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Bedbound (And Beyond)

by Cackling Moron

Chapter 9: We are indestructible

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html>Bedbound (And Beyond)

Bedbound (And Beyond)

by Cackling Moron

First published

Freshly-arrived human in a state of some disrepair is tended to by local deity.

A human, having suffered due to the mysterious means of his transmission from one world to another, is stuck in bed recovering from his injures. While a little alarmed to find that the one looking after him is not human herself, he can't do much about it.

It helps that - as he finds - she's also rather good company.

We're bedbound - we aim for the sun

Never in my life had I felt quite so fucked up.

I didn’t even have the common decency to remember what had happened, either. Neither a distant nor dim memory of a night out gone too heavy. No recollection of anything dangerous I might have been doing. I had nothing.

Groping back through my memories I came up with even more nothing. I was vaguely aware of who I was, but only in a general sense. I knew I existed, but beyond that not a whimper. Even a name was elusive.

I probably should have been more worried about that, but it was difficult to care about such comparatively small details when everything you did or were hurt.

Breathing was uncomfortable, air rasping every way into the body it could find. Swallowing hurt, my throat being parched. Wiggling my toes made me convinced that each and every one of them was recently shattered and only now healing or, at best, all individually stubbed. Likewise, flexing my fingers produced much the same painful effect, only in my hands. So I stopped doing it.

Looking around was particularly painful, as whatever bed I had been put into - while comfortable, I’ll admit - was directly facing a window and through this window was shining the sun. Being put into a bed at all was nice, yes, but gazing directly into the screaming face of the sun itself was not quite as nice. There was not even a net curtain to shield me. It was blinding.

Pleasantly warm, but blinding.

Couldn’t even raise a hand to shield my eyes as my arms didn’t seem to want to go through the effort and instead hung limp and weak by my sides. When I really, really tried to move my arms they flopped away from me and hurt. So at least that was consistent.

The light continued to be blinding. My eyelids could only do so much, and the piercing sunshine was making the pounding that filled my head - which seemed to have already been exacerbated by all the thinking I’d tried to do - worse.

I had to turn my head away instead, and keep my eyes closed. My neck protested in very strong terms, but needs must.

Propped up, I sat like this for a while. The room was very quiet.

Who had propped me up? I did not know. It seemed extremely unlikely given my barely-holding-together state that I’d done it myself. Presumably whoever had put me in the nice comfy bed had been kind enough to do it for me. I would thank them, I thought. I had the feeling it was the polite thing to do.

“Oh! You’re awake!”

A voice. A very definitely female voice, though not one I recognised. Or maybe I did and I just couldn’t remember. Could have gone either way.

A nice voice, certainly.

I cracked an eye to see if I might spot who it was but the blinding light made this impossible. I got the merest, briefest hint of someone moving by the foot of the bed and heard footfalls muffled by thick carpet, but that was it. None of this told me anything.

Not that I could have done much about it even if it had.

“That’s me. Awake,” I said. I sounded hoarse and three words was enough to set me coughing, coughing enough to send delightful stabs of pain tinkling up and down my ribs. I screwed my eyes shut and clutched at the sheets - such soft sheets! Almost a shame to clutch them so - and was so distracted coughing I barely even noticed the straw being proffered to my lips.

It could have been anything, but, really, at a time like that I felt like taking my chances. And so I drank. Cool, refreshing water. I must have drained whatever it was as I was quickly sucking down nothing but air and the straw withdrew.

My chest throbbed and my sides ached and my fingers were a veritable cheeseboard of pain following my rash decision to clench them, but the water had still been a godsend. I sighed happily and settled back. The little things were always appreciated.

“Better?” I heard the voice of my unknown guest ask.

Feeling it best not to try and speak for a little while given what had just happened I nodded and hummed instead.

“Good,” she said.

I don’t know a lot about voices, I’m not an expert. But even in my sorry state I knew that I rather liked this one. It was pleasant and oddly soothing. I kind of hoped she would keep talking so I might keep listening, but she seemed content to be quiet after this.

Again I tried to take a peek and again was stymied by the sun. Hissing, I turned my head away once more. My eyes were watering now, after-images refusing to fade away.

“I’m sorry, is it too bright?” She asked. I nodded.

“Just a tad,” I about managed to croak. No coughs came this time, much to my relief.

My guest giggled. Somehow, the sound entered my ears and seemed to bypass my brain entirely, much preferring to instead travel up and down the length of my spine. I tingled. Tingling was much, much better than aching and throbbing.

Generally speaking…

There was the sound of fabric shifting as curtains were drawn and I could see the light level dropping, hopefully to somewhere more comfortable. I had another little peek, and this time wasn’t immediately forced to close my eyes again.

The after-images did make picking out the details hard though. A great, white blob was sat right in the middle of my vision, leaving me able to sort of half-peek at what was around it, and even then not in enough detail to get a proper impression.

What I could see looked opulent, expensive. How I knew this was unclear, but I did. Rich carpet, fancy sideboards, shiny looking artistic bollocks to sit on the top of the sideboards. All very luxurious. The bed, were I able to get a proper look, would probably be fancy too. Just a guess.

“Better?” She asked. I could see her moving, sort of, but with the mere edges of what I was left to work with I couldn’t make out much more than the fact she was there, and I knew that anyway. I nodded and hummed again, swallowing. My throat hurt less.

“I couldn’t-” I started to say, but I only got that far before the coughing came again. Not as bad this time, but enough to stop me in my tracks. At least I got more water out of it, which was something, especially since what I’d been meaning to ask was for more water anyway.

I slurped it down and decided that from here on out I’d stick to single words, at most.

My mysterious, lovely-sounding caretaker - possibly captor? Remained to be seen - came padding around the side of the bed. I’d given up trying to see what she looked like. My eyes were blurrier now after the coughing and, really, the experience of hearing her speak while I just lay back with my eyes closed was nice enough to justify itself.

“I’m going to ask you some yes or no questions, okay? Nothing serious, don’t worry, I just want to try and learn a little bit more about you. Just nod if it’s yes, okay?” She asked.

I nodded.

I had the hang of this already.

“You have the hang of this already,” she said. I could practically hear the smile on that one.

Nailed it.

“Okay: Do you know where you are?”

Pretty easy question. I didn’t have the foggiest idea where I was. I shook my head.

“Do you know how you got here?”

Easy again! If I didn’t know where I was how was I meant to know how I’d got there? Another shake.

“Alright. Do you know who I am?”

I must just have been really good at yes or not questions because these were all so easy. She could have been anyone. More head shaking. I was bursting with confidence.

“Do you know who you are?”

Ah.

Now that was harder. I had to think about that one.

I had to be someone, surely? And isn’t knowing who you are a pretty basic thing? Doesn’t everyone know who they are? So why didn’t I? I knew I was a man, that much was certain. And a man has a name, doesn’t he? So what was mine?

Nothing. I had nothing.

I shook my head, but this time I didn’t feel so happy with myself about it.

“That’s okay. You were in such a state when I found that you that you’re lucky to be alive at all. I’m sure it’ll come back once you’re feeling better.”

I wasn’t sure about this but I trusted her implicitly. If she said so, I’d believe it.

“Can you open your eyes for me?” She asked.

My initial answer would have been ‘no’, but she’d asked me so damn nicely I just that I didn’t really have a choice. I peeked and saw blurry nothingness. There was a blobby outline there that might have been her, but could have been something else. I could also see something sort of rippling. Curtain, maybe? Couldn’t feel a breeze. Weird.

And why would it be so close? Real weird.

“Little bit more, I know you can do it,” she said.

And hell, if she said so what was there to stop me?

I opened my eyes properly and blinked. Still watery and still blurry, but clearing up the more I blinked. Without the sunlight and with that afterimage all-but gone I could see properly! Could see the luxurious room! The alarmingly big bed!

The thing sat next to me, smiling at me.

Thing.

White face. Fur Fuzzy. Lightly fuzzy. Big, big eyes. Big billowy sparkly rainbow hair. Colours unclear. Long face. Muzzle? Four legs. Four legs?

There was a problem here. What was it?

Oh yes, that was it.

“You are not human,” I said, flatly. Rationally speaking I could see this was the case, and it seemed obvious. Irrationally, a bit in my brain started screaming at me, but didn’t tell me why it was doing it. The effect was enough to keep me frozen though.

The screaming in my head just gave me the general impression that things that were not human should not be talking. Least of all horses. Which is what this was. I knew that now. It came back to me.

“You are a horse,” I said, equally flatly. I then clapped eyes onto the long, long horn jutting from this particular horse’s head and another fact floated into my awareness. “A unicorn.”

Then I saw wings.

“You’re a peg - pega - fuck, pegasus?”

That took me a bit of effort to actually bring forth.

Throughout all of this it - she? - just kept smiling pleasantly at me, apparently content to let me blunder through whatever I could remember. I was out though.

Horse, unicorn and pegasus were all I got from looking at her. What any of them really meant to me wasn’t as obvious. They sat there in my brain and there were a few details about them that presented themselves proudly to me, but I didn’t know what to do with any of it.

Horses shouldn’t talk. That was a fact. I knew that. But she must have done. Unless someone was hiding behind her. That seemed like a lot of work for someone to go through. Unlikely? Possible though.

She was still smiling. It a nice smile - I knew this, too - but somehow that just made the screaming in my head worse the more I looked at it, so I looked away. Something about how horses should not be able to smile. I looked at my lap instead, as it seemed a safe enough place to keep my eyes.

“I feel uncomfortable and I do not know why,” I said apologetically. There was a flicker and a ruffling as she shifted in position, but I couldn’t see her do it.

“Is it my fault?” She asked, plainly concerned.

It was odd. If I kept her out of view and made it so that all I heard was her voice, the screaming lessened. I felt legitimately soothed if I kept things that way. This seemed unfair on her somehow. Not her fault she was a horse. Or three types of horse-like thing all at once.

“No, no it’s probably mine. Somehow,” I said, looking at my hands. They looked bruised. I appeared to be missing a fingernail. Ouch.

“Are you a human?” She asked.

“Sorry what?”

“You said I wasn’t one. Were you expecting one? Is that what you are?”

A good question. A quick mental check. Yes, yes, pretty sure a human was what I was. I was looking down at my hands, after all. If I were a horse - and, hey, if a talking horse is sat next to me maybe being a horse is normal - I wouldn’t have hands. Conclusion: human. Probably.

“Uh, yes. I’m fairly certain.”

At this point, all the talking I’d been doing caught up with me and my throat dried once more. I could feel the coughing building up somewhere South of my chest and fought to hold it back, but to no avail.

I coughed with such force I managed to shift the covers off of myself, and when I sensed - felt more than saw - my bedside-buddy moving in to do something about this I panicked. Some hellish combination of the irrational, screaming terror in my head, the coughing and my earnest desire to do things for myself all conspired to somehow see me launching out of the bed and landing on the floor.

This hurt. This hurt so much I lost about a second or two, and by the time everything stopped being white I was in the air and I could hear something twinkling.

“You have to be careful,” she said, striking a good balance between concerned and scolding as I was lowered back into bed and the covers replaced. How that had happened I did not know, as my eyes had watered up again and I could see nothing.

I turned to her. For some reason it was easier looking at her when she was an indistinct shape. Made it easier to forget that she was, you know, not a human. Which was bad. I was pretty sure that was bad. Pretty sure I should have known the reasons why.

“I’m not in a good way, am I?” I asked, holding very still.

“No,” she said. “You were very close to death when we found you, and for a while we weren’t even sure you’d wake up at all. We’re very glad that you did, though.”

The royal ‘we’? Or were there more horses lurking nearby? Biding their time?

I considered what she’d said to me. About having been near death.

“Shouldn’t I be in a…”

I felt around for the word. I knew I knew it. I could feel it in my head. It was so close. I could see everything about it, knew exactly what it was I was going for. Gritting my teeth I made a final mental leap and then it popped up, unbidden.

It was like coming up for air. Bliss.

“Hospital! That’s the one. Hospital. Shouldn't I be in a hospital? Assuming you, uh, have them? Being a...horse...and all…?”

Did horses have hospitals? Something told me no, but that same something also told me that they shouldn't be talking, either, so maybe these ones worked by different rules to whatever that something was familiar with.

Best to assume nothing, for now.

She giggled again and again my spine responded more than my brain did. In fact, this giggle seemed to reach other parts of my body, and those tingled too. This seemed like a good thing, but not the sort of thing I should tell her was happening. I had an idea she might take it the wrong way.

If nothing else, the giggling made me feel much about about being at death’s door. If she could giggle about it then surely it couldn’t be all that bad.

Right?

