touched the mirror and fell through and came up through the pool over there, and then you came along,” Pinkie Pie replied.

Stennulf fell down to the ground, landing on his backside with a thump. He hadn’t heard another voice in so long. He had to be hearing things. He closed his eyes, and then he desperately tried to reclaim his sanity. After several moments of sitting in complete silence, he felt something brush up against his nose. He opened his eyes and saw two blue eyes staring at him, and a pink face.

“You don’t believe me do you?” she asked.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Stennulf admitted.

“You look sad. My Pinkie Sense tells me you are sad. Why are you sad?” Pinkie asked, bumping the human’s nose again with her own.

She felt real. He reached out one trembling hand, which hovered over the small pink pony’s head. Steeling his nerve, he lowered his hand and stroked her ear, wrapping his fingers around it and tugging gently, letting it slide between his fingers.

“Aaah,” Pinkie gasped, her eyes closing.

He rubbed behind her ear for a moment, feeling her pelt. She was soft and warm. He could feel her breath on him. She was real. “This is impossible,” he muttered.

The short hairs of her pelt were like fine silk, almost too soft, and his brain had trouble accepting the sensory input he was experiencing. He ran his fingers along the back of her skull, feeling the curve of her bone structure, and then he ran his fingers down her neck, which caused the strange pink mammal to shiver.

“Oh that feels nice,” Pinkie Pie murmured. “You’re very friendly.”

Stennulf pulled his hand away, realising he wasn’t stroking some dumb animal. A human woman might slap him for what he had done. He felt a blush rising to his face. The pink pony didn’t seem to mind however.

“So you come from beyond a mirror?” Stennulf asked.

“Yes I do. Want to see?” Pinkie asked.

“I do,” Stennulf said, desperate for some kind of company, to hear another voice again, even if it was some crazy imaginative hallucination he was experiencing. He carefully stood up and watched as the pink pony pranced away to the pool.

She leaned down and touched the water with her nose. “Look, you can still see the mirror room,” she beckoned.

Stennulf reached the edge of the water and looked in.

He saw madness. In the water, he could see a stone room. He saw dust and cobwebs. He peered in, trying to make out what he saw in the dimly lit room in the water. He leaned over and tried to get a closer look.

And it was at that moment that he felt two somethings press into his backside and shove him. He fell into the water with a cry and a splash, which was weird, because he wasn’t wet. He fell, a long long ways, his arms and legs flailing as he fell.

And then, he landed with a thud on a stone floor. A second later there was the clattering of hooves beside him. He struggled to suck in air and gasped a few times. He reached out and touched the edge of a stone tile with his fingertip. He rolled over and looked up, looking all around him, and looked at the mirror on the wall. It showed the reflection of the room and nothing more.

“The other place is gone,” Pinkie Pie observed, sounding a little worried. She walked over to the mirror and tapped it lightly with her hoof. “It’s solid. Oh no!”

A rising feeling of panic flowed through Stennulf. He had no idea where he was, or how far he was from home. He felt a cold sweat spreading over his skin and the cold hardness of the stone floor beneath him.

Pinkie Pie wrapped on the mirror a few times to no avail.

“Twilight Sparkle will know how to fix this,” Pinkie Pie announced.

Stennulf rose to his feet and wobbled. He started to stumble, and then his hand connected with Pinkie Pie’s back. She braced him, and he did not fall.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“We should go, don’t worry, Twilight Sparkle is super smart, and she’s been through another mirror just like this one, she’ll know what to do,” Pinkie Pie reassured.

Pinkie Pie took off slowly, Stennulf still leaning on her for support. As they neared the door, the mirror behind them shattered into a million glittering pieces.

“Uh oh,” Pinkie Pie gasped.

Stennulf said nothing, but stood there with his mouth hanging open.

“No no no no!” Pinkie Pie protested, her eyes tearing over. She started to sob and sat down upon the floor.

Not knowing what else to do, Stennulf stroked her ear again, knowing how she had enjoyed it the last time. He hunkered down and squatted at eye level. “Don’t cry,” he said gently.

“But how can you go home now?” Pinkie asked.

“You said there was another mirror,” Stennulf replied.

“There is,” Pinkie Pie said as she nodded, some of her sobs subsiding.

