I felt myself gradually rising into consciousness. Although I would have been perfectly happy to keep my eyes shut and sleep in until someone decided that they wanted to go through the effort to wake me, I could feel the signs that my body had needs to be taken care of. My stomach growled silently. Fine, screw it. Step one: get up.

I opened my eyes and laid there for a moment. Something wasn’t right. Normally when I woke up I was in my fold up bed that I’ve been using while I am home for the summer after my first year of college. To my right would be a white canvas and wood framed folding room divider. Above me would be a painted white ceiling. Instead the ceiling had a different look than usual. It seemed to be a smooth white with a sterile look. To my right was a simple curtain.

A steady beeping noise pushed it’s way into my awareness. Oh, don’t tell me...I looked down at my right where the sounds was coming from. I saw a white band stretched around my right arm that let out a small spark in time with my heart beat. I don’t even- Several other things became apparent at that moment. First off, I was wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday. The second thing was that the bed I was in was really quite close to the ground.

I heard a rapid tapping that seemed to move around and stop somewhere beyond the foot of my bed. “Right, I might be dreaming. Let’s put an end to that,” I spoke out loud. I reached my left hand towards a spot on my right arm and pinched lightly.

Ow. I let out a quiet growl. I brought my hands up to my eyes to get rid of that gooey stuff that always accumulates over night. “Not dreaming. So where does that leave me? I could be hallucinating or insane...or lost somewhere. There is no way our hospital looks like this on the inside.”

“I can’t speak for the contents of your head but you can probably cross that first item off your list. The last one seems to be spot on though,” a female voice said to me. What. I lifted my hands from my face and raised my head off the flat surface to look at the speaker. I froze.

There is no way my mind can fabricate something so cute. My mental fortitude nearly shattered. I am very lost and I don’t have my glasses.

I shot into a sitting position and scooted myself backwards until I met the wall. The band on my arm was beeping and flashing rapidly. A part of my mind noticed that it displayed a red circle that was slowly disappearing like a dial being turned.

What had my focus though was the pink furred individual who was giving me a guarded look. Her tall ears on either side of her head were each pointing in my direction. Her eye’s were amber and oh yeah, she’s a quadruped. I couldn’t see finer details due to my lack of corrective lenses that are usually a constant companions.

“If I were you I would avoid sudden movements. Not only is that the fastest way to get in trouble, you might also overwhelm the pain blocker.” Things were quiet for a moment why my heart rate went down and the red circle finally disappeared. I sat there trying to get my adrenaline high under control.

“Um where...no. How did I get here?”

“I am not the one to be asking those kinds of questions. My job is to keep you in working order. Is there anything you need? You have some time before your questioning.” My stomach was still kicking up a storm and I couldn’t see clearly.

“Yes um, I am pretty hungry. Oh, and there is a personal item of mine that I sort of need.”

“And that is…?”

“My glasses. You wouldn’t happen to have them around here somewhere would you?”

“I’ll see what I can do. Stay here until I come back okay?” I nodded in response. She exited the room with what almost seemed like a flourish of her red hair and tail. I also noticed that she had a mark on her side but she was a bit too far for it to be clear.

Before I knew it I was left with my own thoughts, the constant noises from my arm band, and the now tapping sound that was obviously her hooves impacting the tile floor as she went down the adjacent hallway to parts unknown. I reflected on what in the world I was just talking to. She definitely had that equine look but she was unlike anything that I’ve seen before. She was also pink. She did look mostly like a pony but there was no way that she was one. Her head was too round and her eyes a tad too big and intelligent.

I sat a bit lower in the bed and examined myself. I was wearing a pair of black cotton shorts and a plain dark blue shirt. I still had my socks and shoes on which I found to be a bit surprising. I leaned forward to put my hands on my head. When my left hand touched the area above my left temple I was struck with blinding pain. I whipped my hand away and held myself still while it faded, which it did surprisingly quickly. The red circle on the armband was full for a moment before it blinked and started shrinking again. The pain was already gone.

After that little episode I sat for a minute or two just trying to piece together what I knew about my situation. I didn’t have much time to ruminate over it before the pink...nurse returned carrying a tray in her mouth. As I watched she came up right next to the bed and stepped on a heretofore unnoticed pedal which caused a small table that was attached to the side of the bed to rotate upwards before swinging flat. She placed the tray on the table and stepped back towards the foot of the bed all while watching me warily.