“You’re in no condition to be moved right now, I’m afraid. I had doctors come to you. You are stable though, so don’t worry. Just delicate. It was felt best that you remain here.”

I’m not a doctor, so if a doctor had considered the situation acceptable then far be it from me to go poking holes. I had a nice bed, I was sound.

“Well I’m not complaining,” I said, luxuriating under the covers. Then I froze. “This isn’t your bed, is it?”

Yet more giggling. I was rapidly coming to be very fond of that noise.

“No, it isn’t. I can have you moved there if you feel up to it?”

No idea what to make of that.

“Here is good. I just, uh, just wouldn’t like to think of you giving up your bed for me, is all.”

“Very sweet of you.”

“S’just polite…”

My vision was clearing up by that point, so I found myself looking again into that face. Smiling face. I twigged at last that the rippling I’d seen was, in fact, her sparkly rainbow hair. Though on a horse isn’t that called something else?

Whatever it was called the thing was voluminous. And so sparkly! I found myself staring. So much so she clearly noticed, turning her head a little so I got a better look. This made me blush, and so I turned away, even if my neck protested from having to move.

That horrible, incoherent, wordless, squirming terror that was gnawing at my skull and dribbling down to my guts was clearing up the more my thoughts started getting back into line. I was starting to understand a little more why having a big, smiling, talking horse with rainbow hair standing next to my bed was cause for concern.

“Uh,” I said, unsure of how to broach the subject. “I am, ah, confused. And concerned.”

“Is it anything I can help you with?” She asked.

“Uh, no. Well, maybe. You see, horses shouldn’t...talk...but you are. And this - this is a source of some confusion. To me. I don’t know if I’m in the wrong place or if I’ve been...wrong thoughts. I am confused.”

The look on her face was far too polite and thoughtful given the nonsense I’d just spouted.

“Well I can help you a little bit with that. I am not a horse. I am an alicorn,” she said.

This did not help me in the least.

“Uh…”

“What does talk, that you know of?”

This I thought about. The answer was immediate and obvious in my mind so I had to double-check to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

“...just humans.”

In broad terms. I felt it best not to get into questions of sign language and mimicry among anything non-human because, really, who had the time?

She seemed slightly taken aback by this revelation.

“In your world, it is only the humans who can talk? Nothing else at all? What species do you share your world with?”

“Lots, I wouldn’t know where to sta- wait, back up. My world?”

There is a tendency to assume that, in a weird situation, it’s everything else that is at fault and out of place. It’s that irritating little habit to always put yourself at the centre of everything. Up until this point, I’d assumed that I was fine, and that my horse - alicorn, rather, whatever that meant - friend, the bed, the fancy-pants room and everything else was what was being weird.

Everything else needed to explain itself to me. I was fine, you see? I had the right to be here.

But on her saying that, I felt a shiver of doubt. I didn’t like it one bit.

She seemed to notice this, as her smile softened and she looked, again, concerned. This time vering on deeply concerned.

“What is the name of your world?”

“Earth. I guess?”

To my immediate alarm the bed slid forward across the floor and tilted upwards. As this took me towards the window I felt I had good reason to be alarmed.

“It’s alright,” she said, trotting alongside as the bed moved. “I’ve got you.”

This was reassuring, but not wholly reassuring enough for me to feel totally comfortable about being in a bed that was lifting off the floor for no obvious reason. That, and the odd glowy field suddenly surrounding me was a bit worrying, too.

But then I looked out the window. At which point I stopped worrying. Stopped thinking much of anything, in fact.

“This is Equestria,” I heard a voice say, though it sounded like it was coming from a long way off.

I then fainted.

We're bedbound - collecting the stars

When I was cogent again, I was alone.

I was still in the fancy room though. Took me a couple seconds to properly run through what that meant and when I’d got it I felt pretty unhappy.

Not that I was going to pretend to have a clue what any of it meant. But I didn’t really need to know the details. I just needed to know that something very strange had apparently happened to me with no obvious explanation as to why. What was I meant to do about it?

Unclear.

Though at that moment I couldn't do anything at all anyway, being bed-bound and feeble, so the point was pretty moot. I tried to get out of bed, mainly just to see if I could, but I got nowhere and very nearly ended up falling out onto the floor again, so I packed it in.

I ended up just waiting, glaring into space. Would have twiddle my thumbs but they were too stiff to twiddle.

At least the sun wasn’t in my eyes anymore.

The bed had been moved back to where it had been before all the floating and tipping and while there was a handy-dandy jug of water on the table to the side I couldn’t reach far enough or steadily enough to do anything about it so, when I wasn’t glaring into space, I was glaring at the water, willing it to jump up into my mouth.

The water stubbornly refused to do this, and I continued to be thirsty.

After what felt like hours I heard the door open and flinched. There came the sound of hard clattering on tile, quickly then muffled by whatever carpet was laid down. Then my big, rainbow-haired friend was back again.

“You fainted,” she said.

“You noticed that?” I asked. Then I felt mean. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. How do you feel?”

“Better. I couldn’t - could you pass me the jug, please?”

I held a hand out - which pleased me greatly, as my arms seemed to be starting to respond to me now - but rather than passing me the jug proper the horse-lady just poured out a glass and handed me that instead.

This she did without touching anything. That long, long horn of hers glowed a bit and then some of those strange glowy fields appeared about the jug and the cup as they moved around but that was that.

I was not going to ask about that. I was going to ignore it and pretend it never happened. If she wanted to have a way of doing things without having to smash things to bits with her hooves that was her lookout. I wasn’t getting involved.

I had my water, I was happy.

“Thank you,” I said, sipping.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

And then we were both quiet. Once my glass was empty I held it in both hands, rotating it slowly, considering, staring into the bottom of it.

Before too long I was forced to ask the question that had been burning away inside my mind:

“Did you - is this place really called Equestria?”

“Yes.”

Damn. Thought I’d imagined that part.

“And you’re a hor- Alicor- fuck it, you’re a horse, damnit. A magic flying pointy horse but still a horse. And the place is called Equestria?”

“Yes.”

“Is that the name of the whole place, or just the fancy city I saw outside?”

“The whole place. The city is called Canterlot.”

I stopped rotating the glass and looked up. Her eyes were huge.

“...I’m sorry could you run that by me again?” I asked.

Looking at her, I got the distinct impression she was doing her best not to laugh at me.

“Canterlot.”

“Like Camelot? But with horses?”

“I’ve never heard of Camelot but if that helps you then yes.”

Chewed that one over for a second, then:

“Can I faint again? Please?”

She actually did laugh at that one, albeit lightly, hoof held up to her face all dainty-like. She had gold stuff on her hoof, I saw, to compliment the rest of the swag she was dripping in. Certainly the most fabulous rainbow horse I’d ever seen in my life.

Not that I’d ever seen many, obviously, but still.

“I could have you sedated but I think it might hinder your recovery. The sooner you’re up and feeling better the sooner we might find out more of how you came to be here.”

This did sound like an inviting prospect, and the way she said it made it sound actively tantalising. Though that might just have been her voice. Really was starting to like her voice quite a bit.

Which reminded me of something.

“You know, I don’t think I caught your name at any point during all this,” I said.

“Celestia.”

Given I’d been braced for another horse-based pun this was actually quite refreshing.

“Oh,” I said.

“Oh?” She asked, eyebrow raised.

“Not bad oh. Sorry. That’s quite nice, actually.”

Another giggle on her part. If I was growing to like her voice I was growing to love those.

“Thank you. My parents thought so too.”

“Well that’s always helpful.”

Further quiet. I strained to try and put the glass back on the table but had so much trouble that Celestia took pity and did it for me with more of he glowing magical stuff.

“Thanks,” I said.

That got me thinking though, this casual telekinesis. She’d lifted the bed before, too, I was fairly certain. So not only a talking horse but a talking horse that had magical control of mind over matter.

This made more nervous than I was comfortable admitting, even to myself.

“So magic, huh?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“Not something we have back home. That just normal around here?”

On reflection this was a bit of a silly question to be asking a talking horse, but too late. She took it with good grace, smiling politely at what was likely a very embarrassing thing for her to have heard.

“Quite normal. And when you say it’s not something you have, do you mean at all?” She asked.

“Yep, not a whisper. Much to the disappointment of many, I’m sure. No, we’re a materialist bunch where I’m from. Well, mainly. You’ll find people who’ll argue at length about the particulars but mainly things are pretty straightforward. Earth goes around the sun and all that.”

Celestia cocked an eyebrow.

“Is that so?”

The way she said this stopped me before I could say anything else. Couldn’t quite put my finger on why, though.

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” I siad.

“Oh no, nothing. I’m just interested.”

“You’re a magic hor- alicorn - and you’re the one interested in me?”

I’d caught myself that time and she seemed to appreciate it, which made me feel pretty good, though she did tilt her head at me a little once I’d finished speaking.

“You’re an alien,” she said. “Forgive me for being interested in a visitor from a world entirely unlike my own.”

I hadn’t thought about it from that way.

“Well when you put it like that…”

Radiating low-key triumph, Celestia sat herself down by my bedside and then, to my surprise, laid her head on the bed itself. It was about the right level to let her do this and still keep eye-contact with me and converse comfortably, though why she’d do it I had no idea.

Her face touched my leg through the covers.

And I flinched.

I hadn’t meant to. It had been unconscious. But it had been obvious enough that she’d noticed and paused, looking up at me.

“I don’t have to get so close, if you’d prefer?”

“No, no it’s fine. Sorry. Don’t know what that was. Just, ah, happened. Sorry.”

What unconscious nonsense was this? Here was Celestia - and I did actually rather like that name - being wonderfully pleasant company and then there was me, flinching when she got a little close!

So what if she wasn’t human? That was no reason to recoil. Think brain, think, don’t let these reflexes make you look bad!

To my horror she started pulling away, smile gone.

“No no! Really! It’s fine! Ignore me! Just a, uh, you know, injury thing. Yeah, you touched a sore sport. It’s fine. Stay there. Really.”

She was wavering, uncertain, eyeing me.

“Please?” I added.

That seemed to clinch it, and she settled back. This time I did not flinch. This was good.

As a rule I’m not a huge fan of proximity. If people want to be near me I’d rather they did it for as little time as possible. If they could do it without touching me that was better. But I did not want to insult the hospitality I had been - and was still being - shown. If this was how Celestia operated then I could tolerate it. The least I could do for her.

And, really, it wasn’t that bad.

“What else can you tell me?” She asked.

“About what? Earth?”

She nodded as best she could with her head where it was.

“Uh...I’m not sure where to start,” I said, suddenly acutely aware of what an odd situation I found myself in, trying to pick a topic to do with my home planet to a quadrupedal, magical, winged, talking thing that looked like a horse but was maybe not really a horse.

And which was also looking after me, a human, after I apparently arrived out of nowhere heavily injured. Couldn't forget that part.

Running through what my situation actually was I thought I must be in some kind of shock to be so easily able to roll with it all.

Celestia, for her part, looked unconcerned and made some sweeping gesture with one of her wings. The way she was able to move them was alarming. Not very much like any kind of wing I was familiar with. She could probably pick a lock with the damn thing if she wanted.

“Tell me something mundane.”

“Mundane, huh?”

I scratched my head and cast around for something that fitted the bill. The consistency of what I had in my head was patchy at best, but my options were still pretty overwhelming. Most of my life had been mundane, or at least so much of it that even severe memory loss left me with lots to choose from.

So for the sake of simplicity I told her about the last full day of mine that I could clearly remember, which just-so happened to have been a Monday. Not sure if that added anything, but it felt like it did.

There was absolutely nothing interesting about the day in question. I wasn’t even sure how long ago it was, it was just the last day I could remember in detail. A perfectly, painfully ordinary Monday. Drizzling, grey. The commute to work. Someone drove through a puddle and got me - that was unusual and dickish, but hardly fantastic. Just a little spice to the story.

She’d been quite indignant on my behalf, which I’d appreciated.

And so it went from there. Even with my touch-and-go recollection I knew that this was a painfully dull day. All through it though Celestia listened with rapt attention, seemingly becoming more engrossed with every trivial detail I brought up. She leant in closer, scooching around on the floor and laying her head properly alongside my leg, eyes peering up. Her horn was now worryingly close, but felt it rude to comment on this.

Never have I ever had anyone listen to me so earnestly or for long so. I wasn’t sure what to do. Normally a few sentences into me talking about my day I can see eyes start to glaze over. Celestia looked like she was having the time of her life, which was quite motivating at least.

And, where she’d ended up, I was also having to fight the serious urge to scratch her behind the ears. I had no idea where the thought had come from, but I’d just noticed that they flickered every so often while she listened and then there it was, this urge. Probably not a good thing to do, I imagined.