“So nothing to worry about,” Stennulf soothed.

“I guess you’re right,” Pinkie Pie said, recovering a little. “Please rub my ear a little more,” she asked.

The human tried to comfort the pink pony, and stroked her ears, occasionally running his fingertips through her poofy mane. She calmed, wiped her eyes with her foreleg, and then hiccuped once.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “We should go and find Twilight Sparkle.”

The pair emerged from the castle as short while later, Stennulf trailing along behind Pinkie Pie, who seemed much better now. It seemed that her moods ran hot or cold, but Stennulf didn’t mind. He was glad for the company. After all, she was a pony, not a human.

“I hope the others aren’t afraid of you,” Pinkie said as they walked. “You seem nice. You seem really nice. It was very nice of you to rub my ears and make me feel better.”

Stennulf did not reply, but followed the pink pony, looking all around him as he walked. The woods around him looked strange. Everything was unnaturally bright and colourful, just like Pinkie Pie was. Really seemed a bit off here. Everything looked like it did when he had taken five dried grams of mushrooms that one time and thought he saw God.

“Twilight Sparkle is a princess and she is really nice and she will probably contact Princess Celestia who will probably want to talk to you,” Pinkie Pie babbled as she bounced.

Princess ponies Stennulf thought to himself.

“And I have to introduce you to all of my other friends as well,” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “There is Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity.”

“So… is everybody here a pony?” Stennulf asked.

“Well, mostly. Spike is a dragon,” Pinkie Pie replied.

“A dragon?” Stennulf said in alarm.

“Well, he is little, and mostly harmless, he’s only tried wrecking the town maybe once or twice,” Pinkie Pie explained.

“Only once or twice you say,” Stennulf said dryly, his sense of humour finally kicking in now that the shock had completely obliterated all of his defenses. He had to pick up his pace to keep up with the bouncing pink pony. She didn’t trot like a normal horse or a pony. She boinged as she traveled forward.

They made good time through the woods, even with Stennulf having some trouble walking. The cramps in his feet and his legs were worrisome. Pinkie Pie continued to chatter loquaciously and Stennulf found he didn’t mind. Pinkie Pie was warm and genuinely friendly, something he hadn’t seen in his fellow human beings for quite some time.

He found himself wanting to touch her, to feel her supple pelt under his fingers… it was very much like wanting to stroke a cat or a very fluffy dog. She seemed open to being touched, but Stennulf wondered how the other ponies might take it. He had no clue to the social interactions here.

“We’re going to have to find you a place to live,” Pinkie Pie proclaimed.

“I could live in the woods, I wouldn’t mind,” Stennulf replied.

“The Everfree is full of manticores and hydras and big dragons,” Pinkie quipped cheerfully.

Stennulf gulped.

“They would gobble you right up,” Pinkie Pie said with a giggle. “Live in the woods… heh!” The pink pony giggle-snorted, which caused her poofy curls to bounce adorably.

“You know, if I am going to be meeting royalty, I should get cleaned up first. I am probably in need of a bath or a shower,” Stennulf said sheepishly.

“Oh, you are in need of a good scrubbing, but I was trying to be polite. You’re stinky!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “For a time, I wondered if all hooman beans smelled like you, but then I saw all the caked on dirt and I realised, you’re just a dirty bean.”

Quite without meaning to, Stennulf found himself chuckling.

“I am not sure where to get you cleaned up,” Pinkie Pie said. “We really should take you to Twilight first and let her know about you. And then we can figure out where you are staying and then get you cleaned up.”

And then, Ponyville came into view. Stennulf fell down, landing on his backside for the second time this day, and stared ahead. It was a town full of ponies.

Pinkie Pie watched his wide eyed stare and giggled, as the hooman bean looked very silly. The pink pony couldn’t help but notice that his face was as expressive as her own, and his expressions of emotion were very similar to pony expressions, but there was some differences. His face was flat and didn’t have a muzzle. His eyes were smaller. But there were plenty of similarities.

The pink mare heaved a sigh. She didn’t know how the ponies in town before them would respond to her new friend. She hoped there wouldn’t be too much trouble. She worried mostly about the pegasi, the protectors of the town.

“Whatever happens, just stay real close to me Stennulf,” Pinkie Pie instructed as she gazed off towards distant Ponyville.

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