I looked at my hospital food and found a small bunch of grapes and a pair of carrots next to a small pile of hay which caused me to snort at the hilarity of the situation.

“Something wrong?” The nurse asked to which I swiftly replied.

“Can’t eat hay.”

The nurse gave me a look. “Okay then, we will hash out your diet during the questioning. Anyway did you see your, em, glasses?” She inquired.

I looked back to my tray and found them folded up in a groove along the right side. “Oh, thanks.” I picked them up and swung them into position on my face with a flick of my wrist. In an instant the world shook off its fuzziness and I looked back at the nurse. Yep, there is no way my mind can just fabricate something that cute. My thoughts wandered a bit as I observed the four foot tall creature.

I noticed that she was watching my hands closely, which I just assumed was curiosity. As I grabbed a carrot to much on I decided to make some small talk. “So, I never got your name.”

“Nurse Vinegar.” I raised my eyebrow at that as I considered the name. In my head somewhere I knew that vinegar had medicinal uses.

“Works for me. I’m Tom,” I said, “ignoring the context, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Sure.” I didn’t know much about vinegar but I decided that it described her well. “When you finish eating we can take you to have a chat with the royal guard that’s waiting for you,”

It occurred to me that it wasn’t a good idea to keep the guard waiting. I finished the carrots which tasted pretty okay for carrots before switching to the grapes which were fantastic. I didn’t expect that for hospital food. Naturally I skipped the hay and stood up. The nurses eyes widened as I dwarfed her. I guess I surprised her for some reason. She quickly got a hold of herself and led me out of the room.

The ceiling was lower than I was used to but still high enough that I wouldn’t touch it unless I reached for it. I wondered why the ceilings were so much taller than everyone here. Speaking of everyone, I was getting a lot of stares from the equines that worked in the hospital. I realized at that point that they were all sorts of colors and that some of them had horns and some had wings. I saw a few others that had armbands and when they say me the armbands alway began to chirp as a faster rate. At that point the idea that I was pulling a stranger in a strange land move was starting to get to me and my nerves were on edge. Luckily we chose that moment to reach our destination.

“In here.” Nurse Vinegar nudged me to get my attention. She opened and walked through a door on our left. As I followed her I spotted a white unicorn with a two toned blue mane wearing a red uniform sitting at a table and looking down at some paperwork.

“Nurse Vinegar, I thought you were going to bring…” He looked up and he eyes grew wide when he saw me. Although one would expect a more dramatic reaction to an alien. “Nevermind nurse, you’re excused.” She promptly turned to leave. When the door shut he looked to me. “Sit,” he commanded curtly.

On the near side of the desk was a sort of low couch that was obviously designed with small equines in mind, but I made do. “This is the way this is going to be, I’ll ask you some basics about yourself before discussing the incident that brought you here. Understand?”

“Yes, though in exchange I’d like to ask my own questions.” He narrowed his eyes and gave me the most suspicious look that I’ve ever had pointed at me. “Just things that an uneducated foreigner would know. Super simple things.”

His expression relaxed slightly. “Fine.” With that settled he looked down at his paperwork. “What is your name?”

“Tom. Can I get yours?”

“Shining Armor.” Heh heh, I wonder if he’s rescued any princesses? “Species?” A quill glowed and lifted itself off the table, dipped itself in a pot of ink and started writing. I stared at the spectacle. I then realized that his horn was doing the same.

“Human. How are you doing that?” He looked up at me.

“This?” The quill bobbed in the air.

“Yeah.”

“Magic.”

I couldn’t decide if that was weirder than the existence of talking equines. “Ok then.” Shining armor kept his eyes on me as he turned his head to look back down at his list before reading his questions off again.

“Age?”

“Eighteen.

“Height?”

“Five foot eleven and three quarters.” He looked at me for a moment and sighed.

“Stand up.” Of course. They don’t have feet to name a unit of length after. “You’re about six hooves tall. How many parts does a foot have?” It seemed that hooves were considered to be about the same length as a foot. Looking at the unicorn, I realized that the length from his hoof to his knee seemed to be about that distance.

“Twelve inches.” I replied. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Did horses always have eyebrows? I couldn’t remember.

He asked about hair, eye, and fur color which I had him correct to skin color. I answered brown, blue, and white which I corrected to light tan/brown when he insisted that I didn’t look white. He sighs again, obviously bored with our little talk that had barely been going for a minute.

“What do you eat?”