In the end I just focussed on the point of her horn to keep from looking at them. This seemed to work.

Eventually I just ran out of things to say.

“-and then I, uh, went to bed. And that was about it. Sorry if I was rambling there. Not very interesting, I know.”

Now that I was out of full flow I felt a little sheepish about having spoken for so long and about so little to something so evidently more interesting than myself. Celestia didn’t appear to mind though

“I wanted to hear about a normal day and that was what you told me about. Thank you.”

Never had I heard those two words delivered with such sincere warmth. I even got a shiver up my spine and it seemed to settle right between my shoulder blades. Shifting was uncomfortable, but I had no choice.

“Uh, think nothing of it,” I said, at which point my stomach felt the need to interject and growled more loudly than I had ever heard it do in my life. To my knowledge, at least.

“Oh my,” Celestia said, taken aback. “Hungry?”

“Apparently?” I said. It was the first I’d heard about it, but now that my insides had decided that it was so it really was so. The stabbing, gnawing kind of hunger - out of nowhere! Accursed body, why you got to do me like this?

Celestia was smiling. This was radiant.

“I can help you with that. Now, I don’t want to make assumptions but when you were examined it was suggested that your species might eat meat?”

Presumably there were signs for that sort of thing? Incisors, I guess?

“Among other things,” I said, in lieu of being able to think of anything else to say.

“Ah, so you do eat other things? That is good. I’ve had some meat ordered in, you see, though it has yet to arrive. What little stock was on hoof had spoilt, unfortunately. Mostly kept around for visitors and we have not had any in a while. Not a lot of call for it normally.”

“You don’t eat meat?” I asked.

“I’m a horse, am I not?” She asked me, giving a very fancy wings-spread kind of a bow. I had a feeling this was for mocking effect, and judging by the look on her face I was right, too.

“Hey! In my defence you’re doing a good few non-horse-like things. I don’t know how things work here…” I grumbled. Though in retrospect, I probably could have made an educated guess. “I’m an invalid, stop bullying me,” I added in further grumblings.

For this I got a pat on the head from one of her wings and another giggle. So maybe things weren’t all that bad.

“Yes you are, poor thing. Delirious, too,” she said.

I’d have folded my arms grumpily at this point, had I been able to.

“Hah.”

“I’ll have some soup fixed for you, if you’d like?”

My stomach growled again, somehow managing to sound approving. Who knew it had such agency?

“I think that sounds about my level right now. Thank you. You don’t need to do all this for me, you know,” I said.

She fixed me with those big eyes and said:

“But I want to.”

Again, the sincerity was palpable. I could have reached out grabbed great handfuls of it, had I been able to raise my arms more than a few inches off the bed without them shaking.

“...however you get your kicks, Celestia,” I said.

Beaming, big swishy tail flicking, she turned and trotted happily out of the room, closing the door behind her.

I’m not the kind of man who would willingly allow himself to be taken care of. I am the kind of man who will frustrate everyone around me by pressing forward even as a wheezing, sneezing, aching mess, shrugging off all attempts by anyone to offer me support, succor or sympathy.

So why, exactly, was I so happy about the idea of being brought soup in bed by a horse?

I put it down to being excessively injured. Not being able to move was a very good excuse, in my book. How was I to do anything in such a state? And the throbbing in my head - which had been present but lulled throughout my whole conversation with Celestia - was making itself known again, further keeping me in place.

So really, exactly, it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help it. I had no choice.

I had to let myself be taken care of.

But it was by Celestia. So it wasn’t all bad. Because she was pretty damn nice. For a magical talking horse. For something that spoke and laughed like a woman while also having a horn that was a good - what? - two? Three foot long? And wings? And was a horse?

I frowned as my mind wandered back onto that. It was these two bits of me grinding painfully against one another. On the one side I had my rational self which rather liked having my injuries seen to, being placed in a comfortable bed and also having someone to talk to who sounded nice when they talked back.

On the other side was some baseline, visceral part of me that was warning me of imminent danger. Why? Because of strangeness! The unusual! Things that were as they should not be! The part of me that kept looking around for other exits and asking whether Celestia had locked the door behind her on the way out.

Not that I could have managed to get there anyway, in my state.

That gave me another pause for thought. How fucked up was I, again?

My arms were a write-off, this I knew. Resting on top of the covers I could just about stretch them out, but any attempt to raise them higher than the level of my legs, say, was a struggle. I tried, I really did, but they just wouldn’t do it. So that was something.

Legs though, legs were promising. They hurt, but they at least seemed to do what I told them. I could work with that. Lift one, hold it, then lift the other and hold that too. Agony, sure, but I was doing it. Positive!

I could work with that. If the legs worked I could make it to the door, give it a nudge. Just to check, obviously. Wasn’t going anywhere. Just proving that paranoid, fearful part of me that everything was above-board. That was all.

And getting up and about was good, right?

With all that decided I girded my loins, gritted my teeth and in one fell swoop swung my legs out of bed and promptly stacked it, falling flat on my face - which crunched - and getting tangled in the sheets.

My nose was probably broken, that I could figure out. The pain was a clue, as the blood now soaking the expensive looking rug on which my bed was sat.

“Ow,” I said, trying to push myself up. I failed. I tried to roll over. Failed that, too. Tried to wriggle forward a little and got basically nowhere. I was stuck, face-down, on the floor, in pain, making a mess.

I would have sworn, but that felt like it would have taken too much energy and concentration at that moment. Besides, my head hurt too much, so I just rested my head on the floor and went limp instead.

“Well this sucks,” I said into the rug, which I felt sure must have agreed with me.

When you’re helpless on the floor, I discovered, time passes very slowly. It’s a lot like any occasion where you have nothing to do but sit and think only you’re not sitting you’re lying on the floor with every inch of your body aching and your face hurting. So it’s worse, on the whole.

Worse, before too long I could feel the rising need to pee. If the rug hadn’t liked me before then it sure wouldn’t like me very soon.

“I wonder if Celestia will still be friendly if she comes back to find me lying in a puddle of my own piss?” I pondered aloud. That sort of thing could really change your opinion of someone, I’d found. Personally speaking. Could never really look at them the same way again.

Though a lot of it is contextual, I supposed.

Bed down, descending down to zero

Author's Notes:

Okay, the chapter naming convention is kind of breaking down but I started this so I'll finish it.

In all likelihood people have probably been in worse situations than being trapped on the floor, rendered helpless by injury with a mounting need to use the facilities, waiting for their magical horse friend to come back with soup and hoping they did it before bladder failure.

But I was not one of those people. I was the guy on the floor. So I had to worry about that.

“I only have myself to blame,” I said, but this did not help me.

Trying to rise again I failed - again - and sighed.

In lieu of anything else to do - and also as a way of distracting myself - I decided to try and remember some more. This seemed a sensible idea for someone in my circumstances. What is a man but the sum of his experiences, after all, and if I could not remember any of those then who was I really? Etcetera, etcetera.

That, and when Celestia got back and got angry at me for having been a tit and fallen out of bed I could distract her with more anecdotes. There were no downsides.

And so, staring at the fancy rug, I thought deeply.

But got nowhere.

This was frustrating in a way I had not expected. Bits and pieces that should in theory have been easily there were just not. And it wasn’t even like I was experiencing voids where memories should have been, not that nagging feeling that something was just beyond my reach. It was more like there had never been anything there to start with. Which was plainly wrong.

I had a name, damnit. Somewhere.

Even when I thought back to the perfectly mundane Monday I’d told Celestia about all I found were holes and missing pieces that I’d previously glossed over without even noticing that I’d done it. Where had I commuted to, and where from? No idea. What was my job, exactly? Not a clue. What year had the Monday in question even been in? Not the foggiest.

This lack of detail and my brain’s apparent indifference to started to make me angry, which inexplicably made me try to think harder. How does one think harder? I did not know, but I tried anyway, and it just made what had been a mild throbbing in the back of my head into a much more pronounced pounding right in the front.

On the plus side I was very distracted. So much so I didn’t even hear Celestia come back in.

“Soup!” She called out, followed by a pause. “Where did you go?”

“You got a real nice rug here, you know,” I said.

Another pause, and the sound of something being set down followed by the noise of hooves - a noise which was rapidly becoming quite normal to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw more gold expensive looking stuff. Gold horseshoes? Excessive.

“ Are you okay? What are you doing down there?” She asked, practically gasping it out. More of that glowing magical nonsense enfolded me and I found myself gently hoiked up off the floor and thence dangling in mid-air.

“Just having a look around,” I said. Technically not a complete lie.

“Are you okay?” She repeated, looking me over, as though she might be able to see if I wasn’t. Maybe she could?

“I’m fine. No worse than I was, at least.”

Which is to say I felt like shit, but that was normal for me.

“Your nose!” She gasped.

Oh yeah, I’d broken that. It still hurt, but in a dull way now, and I think it might have stopped bleeding. Maybe?

“It’s nothing, really,” I said.

“It’s broken!” She countered. She wasn’t wrong.

This was the point where I expected the telling off for having been so dumb. That didn’t happen. Instead, I was tucked into bed again, propped up and even nuzzled - to my shock.

There came again that magical glow, centered entirely around my nose this time. I heard a crunch but felt nothing, and out of nowhere Celestia somehow had a wodge of something pressed against my face to catch fresh blood. Nice of her. This she held in place for a little while, the magic still tinkling here and there.

You can fix things with magic? Fancy that! I must be pretty messed up to still feel as bad as I did!

“There you go,” Celestia said, stepping back and smiling.

All of this was lovely, obviously, but it had done nothing to diminish my desperate need to use the facilities

Things were reaching a head. Decisions had to be made. I did not want to have to tell a magical horse that I needed a slash. But I didn’t want to pee on her hooves, either.

Out of the two of those, the former seemed a little childish. So I bit the bullet.

“Celestia,” I said.

“Yes?” She said, sweetly. Far too sweetly for what was to follow.

t“You couldn’t...point me in the direction of a bathroom, could you?”

Celestia blinked.

“Oh,” she said, getting it. “Oh, oh I see.”

Boy was my face red.

As a man - no, scratch that, as a grown-ass adult - one of the things you might often find yourself taking for granted is the freedom and independence that comes from knowing that, anytime you might feel the need, you can just go to the toilet on your own. Having this taken away and being confronted with the fact that someone was going to have to help you piss was unpleasant.

Somehow, her being a magical horse made it worse. She didn’t even have hands!

Oh God, please let my arms recover before I had to do anything more than pee...

“There is an attached bathroom. Here, let me just get you up.”

I was untucked and lifted up again, carried across the room and through a smaller door - one I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to, being as how it had been constantly out of my sight until just then, in a back corner.

Through this door was, indeed, a bathroom. And quite a sizable one at that, and also fancy. It had tiles and everything. I was with some ceremony placed onto the toilet

It was then that I got a proper appreciation of what clothing I’d been put in while I’d been out of it. Some weird, flappy, two-piece tabard-slash/tablecloth thing. It had a hole in the middle through my head went and tied at the sides. It did not look like something they used a lot, but rather something that had been put together in a hurry just for me. Unsurprising, once I thought about it. Why would a horse need one?

Maybe it really was a tablecloth?

Not that any of that mattered. It got pulled out of the way in time and Celestia was already turning by the time I’d been settled, for which I was profoundly grateful.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” she said, exiting.

As I sat, I realised how weird it was that the toilet should look so much like what I expected a toilet should look like. Maybe a little closer to the floor than I might have been used to, but other than that basically identical. It even had a normal handle. Weird. Probably best not to think about it too much.

What happened next was uneventful and routine, though I was profoundly grateful again, albeit for different reasons.

“All done?” Came Celestia’s voice through the door. I gritted my teeth. She meant well, but it was still grating. I’m a man, damnit! Grr! Tough! Don’t need people checking up on when I’ve drained the snake and so on and so forth.

We all have our crosses to bear.

“All done,” I said, defeated. “I’ll just-”

“No! Don’t get up. Wait, I’m coming in.”

And so she did, though she kept her eyes down. I was lifted up once more and the toilet was flushed for me. The less said about any of this the better.

“Didn’t want you falling over again,” she said while I hung in the air like an idiot.

“No rugs in here. Probably wise,” I said.

Now was about the time I should wash my hands, surely? Force of habit.

Before I could ask about that though Celestia looked up at me

“While we’re in here…” She said with some delicacy, casting her eyes over my shoulder. I craned my neck - something I regretted immediately and would not be trying again anytime soon - and saw a giant depression in the floor. I also saw pipes and taps. It was a bath. A very, very big bath, yes, but a bath all the same.

Took me a second or two to put it all together in my head, at which point I said:

“No. I flatly refuse.”

Pulling me close and leaning in, Celestia made a very big show of sniffing me. There was no dignity in this, but far more than in what she was suggesting.

“You smell ripe,” she said, pulling back.

She wasn’t wrong, but I was hardly going to concede that.

My stomach - again, demonstrating uncanny timing - growled again, loudly.

“That soup’ll be getting cold,” I pointed out.

She gave me the single sternest look I’d ever got in my life. Or at least as far as I was aware. Certainly, I could hardly imagine ever getting stared down quite as hard I as found myself being after that. It was like being staked out in the desert. I couldn’t even look her in the face before too long.

“Fine,” she said, breaking the horrible tension and giving me the room to look at her again. “But after you are having a bath.”

“On my own?” I ventured.

Some of the sternness returned.

“No.”

“Ugh.”

Worth a shot.

Also, as an aside: how was it fair that I couldn’t remember my name but I could remember idioms? Staked out in the desert? I knew what a desert was! Argh! Memory loss! It’s just so arbitrary!

Not that any of that mattered. I got my hands washed for me - humiliating - and was hovered back out of the bathroom and back into bed - also humiliating, though nowhere near as bad as being spoon-fed soup.

“I want to make it clear that the instant I can raise my arms I’ll be doing this for myself in future,” I said between slurps.

“Noted.”

Being watched while eating was disconcerting, though unavoidable if the one watching you was also the one feeding you. To try and break up the growing awkwardness of the arrangement - though, judging by the smile on her face I was the only one feeling it - I decided to talk between spoonfuls.

“So, what do you do when not looking after mysterious aliens? Magic hor- uh, Alicorns do have jobs, presumably?”

Another giggle. Man I loved that sound.

“Yes, we do have jobs here,” she said.

“And yours is…?”

She hesitated. Only for a split second, but it was definitely there. I decided not to call attention to it. Rude. Especially given as I had the creeping impression I was already an imposition. Best leave it.

“I work at the palace,” she said, all sign of her hesitation having vanished. Had I blinked I would have missed it and besides, I was caught off-guard by what she’d said.

“Palace?” I asked, then looking around and asking in rather more hushed tones: “This is a palace?”

“Yes,” she whispered, leaning in mock-conspiratorially, lifting a wing to shield us from imagined eavesdroppers. I appreciated this for the hamminess it represented.

Well, that would explain the fanciness I was surrounded by. Would also go some way to explaining the shiny things Celestia herself was wearing. Presumably palace employees were required to also look fancy.

“I’m - uh - you’re not going to get in trouble for having me here, are you?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine,” she said, and from most that wouldn’t have been enough but from her it was almost completely enough, leaving only a stubborn sliver of worry. Optimal results in anyone’s book.

More soup followed. I had been so hungry that I hadn’t actually been paying particular to what kind of soup it was, but it turned out to just be some vegetable soup. Exciting stuff.

“Thank you. Again,” I said, once it was done with. I could still have probably eaten anything else anyone could have put in front of me, but my gut was no longer stabbing me, so it was a plus. Celestia’s smile was radiant.

“Better?” She asked.

“Much.”

“Good. You know what happens now, don’t you?”

Foolishly, I had hoped the thrill-ride of feeding me soup might have made her forget about the bath. The look on her face told me it hadn’t.

“Ugh. Again.”

I was getting used to being picked up with magic by now, which was a bit weird once I thought about it. Not much I could do though. I remained held there even as Celestia started the taps running, filling the big ol’ bath alarmingly quickly and also filling the little bathroom with steam.

With the taps turned off things were very quiet, barring the occasional drip.

“Can the tablecloth stay on?” I asked.

That got a proper laugh! Not even a giggle!

“No it can’t, sorry. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my eyes up.”

“Somehow you saying that makes it so much worse. Let’s get this over with.”

I was resigned to my fate. The fate of being seen naked by the nice magical horse lady with the pleasant voice who was for some reason making it her mission to look after me.

Someone could probably make some argument about nakedness reflecting vulnerability and a reluctance to be seen without clothes perhaps being an outward sign of some inward lack of self-esteem or...something.

Mostly I just didn’t like not wearing clothes around people. Call me idiosyncratic.

But these were extenuating circumstances. The table-cloth was duly lifted over my head and folded itself away beside the bathtub while I was lowered onto the lip, legs dipping in.

“Too hot?” She asked.

It was, actually, but I sure wasn’t telling her that.

“Perfect,” I said. I’d look like a lobster soon but hell, in for a penny.

I heard clanking and clinking and saw Celestia’s various shiny accessories joining the tablecloth. Confused for a moment I thought and reached the chilling conclusion that she was planning on actually coming into the bath with me - presumably to help clean me off.

She had magic! She could have just stood next to the bath! Are you a lunatic, woman?

“Just roll me forward into the water and leave me, I’ll manage. I can float,” I said, hurriedly but trying not to sound too rushed or panicked with it.

“You’ll drown,” she said, the tiara thing she’d had on finally settling on top of all the other bits and pieces.

“Only probably.”

“Oh you.”

And so I was lowered into that near-scalding water and Celestia followed in behind me.

One day I’d probably look back on all this and laugh. At least I hoped so. More immediately I was just glad she was behind me and I was facing away. My more embarrassing parts - though submerged at that moment - were on the front.

I decided to close my eyes and just float through whatever was going to happen, let it all pass in a haze of far too hot water and steam. Last thing I saw was a sponge being levitated. Never thought that’d be something I’d see before closing my eyes.

“Alright…” I heard Celestia say, accompanied by what I assumed were the sounds of a sponge being soaked. I stayed still, lacking much other option, and just sat there as a sponge was magically moved about my person. The experience was unique, to say the least.

“There,” Celestia said, making me jump as she was apparently far closer than I’d thought she was. “Better already.”

This gave me goosebumps. Not because of what she’d said, but because she’d said mere inches from my ear. Why this was necessary I had no idea, but my shivering was unavoidable.

“Gyah,” I said. She giggled, which just made it worse. She did not back up.

I coughed and did my best to keep the shivering to a minimum. Perhaps such closeness was part of her sponge-bathing style? I did not know. Frankly, I didn’t really want to think about it too much.

So I asked:

“Do you do this for every mysterious injured creature that rocks up here?”

“No, just you. You’re special,” she said, lightly, joking, further water rolling down me as the sponging continued.

“FIrst person to tell me that,” I joked right back.

The sponge stopped moving. I felt her pulling back, away from me.

“Hey, you alright?” I asked, trying and failing to turn, my neck far too stiff for anything like that. I was left sitting staring forward, stewing in further silence from behind.

“That can’t be true,” she said, eventually. It probably hadn’t been that long at all, but it had sure felt like a long time to me.

“What can’t be?” I asked.

“That no-pony’s said you’re special.”

Honestly, this hadn’t been the direction I’d seen this going in. I swallowed.

“Well, someone might have said it once, but not for a while.”

“Oh you poor baby!” She cried and - sponge discarded - I found myself being hugged. Wings were involved, and her delicacy was such that she managed to avoid all of my sore spots. Magical. It was very soft and very wet and not at all what I had expected to find myself in.

So to speak.

In all honesty I could have just been wrong about the special thing. There remained gaps in my memory you could have driven a lorry through. The possibility existed that someone had told me I was special every day of my life and I’d just somehow completely forgotten it.

Something told me this was unlikely, however. Just a feeling.

And none of which altered the fact that she was hugging me whilst I was nude.

“Uh, Celestia, as nice as this is I am naked.”

I honestly heard her sniffle.

“How can no-pony have ever told you that you’re special?”

This, I felt, was likely a cultural thing. It had to be. Presumably you could have found a human being who might have had a similarly distraught reaction but you would have had to have searched pretty hard to find them. Most of them time - quite rightly - the proper, correct response to this would have been a ‘And?’.

Or so I felt at least, in my bones somewhere.

Though, that said, I also felt that her unalloyed sympathy and big, warm hug were also spectacularly pleasant. I’m man enough to admit this. Though also man enough to know that naked hugs are best curtailed before everyone involved gets embarrassed.

Also - as the formerly-screaming and now just taciturn parts of my brain were keen to point out - I was being hugged by a talking horse. The delivery of this was enough to let me know that those parts of my brain felt this was inherently negative.

So I felt it was time to wrap things up.

“I’m a big boy, I can survive not being told I’m special,” I said. “And I do remain naked, Celestia.”

Somehow it did the trick that time and she disengaged, coughing quietly.

“Sorry,” she said, grabbing up the sponge from where it had floated and resuming without another word.

On numerous levels this was one of the odder experiences of my life. As far as I was aware.

From then on the conversation was sparse and limited mainly to her asking me - softly - if this or that was okay to do and warning me if water was about to go in my eyes, things like that. She even got the blood off my face. I was damn-near ready to fall asleep right there it was so relaxing.

Though I thought I could hear something from outside, too. That same clip-clopping that Celestia made when not on the fancy rug. And a voice? Hard to make out, though it did seem to be getting closer.

“-you in here? Hello? Princess Celes-”

There was a flash and a bang and all at once Celestia wasn’t behind me anymore. This wouldn’t have been so bad had her sudden - and I mean really sudden, bordering on the instantaneous - absence hadn’t created a sizable void in the water.

It had though, and this void filled in, and the act of it filling in pulled me backwards. Me being pulled backwards unbalanced me, and me being unbalanced saw me underwater.

Remarkable how quickly things like aching limbs and stiff necks become lesser issues when drowning presents itself.

Fortunately for me the big bath sloped, and while Celestia had been sort of suspending me towards the deeper end I was able to inelegantly flop and thrash my way up to the shallows, bashing just about every part of me as was possible to bash along the way but ending up with my head above water.

I then slumped against the edge, exhausted and in considerable pain. From what I could see I might also have been bleeding again, though more from scrapes than anything else.

“So relaxing, baths,” I gasped for no-one’s benefit but my own.

Celestia could teleport. I added this to the list of things I knew about her. It wasn’t a long list.

Why did she even need wings?

“Sorry about that, I had to - oh! Oh no! What happened? Oh this is my fault!”

That was all the warning I had when Celestia came back.

A whirlwind flurry of magical nonsense followed where I was turn this and that way and my various scuffs were examined and - apparently - healed. This did wonders for my headache, which is to say made it much worse. By the time I was set down on the lip of the rapidly-draining bath and wrapped in a towel I was wincing and doing my very best not to lose my lunch.

“I heard ‘princess’,” I said, seeking distraction, anything. “Was someone looking for a princess?”

“They were lost,” Celestia said quickly. So quickly I hadn’t even had time to close my mouth after speaking.

“Huh. Probably looking for one or something, right? Is there a princess around here somewhere?”

She had said the place was a palace, I just hadn’t thought about it that much. Royals may well have been in residence.

Royal horses! What a thought.

“Oh, there’s one around. One or two.”

Two! Didn’t expect that.

“She - uh, they - they nice?” I asked. Given that they were technically Celestia’s bosses - I assumed - their temperament was of some interest to me. Celestia thought about this, head tilting one way then the other.

“They have their moments,” she said. Then asking: “Are you alright?”

“Hmm, me?”

“Yes. I’m so, so sorry I left like that I just - something came up.”

I imagined that Celestia was probably still on the clock, so this was fine by me. Not like I’d died or anything. If I had, then I might have been a bit cross. As things stood, eh, these things happen. We all teleport away suddenly and without warning, leaving our injured charges to thrash around in the water on their own.

Right?

“It’s fine. And - hey - I’m clean now, at least.”

This got her smiling again, which relieved me greatly. I smiled too. Then I yawned. Being an invalid was tiring work.

“That you are. And now I think we should get you dry and put you back to bed. Unless there’s anything else you’d like to do in here?” She asked.

Nothing good could have come from remaining in the bathroom in my condition.

“Dear God no,” I said.

And I got another giggle out of her. Marvellous. I should keep a tally.

The luminous moon will take us high over ground

Author's Notes:

It's been quiet week and this is a short bit.

I was in California, obviously, the bus having taken the tunnel only moments before. The weather was sunny here, the terrain rocky.

The bus pulled into a layby and the side of it opened as it had been designed to - flipping-up gullwing style. The seats of the bus were, obviously, arranged as they might be in a stadium and faced sideway. This way myself and the others on the bus - strangers - were able to get a better view.

An ex-girlfriend of mine was also present, though I didn’t have any strong feelings about this.

Walking to the edge of the cliff - for I was off the bus now and the bus was next to a cliff, but I knew that already - I looked down at the ocean. And what a fine ocean it was, so far below.

Turning back to cross the road and return to the bus I found my path blocked by a winged, horned horse with a big billowy head of hair. Or a mane. Yes. Horses had manes. Remembered that now.