“Lemme think.” I decided to lay it on easy considering the obvious fact that they were herbivores. I mean look at those teeth! It’s like having thick molars sitting behind your lips. You can’t eat meat with those. “Fruits, vegetables, dairy products, beans, eggs, wheat products, and well that last thing that makes me an omnivore.” To his credit he writes it all down without batting an eye. “Oh, I can’t eat any sort of grass, like hay. I don’t know if I missed anything but I should be able to answer on a case by case basis.”

“That’s good enough. Do you want to ask anything else before we get to talking about your arrival?”

“Em, yes. You are some kind of equine right?” He looked as if I just asked if he walked on four legs.

“Yes, I’m a pony. Where could you possibly come from for you to not know that?” Asking that question seemed like the most vigorous thing that he’s done all day.

“A place where my species is the only sapient one around and where ponies, and all equines for that matter, are just run of the mill ordinary animals without the slightest spark of intelligence or self awareness. They are also a heck of a lot less colorful there too,” I retorted without missing a beat.

Shining Armor doesn’t respond for a moment. “Fine. I don’t care enough to get the details. That would be something that my sister would be interested in.” A fire lit in his eyes. “And if you do find yourself having a chat with her, don’t do anything that I wouldn’t approve if you don’t want to find a new home in a dungeon!” He sternly ordered me.

It’s not like I actually needed the shotgun talk to realize that pulling anything would be a bad idea. “Hey now, I like having a future and I would never do anything to jeopardize that okay?” He kept his glare up for a moment before relenting.

“Fine, let’s get this over with,” he says and looks to his lis. “What do you know about the event that brought you here?”

“Um,” for the first time since waking in that hospital bed, I actually tried to think back to the last time I was conscious. The room was silent for a moment except for the pulsing noise of the armband “I was on my way home from a trip I took to visit some friends a city over and…” I replayed the journey through my mind. I was heading east on I-395 from Sacramento, California when...what? I pushed my memory as far along my route home as I could. I remember being all alone in the freeway in my brother’s Toyota Highlander heading through the forested mountains with a river far below on my right. It was coming back to me. “There was a sort of flash and I felt like was pulled sideways. After that I woke up down the hallway. I don’t remember anything else” It occurred to me that there was now a great big spiderweb crack on the driverside window.

“There was some commotion on the edge of the Everfree forest yesterday where a large metal object was found wedge up against a tree. You were found inside and brought to the hospital and the items on you were confiscated. A quarantine has been set up around it until a decision is made about what to do with it. Now, I am going to ask you about the things that we can’t identify. Okay?”

I nodded in reply. “Good. Now I want you to identify these items.” He was perking up a bit with his own curiosity. He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a brown wallet and my cell phone.

I pointed towards my wallet. “That is my wallet. A normal person uses one to store their person identification, money, and other paraphernalia that they think is important that they can fit.” I then pointed to my phone which was one of many new things that my aunt bought for me recently. “This is a device that let’s me communicate with others that have a similar device in several ways but mostly verbally. It’s long name is cellular telephone but these days it is shortened to just phone or cell phone. Over the last few years the actual number of things you can do is a cell phone has grown immensely but mostly it’s just for talking with people far away.” I felt pleased with myself for describing my things without getting stuck and rephasing anything. The cellphone that I had was a Nokia Lumia 1520. A big monster of a phone with a six inch touch screen and awesome camera. I had intended on getting a smaller and cheaper one but my aunt got it for me anyway. She insists that I am not spoiled.

Shining Armor looks at it with an appraising expression. “What’s the purpose of the dark round part right here?” He asks while pointing at the currently face down cell phone with his hoof.

I smile. “It’s a camera lense. You have cameras right?” He nods. “Would you like to see the kind of picture it can take?” He nods again. I pick up the red phone in it’s white case. I let the screen cover fall open and unlock it. The screen changes from a starscape to a bunch of squares. I press the button on the side of the screen that turns on the camera and I level it towards the unicorn. “Hold still and consider smiling,” I ask. To my surprise he does smile.

By default I leave the flash off and due to the lighting of the room with white walls and archaic looking electric lights with only a desk, two seats, and a door to furnish it, I decide to leave it off. Holding the phone oriented to get a wide picture rather than a tall one, I press the take picture button and the image freezes for a moment. I lower the phone and bring up the new picture. Shining frowns and pauses for a moment before asking, “No flash?”

“Nope. I usually don’t need it so I leave it off.” Before he has a chance to comment I turn the phone towards him. His eyes get really wide as he looks at himself.