“Hello Celestia. You got small and differently coloured. Good for you,” I said. Celestia was meant to be white and maybe a little shorter than me (horn excluded), but if she wanted to shrink and be a deep midnight blue that was her prerogative.

“We - I - am not Celestia,” said Celestia. Or not-Celestia. Certainly, she didn’t sound the same.

“Oh, terribly sorry. You looked very much alike is all,” I said. Then in a moment of freezing panic clarified: “Not because you’re both horses or anything just I saw a lot of resemblance. It’s the hair. I mean mane.”

Nice save.

This horse which somehow had stars in her mane turned her towards me.

“I am Luna, Celestia’s sister,” she said.

“Ah, family resemblance then. I wasn’t that wrong! Hello. I’m, uh, actually I’m not sure about that, still. But welcome to Earth all the same! We’re in California!”

I knew this for a fact. So much so I waved my arms around.

Luna fixed me with a look that chilled me despite the sunshine. I think I preferred her sister, given the choice.

“We are not on Earth, wherever that may be. You are dreaming.”

“Huh. That so?”

I looked around. The bus was gone, but that was normal. Everything looked pretty normal to me. Still California. Still sunny. Still Earth, plainly. That I did not believe her must have been obvious as she asked:

“How did you get here?”

Easy question, easy answer.

“Took a bus. Through the tunnel.”

“Why?”

“Uh…”

I hadn’t actually thought of that. And now that I did, I realised there was no why. None of it made sense. I had no idea where the tunnel had come from, or even where it had come out. The tunnel was just how I’d got here. And here was California, which I somehow knew without actually ever being told or it even being hinted at.

My head hurt.

“Ow, fuck,” I said. “Okay maybe you have a point. Is this what lucid dreaming is? Why would anyone do this, it sucks.”

Luna walked past me and looked out across the sea, which - when I did the same - looked smaller now. I could see where it ended and it was far nearer than the horizon. My dream had a bloody sky box. That was just cheap.

“Typically, it becomes more enjoyable once you exercise some control over the dream. It is, after all, constructed from you,” she said, not looking at me.

I considered this. I’d accepted that this was a dream pretty quickly, I realised, but then again once she’d mentioned it I’d just sort of known that it was. Dreams were jacked, man.

“So I can just make stuff?” I asked.

“If you have sufficient control and will, yes.”

How does one exercise willpower to exert influence on the dream world around them, anyway? Is there a muscle you flex? Is that muscle your brain?

I thought about the best donut that could possibly exist. I thought about it super-hard.

A donut appeared in my hand. This was delightful.

“Sweet, okay now I see the appeal,” I said, eating the dream-donut and enjoying all of the immediate benefits one got from eating an actual donut.

I heard the clearing of a throat. Luna was staring at me. The remains of the donut promptly puffed to nothingness.

“Ah, sorry. Miles away. Did I dream you up as well? Or is that rude to ask?”

“You did not. I am real. I have entered your dream because I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“That sounds serious. Do you do this a lot?”

Again, I was being very accepting but somehow I just knew she wasn’t stringing me along. If I stopped to think about this the pain in my head came back, so I quickly found that it was best to just roll with it.

“No. When I enter a dream it is typically to counter a nightmare or assist in introspection, often at the same time. This is...a personal matter. Of a sort.”

“Oh. Okay then.”

What did assisting in introspection mean, exactly? I’d ask later, if the opportunity arose.

Luna circled around away from the edge of the cliff to face me. Did I feel nervous with my back to a cliff, even in a dream? No. Heights were never a big thing for me. That, and the drop had shortened considerably from when I’d last looked over it, and it was now about two foot. Figure that one out.

“My sister has been distracted these last days, performing her duties with a perfunctory attitude that is most unlike her. She has also been quite secretive about how she spends her time alone. Some of her subjects are starting to talk.”

I didn’t know what to say to this, so said nothing. Apparently this was the right decision.

“What do you know of my sister?” Luna asked.

“Celestia? Uh, not a whole lot.”

This was true.

“What is she to you?” Luna pressed, now starting to circle me as I stood feeling tense.

“Friendly? She’s very nice. Looking after me. The awake-me, I mean. I’m in a bad way and can’t be moved.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Well, yeah. I haven’t seen anyone else but her. The doctor checked me out while I was still unconscious. Or in a mini-coma or whatever happened to me.”

Details hadn’t been especially forthcoming about what state I’d been in on arrival or what had happened between then and me waking up in that bed, but what would I have done with them anyway? I assumed they were bad, and I was still alive, so who cared? Not me, that’s who.

Luna considered this quietly, pausing before turning about tail and circling me the other way. I fidgeted, because at least in my dream my body didn’t ache so much that I couldn’t fidget.

“What are you?”

Ah, these questions again.

“Human,” I said.

“You are not from Equestria?”

Ugh, that name. Still not over that. Even in my dreams.

“Nope.”

“You are from ‘Earth’?” She asked, speaking the word as though she found it as offensive as I found Equestria.

“Yep.”

“How did you get here?”

“No idea. Memory loss.”

“Your name?”

“Can’t remember that either.”

Celestia’s questioning hadn’t felt quite so much like being mugged. That, and she hadn’t been inside my head to do it. This seemed a more polite way of doing things to me, but that’s me. Perhaps this sort of thing was normal here?

My lack of useful information seemed to be starting to frustrate Luna, given that she stomped a hoof and frowned even more than she had been to start with.

“Sorry,” I said, uselessly. This was ignored.

“You say she has been looking after you?”

“Yeah. Was there when I woke up. Brought me soup, that sort of thing.”

Best leave out the bath, I thought. Not as if telling her about it would add much anyway. It’d just raise more questions, and not any ones I wanted to answer. Or even think about.

Not that Luna was paying attention to me at that moment. Rather, she seemed to be talking to herself and unhappily at that. I only notice when she was about halfway though.

“-and for this she neglects her subjects? Such trifling diversions cannot-”

I felt obliged to interrupt. Partly because I wanted to, mostly because what I’d heard her say jogged something in my head.

“Wait, you said ‘subjects’. You said that before, too,” I said. She had, I just hadn’t noticed or really thought much about it. Either way. Luna looked a little irritated to have been pulled back into a conversation, but not so irritated she ignored me.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why would she have subjects?”

Luna’s look was one of pity, and not the pleasant kind. The condescending kind.

“What is it you think my sister is? Or does?” She asked.

“She told me she works at the palace. Or a palace. There may be more than one but she just works in one, I don’t know.”

Luna looked more irritated, though not so much this time, I felt.

“Did she now…” She said, glaring and then just trailing off into silence. I cleared my throat.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah she did,” I said.

“She didn’t happen to say what she did at the palace, I take it?”

“Just said she worked there.”

Luna muttered something too quietly for me to hear and shook her head, something which in no-way affected the rippling of her mane. This was odd to watch.

“She and I are to have words. I shall leave you to finish your dream.”

“Oh, okay, cool. Hey, before you go I had a question,” I said.

But Luna wasn’t there anymore. There had been no obvious state of her leaving or being about to leave. It was actually kind of hard thinking of her having been there in the first place.

“Huh. Dreams, eh? That was weird,” I said.

“Yeah,” said my friend, who was there.

I shook my head and looked back out to see again. The sea was cold now, the cliff gone and the weather grey, because we were in Hastings. It was Christmas. There were donuts. Maybe that’s where I’d got mine from? Unclear.

“Wonder what this one meant…”

Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken

Author's Notes:

Not too sure how well I handled this. In my head, both Luna and Celestia are sympathetic. But I am a softy, and you may disagree.

Eh, I tried.

And I know that this technically isn't a Bloodbound lyric but still, how could I not?

And then it was dark and I was in a bed and I was confused.

Hadn’t I just been in California? And hadn’t it been sunny?

Then my brain caught up with me, and things clicked.

No, not California. Not Earth at all, in fact. Equestria, wherever that was. I’d just been dreaming was all, and I’d been dreaming because I’d been tucked up nice and snug by a magical flying horse-lady. After a bath.

It was all coming back to me now, and already the dream was getting fuzzier. Had my ex been there? And a bus? And another magical horse? Hard to remember, all a bit of a swirl.

Probably not important. Dreams are weird.

Although, given that reality for me at the moment involved magic and horses and magic horses dreams had a lot to compete against. Unless all of this was some larger, crazier dream. Or maybe I was in a coma?

Hell, it beat being in a giant version of the Forth rail bridge, I guess…

I took a look around the room. In the dark it’s fanciness was less obvious, but the bed was no-less comfy, so that was a plus. I wondered what time it was. Were the days even the same length here? This was the sort of thing that occurred to me in the dark as I sat and realised just how oppressively quiet it was.

I wondered where Celestia was. Asleep, I imagined.

That got me thinking more, as the night is the best time for thinking far too much about things you can’t do a whole lot about. Especially if you’re bedridden and can’t move anyway.

Celestia. Magic horse. Very nice lady.

The first and third parts there I had no issue with. Celestia was actually a pretty nice name and she was a very nice lady. The horse part thought was continuing to be something of a mental sticking point, as irritating as I was finding it.

Be rational, I told myself. Think! Yes it’s very odd to be talking to something - in regular life - should not be able to talk. But these are not regular circumstances! This much should be obvious. Either you really are somewhere packed full to bursting with horse puns where magic is real or else you’re dead. If the former, then be polite to the locals and don’t react with irritating, instinctual fear and wariness. If the latter, who cares? You’re dead!

I looked down at myself in the dark. I didn’t appear to be dead. That I was looking at all seemed to be proof enough. But who knows? I’d never been dead before. I had no experience.

For now, it was probably the more sensible thing to assume that I was actually alive until this was proved otherwise, which meant somehow getting over this lingering revulsion and panic - for want of better word - that writhed around my body anytime I clapped eyes on Celestia. And in particular when she talked.

This was the crux of the problem, I felt. Being human, I had been brought up on a solid bedrock assumption that other humans were the only thing I would ever see talking or thinking like me. Maybe we can teach a gorilla how to use giant remote control or sign language and maybe a dolphin will recognise its own reflection, I’m hardly going to sit down and talk about my Monday with either of them.

Maybe I was overthinking this.

Celestia was basically a person. She just wasn’t shaped like one. And that wasn’t her fault! And I liked hearing her talk! Apart from the writhing it was a lovely experience! Her voice had some aspect to it which made me comfier than the bed ever could on its own! Apart from the writhing bits every other part of me knew this!

Be rational, me, I told myself. I’m not missing a horse, I’m missing a nice person who has been nice to me from the very moment I became aware she existed. Before then, in fact. So get over it, writhing bits, I told myself.

In the dark. Inside my head. This is why I dislike being on my own too long. I think?

All of this thinking had taken up what felt like absolutely no time at all. It remained just as dark and as quiet as it had when I’d first woken up, and I was at something of a loose end.

“Bums,” I said out loud.

Hopefully, wherever she was, Celestia was having a more restful night than me.

Nice lady. Nice voice. Nice smile, for a horse.

At some point I must have drifted off again, as the next thing I knew the room was light and Celestia was there with breakfast. I hadn’t even heard her come in.

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” I said, blinking and stretching. That bath must have done me the power of good because stretching somehow didn’t leave me feeling worse than it had when I’d started. This, clearly, was progress.

What was also progress was breakfast, which appeared to be toast. I had no issue with this. You could not go far wrong with toast.

“Good morning,” she said, sitting by the beside. “Did you sleep well?”

Bits and pieces of the dream came back to me. Best not to mention that, I thought. A pretty good way of annoying people is to think that your dreams are as interesting to them as they are to you. In my gut I knew this was never the case.

“It was okay?” I ventured, and she seemed to accept it, nodding.

“I brought toast.”

“I saw!”

“Like some?”

“Yes!”

Riveting stuff, this early-morning conversation. There was a minor fumble where I insisted that I would be able to hold the plate and feed myself. The first part was easy enough, the second not so much, and after watching me fruitlessly attempting to raise toast to my mouth for maybe a minute Celestia wordless took it from me and fed me herself.

“This is still humiliating, I hope you realise,” I said, toast hovering menacingly near to my face.

“Why do you think I like doing it so much?” She said, and it was a great bit of light relief and I greatly appreciated it, but there was an edge I couldn’t help but catch.

I’m hardly an expert, but there was something strained about her today. Her usual friendliness and warmth was present - practically radiating off of her - but there was that edge even someone as dense as me could feel.

“Uh, you okay Celestia?” I asked. It was only polite to see if she was, after all, given what she had done and was doing for me.

Her smile intensified, apparently intending to drown out whatever hint I’d latched onto with sheer brute force. It was a touch alarming.

“Just an unsettled start to my morning, that’s all,” she said.

Any immediate response I might have made to this was rendered impossibly by the sudden intrusion to more toast, so I dealt with that first.

Getting fed by someone else is not something I enjoyed. This was possibly one of the things I’d forgotten but if so I was rapidly remembering it. Just made me feel like a sinking pudding.

Swallowing, I said:

“Oh, okay. Happens to the best of us, huh?”

“It does.”

Toast crunched. I was getting crumbs everywhere. It was horrendous.

To fill the silence with some other than the sound of me eating I asked:

“Hey, crazy question but do you have a sister?”t

She froze, the next piece of toast she had been raising pausing just above the plate.

“Why?”

I tried a shrug and it made my shoulders hurt.

“It’s probably going to sound dumb but - ah, forget it, it’s dumb.”

Celestia put the toast back, which seemed a very serious move given the situation. Her smile had gone, too, which was more serious as far as I was concerned.

“What?” She asked, and against my better judgement I shrugged again. It hurt more the second time.

“I just dreamt about another magic horse, is all. Guess it’s to be expected that that sort of thing would show up in my subconscious. But there was one in my dream. Kinda looked like you, I think. Said they were your sister. Forget the name…”

Details remained fuzzy. I had the impression that it had happened, and that was about it.

Celestia had moved the plate by now and turned more fully towards me, leaning in awfully close. Her look was quite intense, and I found myself pinned in place by it.

“What did she do?”

Was it my imagination or was the room getting warmer? Probably just the sunlight coming in.

“Uh, I can’t really remember, honestly. Just talked, I think.”

“Talked to you?”

I swallowed.

“Yeah? Think so.”

The door then opened and Celestia jumped what looked to be a literal foot in the air, spinning around and standing so suddenly I had to move back to avoid her tail slapping me across the face.

I had no idea what being hit with a magical floaty multicoloured tail would be like, but on balance it seemed best to avoid it. My body lodged a formal complaint about the sudden movement. This took the form of pain. Unsurprising.

And in through the door with what appeared to be magnificent dramatic timing came in the smaller, bluer version of Celestia. Turns out she was actually real. This surprised me. Celestia sounded surprised, too.

“S-sister!” She said, and though I couldn’t see her face I imagined she looked as shocked as her voice suggested. Luna just looked sort of unimpressed with the whole scene before her.

“Sister,” she said, inclining her head slightly as she clip-clopped into the room, shutting the door behind her. “I am glad to see you have found something to fill your empty hours. Being princess evidently takes up less time than it once did.”

I could practically feel the passive aggression coming off that one. It was like a heat-haze.

Wait, princess? Did she say princess?

I looked at Celestia. Like, properly this time. Lots of shiny bits and pieces? Regal air and bearing? Palace? Working at the palace?

Oh man, we were going to have to talk about this, weren’t we?

Would explain the tiara-thing though, now that I thought about it. Man I’m slow.

“That’s uncalled for, Luna,” Celestia said, with the kind of delivery that suggested she had been caught out and knew it. “I’ve hardly abdicated. I’ve just been taking a little time to care for an injured guest.”

“A ‘little time’ for a monarch has rather a different meaning. A little time for a day is noticed. A little time for several is talked about.”

I had no idea what was going on, but it sounded very important and I got the impression that Celestia was being chastised. And from the rather quiet way she was standing there and taking it I also got the impression that she knew the game was up. Whatever the game had been to start with.

“Why you have taken the care of the human on yourself is beyond me. They have doctors for this sort of thing nowadays, I hear,” Luna continued, glancing at me properly for possibly the first time. I tried to wave, failed, and she looked back to Celestia.

“He was dying when I found him, Luna! And would have died if I had wasted the time to go and fetch help. I had no choice! Should I have just left him? What would you have done?”

Luna’s expression softened, but not by much. I just sat and let the situation wash over me. All of this was way over my head and far out of my control. I was a leaf on the wind. Agreeably, a leaf on the wind that was also a significant factor in what was being discussed, but still. Just a leaf, that was me.

“Of course I would not have expected you to let him die. While I can appreciate your compassion, you cannot shirk your duties to look after the human. Your royal responsibilities do not go away.”

Harsh words, but true, and delivered with obvious kindness. The kind of thing spoken by someone who is concerned. Celestia could say nothing.

I have to say, the novelty of being an alien and getting referred to as ‘the human’ was actually pretty significant. Sure, being talked about like you’re not even there is always galling, but still! I’m The Human! That’s kind of neat. Back home I would have just been a human. No fun at all.

Luna stepped in close and the sisters had a nuzzle. Very touchy-feely these ponies. Must be a cultural thing.

“If you simply wish another, more exotic pet we would not begrudge you it, but not one that demands so much of your time. It’s the abandoned chicks all over again.”

I had a feeling I was being insulted here, somehow. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it. What could it have been, what could it have been…

Celestia too seemed to read into this sentence as the nuzzle finished somewhat abruptly and she hissed:

“Luna. He can hear you.”

“I am pretty exotic,” I said. I doubt it helped much.

“Oh, sorry,” she said in my general direction, and it was hard to tell if she was sincere or not. I wasn’t especially concerned either way and it hardly mattered as Celestia interposed herself between me and Luna before anything further could be said.

“I will resolve the situation,” she said, some alarming steel suddenly in her voice and as Luna opened her mouth to reply she added: “To your satisfaction, sister.”

Luna shut her mouth, apparently getting the message.

“My thanks. I have only your best interests at heart,” she said.

“I know, Luna, I know, and I yours - shouldn’t you be getting to bed?”

Luna glowered but left without comment.

Things were very, very quiet after that. Celestia came back and sat down where she’d been sitting before. The toast was probably stone-cold by now. Neither of us could look at the other. She had the proper understanding of what had just done down, I knew that something had and that made me feel awkward.

It was less than ideal.

But still, best to bite the bullet. Something had to be done.

“So…” I said. I wasn’t sure where to start with anything that had just happened. I had a lot of options. Eventually I decided to go with what seemed to be the biggest bombshell to have landed in that conversation. It seemed a solid place to start:

“A princess?”

“Yes,” Celestia said.

“Is Luna also a princess?”

“Yes.”

“Right, cool. Dual princesses. Glad we got that out the way.”

I probably could have cared about this revelation more, but I didn’t. Wasn’t as though I was from here anyway, so it had nothing to do with me. As far as I knew this place could have princesses boiling out of every orifice. I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it anyway. All that mattered to me was that Celestia was nice, which she was, so it was gravy.

“Uh, why was she mad at you? I feel I was only really following half of that, sorry,” I asked.

Celestia rubbed the back of her head with a hoof, a very odd gesture to see a magical horse do. Don’t even ask me how her joints were supposed to work.

“I may have not been giving work my full attention for the last few days…”

“And your work is…?”

I was looking for clarification, just so I knew the full extent of what I was dealing with here.

“Running the kingdom,” Celestia said, as though this was a normal thing to say to someone.

“Ah,” I said. Not a lot else I could say.

“Luna notices these things, though she gives a very good show of not noticing. So good I thought she hadn’t. Then we spoke earlier as she was heading for bed, and she asked if there was any reason I had been ‘lax’ in my royal duties of late. She gave me an opportunity to come clean. I...didn’t. Looks like she knew the reason anyway,” Celestia said, shrugging with enough ease to make me jealous.

Ah, I thought.

One of those types of conversations. The type where one side is holding all the cards and the other isn’t even aware a game is being played. I was never a fan of those. Not that I could remember any. Just had a general impression that I’d always been the one on the losing side before I’d even known it.

“How did she even know?”

“I imagine that whatever you told her in your dream confirmed whatever suspicions she already had. My sister knows me quite well...”

I blinked.

“You mean she really was in my dream? Like actually there?”

“Yes.”

That was difficult to wrap my head around. I knew in a general, fuzzy sense that she’d been there, but I thought that just been some artistic license on my brain’s part. Just dreams being weird, as dreams often are, or else something completely different that I remembered as Luna only once I saw her. Learning that she had literally been in my head was something else. This place was jacked.

But still. That did rather make what had just happened my fault.

“Sorry for telling on you,” I said.

“You weren’t to know,” she said, and the conversation fizzled.

Despite this, I pressed on.

“What was that about baby birds?” I asked.

Celestia bit her lip sheepishly, pawing at the rug with her hoof. This was adorable. So adorable I nearly stopped caring about the answer even as she was thinking of how she should deliver it.

“Don’t take what Luna said the wrong way, she was just heated. The birds were a long time ago and they were a one-off anyway. You’re much more than a pet.”

Nothing about this sentence was reassuring.

“Uh, thanks?”

Always nice to be told one is more than just a pet by someone solely responsible for your care and who could throw you out a window with their magic brain. Celestia jolted and then blushed lightly, turning aside.

“...I probably could have phrased that better,” she said.

“It’s fine, I get what you meant,” I said. I did. It was still pretty funny that she’d said it like that, though.

As an afterthought I also chucked out:

“Thanks for saving my life, by the way. I didn’t know it had been you personally.”

Given that apparently she’d done it all on her own on the spot. Her continuing to look after me personally for however many days after was just the icing on that particular cake. She blushed - she actually blushed. Properly this time, not just a little bit.

“You don’t need to thank me,” she said.

“Well I kind of do. I’d be dead otherwise. You said so, right?”

Celesta couldn’t deny this, it seemed, so instead she deflected:

“Anyone would have done the same thing.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. And not everyone is a princess, either. You went out of your way.”

All of which did beg the rather important question:

“If you’re a princess shouldn’t you be doing important things than looking after me? That whole ‘running the country’ thing you mentioned?”

“This is important,” she said sternly.

“Pull the other one. You’ve probably got heaps of horse-related problems on your plate. I’m just some dickhead. You said there was a doctor what looked me over, why don’t you palm me off onto them? Get me off your hands.”

“Hands?”

Was she taking the piss, or just off her game? Could have sworn she’d previously demonstrated some level of understanding of the concept of hands. Maybe I just hadn’t used the word. So hard to keep track of these things.

“These things,” I said, lifting mine with a Herculean effort and actually getting them just above my lap before having to drop them. It got the point across.

“Oh. Have I made you feel unwelcome?” She asked, pouting.

I was momentarily flabbergasted by this brick-wall I’d apparently walked myself into. What conversational Judo was this?

“What? No! You’ve been great! Not at all unwelcome, I just - I don’t want to be distracting you if you’ve got stuff you should be doing,” I said.

“Anything important I’ve had to do I’ve done. You’re not a distraction.”

“Would you tell me if I was though?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said a split-second later.

“You didn’t even think about that!” I spluttered.

“I didn’t have to,” she said, smiling sweetly.

“Augh!”

I wasn’t Luna, so clearly I had no business arguing with Celestia. It was like getting tangled in parachute silk. It was hopeless. That, and her damn voice and her damn smile kept making me lose the thread anyway. I just felt so bloody comfortable and looked after. Infuriating! But lovely.

This time Celestia was the one to break silence, clearing her throat before saying:

“About the doctor…”

“Yeah?”

“I may have...used words in an obfuscating fashion,” she said, shifting.

That could go lots of different ways. My brain fizzled as it tried to calculate the options.

“Uh, okay?”

“You were looked over by someone who is a doctor but you cannot be handed over to them because you are technically already in their care.”

That took me longer than it should have, mostly because it was one of those cases where the answer is so flagrantly obvious that you think it can’t be that, because it’s too obvious, only for it to turn out to just be that obvious.

“...you?”

Tapping her hooves together she nodded, not looking me in the eye.

I turned this over in my head a few times.

“You’re a doctor?” I asked, for clarification more than anything else. She didn’t look like a doctor, but then again she didn’t look like anything other than a fantastical magical horse with pretty hair. And doctors could look like anything anyway.

“I have had the time over the years to become many things, if I felt like turning my hoof to it,” she said.

“...what?”

I was missing something here again, I was sure of it. But it probably wasn’t important. Best to ignore those bits and focus on what I could actually understand.

“Wait,” I said. “Didn’t you say the doctor said I couldn’t be moved because I was too delic- oh, oh okay, I see. You’re the doctor and you said I couldn’t be moved.”

Then I thought about this.

“Wait, no, I don’t see. Why? Why would you want me here and not somewhere where I wasn’t your problem? In fact, why were you the one looking after me in the first place? I mean, I can see your reasoning about not rushing off if it would mean I’d die - thanks again, by the way - but after that why didn’t you bring anyone else in? I’m so confused...”

This whole thing was starting to tie me in knots.

Let me get this straight.

I arrive here somehow. That much is obvious given that I was, well, here. I arrive in such a poor state that I’m apparently so close to death that if Celestia hadn’t intervened on the spot I would have died. Fine. I can believe that. Horses can know first aid, that’s cool.