“Why...why would such a device have a camera in first place?” He asks in a daze. I don’t know how I would have reacted in his place but I don’t know if that would have been my first question.

“Well necessity is the mother of invention and that probably came in the form of an order from a boss to an employee to come up with some slick new thing to tack on, and it most certainly sold. Do you want to know more about the phone or do you want to move on?”

His discipline rapidly reasserted itself as he cleared his throat. “Yes, we really should move on. There is only one thing left for me to ask about. What is that metal contraption that you arrived in?”

“Oh, that is a machine commonly referred to as a car. It is a self propelled vehicle that is used to travel quickly from location to location around cities or between them. It can carry several people plus cargo long distances,” I lectured. I hoped that I was using words that someone who had no connection to modern human society could understand.

Shining Armor muttered, “He sounds just like her,” before continuing. “Alright that’s it. I’ll endorse the plan where you are consulted to identify any other objects in your vehicle and to be interviewed for other things you might have to say. I’m going to guess that the interviewer is going to be my sister and that she will be in charge of your living arrangements. Remember, if you hurt Twilight then you are going to answer to me after she’s done with you, and you won’t enjoy making either of us angry. At least I won’t burst into flames.”

I decided to take that last part to mean that he would be very cold with me. “Trust me, I don’t want to cause any more of a stir.”

“Right. You will be transported to the library she lives in. Cooperate and do as you’re told and everything will be fine.”

We exited the small room. I discovered Nurse Vinegar along with a pair of bulky looking pegasus ponies in what appeared to be golden armor. If that is actually gold, then not only would that be really heavy to fly in, it would be too flimsy to offer much protection. I decided to leave my musings behind me when Shining Armor directed me to follow the guards. The nurse fiddled a bit with my armband and got the beeping to stop before leaving without doing anything else with it.

In no time we exited out onto a wide uncovered balcony that had a chariot. It also looked like it was made of gold with a smooth floor and a swept wing design on the sides with a low railing at the front. The were some simple bars out front which seemed suitable for pushing the chariot.

The guards each took a position behind the bars before turning towards me with an expectant posture. I took the hint and carefully climbed onto the two wheeled contraption despite the questions of safety buzzing in my mind.

Then the small pony guards with their small pony wings surged forward in a cacophony of feathers and wings and then we were airborne. I was surprised at how calm the whole event felt. There was almost no sense of acceleration or of changing altitude and despite the maneuvers pulled by my little golden entourage.

For the first time since my last memories behind the wheel, I could actually see my surroundings. We were pulling away from a blocky white structure and heading out over what appeared to be a small city at least by my standards. Not too far away appeared to be a genuine castle with some especially tall stone towers. The city below me looked like something you would expect archaeologists to dig up complete with marble buildings and stone statues. The whole city was on a level plateau sticking out from the side of a mountain no less.

I was rather enjoying the ride in spite of the lack of safety restraints. The smooth ride combined with my no-hesitation attitude towards rollercoasters and small planes quickly put a stop to that queazyness in my stomach.

The panorama gradually shifted until I realized that our destination was somewhere outside the city limits. Along the mountain was a railroad track that led down into a plain shrouded in patchwork forests and grasslands. Dead ahead was what appeared to be a small town that we would reach in only a few minutes.

I thought about where I was which led to thinking about how I got there. My train of thought quickly led to thinking about what I left behind. No. I can’t afford to think about that. I can’t. Worrying will just make me think about my fam-. I cut my own thoughts off there. I wasn’t quite ready to have a breakdown.

Luckily by that point we had closed in on the small town of old style homes with thatched roofs and, well, ponies. We swiftly passed over the rooftops before the guards decided to make a left turn before setting down next to the largest tree that I’ve ever seen in my life. Naturally I’ve seen tree’s that were taller or had branches reaching out to cover a huge area, but this took the cake in trunk thickness. You could fit a home or two in there! It took me a brief moment of staring before I even realized that there were windows and balconies poking out of its natural exterior. In front was a sign that read Golden Oaks Library.

Without saying a word, one of the pegasi removed himself from the chariot and walked (trotted?) up to the door and knocked a few times with his hoof.

“Coming! Hold on!” A voice called from somewhere inside. Who knocks to go into a library? Maybe I’ll have a chance to ask.

Author's Notes:

So here is my first chapter of my first pony story ever. If you want me to write more, telling me so would provide more than enough motivation. I'll admit that I am writing this story because of how much I want something like this to exist, rather than how good of a story I think it will make.