Following this Celestia - a princess with shit to do, I’d imagine - gets me inside a palace into a room that’s clearly out of the way enough that she won’t be bothered when she’s in it, where she proceeds to singlehandedly care for me over the course of the next few days. In between continuing to princess when she can spare the time.

That seemed about the long and the short of it to me. In my head. Without asking.

“Why though?” I capped off my internal monologue with, given that for the duration Celestia hadn’t said a word.

Celestia kneaded the rug and mumbled something but I couldn’t make it out

“Pardon?” I pressed.

“I wanted to look after someone…” she said at barely a step above a mumble.

That hung in the air for longer than seemed possible.

“For real?” I asked.

I mean sure, that’s a thing people like to do. But come on! A princess! And going to all this trouble? Then I saw how borderline-distraught Celestia appeared to be and most of my thinking came to a grinding halt.

“When I found you you were close to death. However you got here must have been very hard on you. I tried everything I could think of but it was still close. For the first few hours I wasn’t sure you were going to make it. But you did! And you just looked so hurt and I knew the moment I saw you that you weren’t from this world - how alone you’d be when you woke up! I couldn’t have just left you at the hospital. They’re busy enough as it is, and how confusing that would have been for you! Surrounded by so much you couldn’t have recognised? Better I be there to ease you in gently, see that you were treated delicately.”

I felt Celestia was doing a disservice to my ability to just roll with weird crap, but I hadn’t known I had that ability and her heart was in the right place so maybe I was in the wrong. Certainly, I could feel the conviction of what she was saying coming at me in waves. Then again I liked her voice and she’d nursed me back from the brink of death. So maybe I’m biased.

“And then the more I visited you and looked after you the more I remembered how much I enjoyed caring on such a close, personal level. Being able to see who I was helping. I love my little ponies, I do, and I live to serve them and know I help them every day. But this was different, refreshing. Something I’d missed. Selfish, I know,” she said dolefully, wings drooping.

This was going way over my head again. I believed her, I just didn’t really get it. I didn’t really need to. So I just listened to her speak, kind of wishing I could give her a hug because of just how miserable she looked.

“I wasn’t going to do it for any longer than I had to. Once you were able to get up and about I’d have brought in others and would have stepped back. It would have been fine. I was just...enjoying it…caring for someone like that...”

Another shrug. Then:

“That, and you’re quite nice company, you know.”

“Now I know you’re lying to me,” I said.

A wing came up and patted me on the head.

“Shush, you. Don’t do yourself down.

I glowered at her while she patted, weathering the patronising - but pleasant - gesture.

“You don’t need to apologise or explain yourself to me, you know Celestia,” I said once the wing withdrew.

“But-”

“No, no really, it’s fine. I’m not in any condition to pick fights and I don’t want to anyway. Maybe I’m just a softy or maybe my injuries have mellowed me out but really it’s fine. I liked you looking after me. Well, as much as I could. I want to make it clear I don’t like being looked after, okay? That clear?”

“Very clear,” she said, smile returning by inches.

“And sure, you taking time of your busy day to fuss over me probably wasn’t the best thing to do but it’s happened now and we had a whale of a time. You saw me naked, I broke my nose, it was good times all round.”

She giggled. I celebrated internally.

“But, uh, what does happen now? If you don’t mind me asking?” I asked. She sat up straighter.

“Now? Now I shall return my full attention to my royal duties and you shall pass into the care of others. The palace does have medical staff.”

That was a funny way of saying I was going to the horse hospital.

“The pal- I’m not being moved?”

“Of course not. Your doctor said you couldn’t be, remember?”

“You! Oh you. You...are something else, Celestia.”

Fairly certain this was probably an abuse of power. Her smirk looked like one, that was for sure.

“I see no reason for there to be undue disruption for the patient, given his unusual condition. This guest room wasn’t being used anyway. And besides, this way I can ensure that you - given that you are a guest here - are being treated appropriately without the fuss that would be involved with me visiting the hospital. A royal visit can cause all kinds of trouble in a busy place like that, you know. I think this works out best for everyone.”

She actually sounded like she had a point. Royalty did tend to have a wake that followed around with them causing ruckus. Could have just been my bias again. And the bed really was very comfortable, would have been a shame to have to leave it.

I then found myself being nuzzled again. Nice, but still going to take some getting used to.

“Until I work out how to get you home, no matter what happens, I will make sure you’re looked after, my little human.”

And for a good second I loved every bit of this sentence. Then I remembered that I am a grown-ass man, and I can look after my damn self. And I am no-one’s little human!

Though, for the sake of argument, if I had to be, I’d easily choose to be Celestia’s first, before anyone else. Easily. Like, in a heartbeat.

But that’s besides the point!

“You know Celestia, one day soon I’m going to be able to pee all on my own. Then what will you do?”

She lent in so close I felt her Goddamn horn resting on my forehead and her eyes became impossible not to look at.

“I’m sure I’ll think of something,” she said, smiling.

In the solar glance, in the desert sand

Author's Notes:

I'm sure this all makes perfect sense?

Not long after Celestia went off to do whatever it was she was actually supposed to be doing instead of hanging around with me, I learnt that ponies were small.

I mean, I’m not that much of an idiot. Even when it had just been Celestia looking after me - before I’d found out about her actual job - I’d assumed the palace wasn’t empty. Other horses would be out there, somewhere, doing other equally unlikely things about the place. I just hadn’t seen any of them yet. But they had to be around.

And I’d been right, they were. But I’d been picturing them as looking like Celestia. I figured that was what they all looked like. Kinda slender, elegant, possessed of poise. They were not.

They were bloody adorable. And so little!

Three of them came into the room just as I was starting to doze off again and they were just so damn cute I couldn’t help but stare for a good solid five seconds. Since they were also staring at me the whole time this meant we were all just staring like goons in utter silence. But there’s a first time for everything.

So adorable!

Tiny squishy brightly-coloured ponies with big, expressive eyes and squidgy-looking hooves and swishy tails! What I assumed to be the doctor one was even wearing a teeny little white coat with a teeny little stethoscope around their neck!

A lesser man would have squealed. I managed to contain myself, for the most part.

“God I just want to squeeze your cheeks and eat your face.”

“I’m sorry?” Said the doctor-one while the other two - nurses? They had hats - looked mildly appalled. They may have taken me literally.

The room was deathly silent. Did I say that out loud? Whoops.

“Uh, hello, I’m not from round here. Sorry.”

First impressions were off to a rollicking good start.

One of the nurses had been holding a clipboard in her mouth and this she passed to the doctor, who used magic to hold it instead. Seemed more hygenic that way, personally speaking. The doctor also produced a pencil from one of his many medical pockets and then approached the beds, nurses lurking behind. Why did he need them, exactly?

“Could you raise your arm for me, please?” The doctor asked.

Not wasting any time, was he?

“Am I aiming for a specific height here or…?”

“Just as high as you can, but don’t strain yourself.”

I must have been improving by leaps and bounds because I was almost able to raise my arms level with my shoulders and almost able to hold them there, too! Agreeably not for very long and it hurt like buggery, sure, but I could do it. That was the point.

“Did that hurt?” The doctor asked, making notes.

“...little bit,” I said, doing my best not to wince. The doctor was not fooled for a moment and gave me a deeply disapproving look as further notes were taken.

Yeah well at least I have arms. And hands! Let’s see you try and tie shoelaces, doctor.

Oh, he’d probably just use magic. Scratch that. Damn magical horses.

With a certain level of finality he finished jotting whatever it was he’d been jotting and then looked up at me again.

“Can you turn your head for me? As far as you can, left and right.”

It went on like this for a while, limb by limb. The eventual conclusion was that I could move better than I could before and that I was in a fairly considerable level of discomfort as a result of having found this out.

The doctor gave me something for the pain and so I swore him eternal gratitude. He seemed a bit taken aback by this. I had no regrets. The numbness was blissful. Why hadn’t Celestia drugged me? It was like she didn’t care!

That what he’d given me had also arrived in the form of an honest-to-God potion was just icing on the cake. The novelty alone was worth it!

Afterwards, my aches and pains felt as though they were happening in the next room over. I was even able to push myself up in the bed to a better sitting position all on my own, though I had an inkling I’d regret it once whatever the potion was wore off and despite the glare of the doctor.

“Hey,” I asked. “Is it possible for me to, uh, you know, leave this room? Now that I’m not being kept a secret and all. I don’t want to go through the streets of - what was this place called again? The city?”

The doctor looked momentarily confused.

“Canterlot?”

Oh yeah. Pun.

“Yeesh, how did I forget that? But yeah, I don’t need to go that far. Just in the garden or something. This place must have gardens. Some fresh air would be nice, you know? You guys got a wagon you can sling me in?”

From the look on his face the doctor seemed to find my wagon suggestion professionally insulting. I wasn’t winning this guy over anytime soon, I could tell. One of the nurses looked to be trying to hide her giggling behind a hoof and even if she was just laughing at me that was a start, but the doctor might as well have been made of stone for all the progress I was making.

Some people will just never like you.

“We could probably find a wheelchair,” the doctor said.

I was honestly surprised by that.

“You guys have wheelchairs? That’d fit me?”

“Yes and yes. Well, we have some more to your scale, though not in the palace. We’d have to fetch one,” he said, making to motion to one of the nurses but I leapt into action before he could go further.

“Ah, that’s too much trouble, don’t worry about it, it’s fine.”

“The Princess made it clear that you were to be cared for and accommodated and it’s no trouble, really.”

‘Accommodated’ was a broad and ominous word for Celestia to have used.

“She said that? Nice of her. But, uh, no seriously it’s fine.”

“If the Princess wants you accomodated then it’s not a problem. Nurse, if you could find - yes, thank you,” the doctor said, waving off one of the nurses who didn’t even seem to need to be told what it was she was being sent for.

I sat and considered sulking for having my wishes ridden over roughshod. But sulking never solved anything, so I didn’t. Instead I retaliated by refusing to engage the doctor in small talk. It was only just before the nurse returned that I realised that this was probably just what the doctor would have wanted from the start. Oh well.

They really did turn out to have a wheelchair, though why or who it was actually for was less clear. That said, from looking at the thing I could tell I’d fit in it, so what did it matter?

Getting into it was awkward. The doctor appeared to lack the raw magical force that Celestia apparently possessed as it required both him and one of the nurses working in tandem to maneuver me into the thing. There was no dignity in this, especially given that I was still only wearing that weirdo table-cloth thing. At this point I was beyond caring if anyone saw my junk. And besides, they were medical horses. They’d probably seen worse. Probably.

The horns seemed important for the magic. The nurse without a horn - or wings, I noticed, so would that just make her a pony pony? - didn’t contribute much to the process of me getting stuck into the chair. Were some unicorns just better at magic? Or did they practise? I felt I might ask Celestia about it later, should I see her.

I did hope I’d see her. Hoped she was having a nice day.

Once they’d got me properly sat in the wheelchair they slung a blanket on me, which made me feel like an old man but hell.

“Nurse, if you could please take the patient to the gardens,” the doctor said. All very formal, this. And I was ‘the patient’ now. Like I wasn’t even there! I didn’t mind.

The nurse without the horn was the one pushing me and I did wonder how she was actually doing it. Being as how she was directly behind me I couldn’t really see, but I seethed with curiosity. How does a teeny pony push a wheelchair? What a mystery.

Along the way to the garden we passed a good few more of the smaller, squishier ponies. Most were in sort of crypto-uniforms that kind of mirrored the sort you might expect to see on the kind of people who you’d expect to see working in a palace. But the uniforms tended to end about midway down their bodies.

It looked weird. Everyone here was either naked or half naked. But they were horses so maybe that was normal? Looked weird to me.

They looked at me like I was weird, too. So I suppose it balanced out.

Kind of made me a little uncomfortable, actually, the way they kept staring. The first few fine, but every single one we passed? I’m not that interesting looking, come on.

Thankfully they thinned out by the time we got to the gardens. Given as how the room I’d been put up in seemed to be a fair whack above ground level - judging by that look out the window I’d got - I had no idea how we’d managed to go down without me noticing. Probably magic. Probably me just not paying attention. Maybe somewhere between the two.

Probably not important...

The gardens were odd, though it was difficult to pinpoint exactly why I thought so. Everything just seemed too colourful and too clean. Probably just a result of being fancy-pants royal gardens. Likely had teams of tiny horses with trowels and secateurs on standby at all hours ready to pounce and correct even the tiniest of flaws. Probably. That would explain it.

Very pretty though. And peaceful. Air was wonderfully fresh and it wasn’t especially hot or especially cold. Comfortable would be the word.

The nurse rolled me to a halt in front of an ornamental pond. This I appreciated. Water was always restful to look at, and this water was very expertly done. There were lily pads and a big willow and everything. Fancy palace gardens and no mistake!

“Thanks,” I said to the nurse as she stood just behind me to my left. Kind of difficult to relax with her hovering there but I guess she would have to stay until I wanted to go. Poor lady, beholden to my wishes.

“You don’t have to stay here,” I ventured. “I could probably get back on my own.”

“No you couldn’t,” said the nurse, flatly.

Holy crap, alright lady. You stand there silently all you want. You do you.

As I sat and stared out at the pond a butterfly of all things came flapping down and landed on my arm. It looked enormous, worryingly so, but seemed friendly enough. As friendly as an insect can be.

Whatever the doctor had given me meant that I couldn’t feel the tiny pitter-patter of butterfly feet on my skin so I just watched as it turned this and that way, wings splayed.

“Having a nice day?” I asked.

The butterfly flapped away again. I wished it well.

“So what’s it like - hey, where’d you go?”

I’d been trying to ask a question but the nurse was, I noticed, gone. Twisting around to see where she might have disappeared to I saw that the gardens were entirely empty, though I couldn’t shake the impression that someone was-

“There you are!”

I jolted in the chair. The volume and suddenness of this voice had caught me completely off-guard. Every single hair on my body stood on end.

Celestia, smiling ear-to-ear, seemed entirely unaware of the near heart-attack she’d given me. Which was odd, given that she’d obviously surprised me on purpose, her face barely inches from mine.

How does a floaty magical horse that size even move so quietly!

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said.

“Found me now. I was so close to escaping, too. Curses,” I said, still recovering from the shock. Celestia giggled and sat down beside me, facing the pond

“I’m sure you will have many more opportunities to slip away from us. You did strike me as the cunning escape artist type.”

“I’m glad I give off that vibe. It’s what I was going for.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see her looking me over and I got the distinct impression she was checking that I was still in one piece. I felt self-conscious about that, but couldn’t exactly go anywhere. I took a moment to peer around the garden again - at least to the best of my limited ability - but there was still no sign of the nurse.

“Where’d the nurse go?” I asked.

“I let her know I’d take it from here,” Celestia said breezily.

“Completely silently? Behind my back? Without me noticing?”

“Wouldn’t have wanted to disturb you. You looked like you were having a good time with that butterfly,” she said, this time with far more of a smirk than a smile. The sort of smirk someone can’t help but have when they know they got you good. And she had got me good.

I just grumbled at this and the conversation petered out into a minute or two of pleasant, companionable silence.

“They’re taking good care of you?” She then asked, more seriously.

Their bedside manner could do with some improvement, but I wasn’t going to complain. I’d only just met them.

“Natch. I’m in the most capable of hands. Er, hooves. Appendages. Thank you.”

“You don’t need to keep thanking me.”

“So you say. I will though. You can’t stop me.”

Thanking people too much was in my blood, damnit. That and apologising too much. I could feel the need to do both at all times just calling out from deep within. Like an itch!

“Powerless against you, am I?” She asked, eyebrow raised. I rolled with it and gave my answer straight:

“Completely. Frankly, it’s unfair. This relationship is terribly lopsided in my favour.”

‘Relationship’ in the platonic sense that we were two people in a position where we interacted, obviously. Her grin told me she got that. Some people could read too much into these things.

“So what’s on your mind today? Weighty matters of state?” I asked.

Celestia shook her head, giggling softly much to be my immediate delight.

I did enjoy the way her hair - mane, must remember correct terminology, when in horse Rome and all that - moved according to nothing that was happening around it. Very pretty stuff. Luna had kind of the same thing going. Was it a princess thing? Maybe I’d ask later. Alongside all the other things I meant to ask about.

I realised I was staring a bit when I watched her tap a hoof to her chin, thinking for a moment.

“Tell me about other humans,” she said.

“Others?”

She nodded, smiling at me earnestly.

“Yes, please. I’m curious. Are they all like you? What of the mares? What’s it like where you live? I’d enjoy anything you’d be able to tell me.”

No-one did sincerity like Celestia. It was disarming. The smile helped.

“Humanity, huh? I’m sure I can come up with something. Let me think…”

And I thought.

And I came up completely empty-handed.

I was aware of humans. I knew what they were like quite definitely, just as I knew I was one of them, too. But only in a general sense. There were no specifics. Any time I tried to reach for something more concrete everything seemed to just slide away from me, inches away but far enough to elude me.

What other people even looked like was beyond me. I could not conjure up a single solitary face other than my own. Whatever bits and pieces of home I was able to isolate in my head - the town I lived in, the building in which I worked - only ever came to me entirely empty. Devoid of human beings.

It was as if, in my mind’s eye, everywhere I tried to look people had only just left, moments before.

Infuriatingly I was able to remember a Twilight Zone episode where something similar had happened to someone else, but while I remembered the episode itself and the constant fleeting almost-caught-them glimpses of humans in what appeared to be an abandoned town, the person to whom it happened was entirely beyond me.

In my head, they simply weren’t there.

How was that fair? How was that meant to work?

I started to feel a little distressed.

“I, uh, I - well - “ I said, acutely aware that Celestia was staring me, expecting an answer, waiting for one. It was rude to keep her waiting too long.

This should have been easy, surely? This wasn’t normal, surely? I didn’t know, I couldn’t remember, but it didn’t feel right and the more I tried the more obvious it became I wasn’t going to succeed.

What was even the name of the town I lived in? I could see it, but was what I could remember where I actually lived? Did it exist at all? Was I imagining it? Why was it empty? What did my house look like? I didn’t know. No details, no details at all.

And no people. Not a single one. Just an impression of what they were like, as though I’d been given a brief overview of human history and attitudes the night before, fallen asleep and then woke up to find that I’d only barely been listening.

I felt a hoof on my hand heard Celestia say something, but what she said exactly was lost on me. I was somewhere else, and it wasn’t a very nice place.

“Nothing, I’ve got nothing. Nothing at all. That can’t be right, can it?” I asked, looking to Celestia for support and finding her only looking concerned and confused.

“What do you mean nothing?”

Panic born of helplessness was bubbling into my gut, tickling up my spine.

“I mean nothing! I can’t think of anything! No-one! I’ve got places! I’ve got places and a general sense of...I don’t know! I can’t think of anyone! I can’t even - oh God.”

There I came to a halt as I’d realised something. My utter inability to picture another human being extended even to my parents. They existed - I was pretty sure of that, being as I was around to consider it - but they themselves were completely absent. Even their names were beyond me. A void.

“Oh God. I can’t even - they’re not there. No-one’s there! That’s not right, is it? Is that normal? Why can I - fucking Twilight Zone but not mum? Not dad? No names? How is - how did - what -”

I was babbling by then, thoughts coming apart as soon as they popped into my head, dozens and dozens of things all trampling over one another in an effort to be the one thing I focused on. The wheelchair was rattling. Breath wasn’t coming. My hands hurt from gripping the armrests. I heard a pounding noise that seemed to be sounding from inside my skull.

Then all at once I was encircled. Whiteness wrapped around and cut off the outside world. I was warm. Things were soft. Things were quiet.

“Shh,” I heard from somewhere very close by. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“I-” I said, faltering.

“Shh, just breathe, deep breaths, it’s okay, I’m here, you’re okay.”

The world was soft and warm and quiet now. And smaller too. All the things I’d been worrying about were far away. I wasn’t even sure what they’d been, and I was so happy to be able to breathe that I barely cared anyway.

“That’s it, there you go,” I heard.

That was Celestia’s voice. Wait, what?

Where I actually was and what was actually happening starting clicking into place as my brain - with what I was sure was intense sheepishness and embarrassment - got its act together.

The reason for the overwhelming warm whiteness was, I saw, on account of Celestia having lent in and put her wings around me again. Once more they did not bend the way wings should bend, and this was still so baffling to me that even the merest trace of whatever I had been losing my mind over was banished at once.

They were still soft and warm though, which was lovely.

What was also warm was the trunk of her body, at that moment pressed flush against my face, and her chin, which was resting on the top of my head.

Was fairly certain I could also feel her hoof on my back.

“Well this is snug,” I said, muffled.

A pause, and then Celestia withdrew. Instantly I was chilly, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone that. Looking a little pinker than she usually did Celestia sat back and settled herself again only to briefly extend a single wing again to straighten out my hair. Unnecessary, but appreciated all the same.

I was utterly unable to look her in the eye after all of this and so kept my attention on my lap and the fidgeting fingers that lay there. I was getting better at the fidgeting. My fingers were less stiff now and bent more easily. Pretty soon I’d be able to pick nervously at loose threads in the blanket. So there was that to look forward to.

“Uh, terribly sorry about that. No idea what came over me, sorry,” I said, barely a step above a mumble. Now that I had recovered I was practically radiating my low-key shame on having made a scene.

“You were having a panic attack,” Celestia said, which got my attention and got me looking up at her.

“I was? That’s what those are like? Wow, people aren’t kidding about those. Uh, yeah. Sorry.”

I’d heard of them but - and I was pretty certain about this - I’d never had one. Until now, apparently. Rather hoped it was the last one.

“You don’t need to apologise,” she said, her smile of the warm and comforting kind. I had to turn my face away again.

“I feel like I do.”

“Well you don’t. Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. Much, thank you. Hope that doesn’t happen again,” I said, on reflection adding further: “Hey, how come I didn’t have that happen the last time I answered one of your questions?”

I’d managed to give a pretty good go of outlining my Monday to her. How come I hadn’t freaked out then? Was it because I hadn’t really been paying attention to what it was I’d been telling her? Was this like the centipede problem or something?

“I don’t know. Try not to worry about it. Try to relax,” Celestia said.

Was there anything less relaxing than being told to relax? Normally, no, but this was Celestia asking me in soft and soothing tones and so I immediately thought that relaxing sounded like a great idea.

I stared at the pond some more. I was soothed.

“Sorry I couldn’t give you anything interesting,” I said.

“If you keep apologising I will gag you.”

That escalated quickly.

“Steady on,” I said, expecting at least a titter or a lesser giggle, but I got nothing. I glanced at her.

Celestia looked troubled.

“What’s up?”

“Just thinking,” she said, continuing to look low-key troubled.

“That can end badly. Trust me, I just found out.”

“Hmm.”

And then nothing. I wanted to lean over and poke her in the side but she was far enough away that this seemed beyond my abilities. For now.

“Am I really going to have to prise this out of you question by question?” I asked instead.

“Hmm, sorry, no. It’s just...your memory loss is...unusual,” she said.

Even being reminded of the void inside my head gave me a little stab of panic. I rammed it down and thought of clouds. Clouds are cool. Sometimes they look like mackerel. Whatever mackerel is. Some kind of fish, I think.

“Unusual is bad,” I said.

“It can be. We shall see. No matter what happens I’ll look after you. I hope you know that.”

This felt like it was being laid on a little thick but, again, with Celestia there wasn’t even the hint of anything less than total, heartfelt honesty. It came at me in waves and I nodded, swallowing. No words came to me.

Then I remembered that she was a princess.

“Wait, hang on, shouldn’t you be running a country? Why are you out here with me?”

Wasn’t the whole point of the doctors being that she didn’t have to waste her time on me? Was I missing something here?

My outburst had her smiling again, at least.

“It’s lunch time. It’s why I was looking for you. Thought you might be hungry.”

I was hungry. She knew me so well! The toast did seem a long time ago now, and I hadn’t even finished it properly. On being mentioned my stomach seemed to wake up and make itself known, grumbling to itself.

“Lunch already? Man, I’m losing track of the hours. Uh yeah sure, lunch sounds good. If it’s not a problem,” I said.

“Of course it’s not a problem.”

Her horn glowed and the wheelchair did an abrupt about-face. So abrupt I may have yelped, gripping the armrests again as it started trundling along beside her, back towards the palace proper.

“Magic…” I muttered. She just smirked some more.

Then, when we were inside, we found ourselves looking at a long, straight, deserted stretch of fancy palace corridor. Floor looked perfectly level, too. I’m talking completely flat, not a bump or seam in sight. An idea immediately popped into my head.

“Hey Celestia,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“You see this real long, straight, completely empty corridor we’re in? Devoid of any obstacles? Completely flat?”

“Hmm?”

I gave the wheelchair a pat.

“How fast do you reckon you can get me going in this thing?”

We’ve got a lust for freedom

Author's Notes:

I'm coming dangerously close to enjoy writing this. Maybe I'm dying.

And yes, it's meandering twaddle but there will be a point eventually. Probably. I can see it in my head.

Just don't know how long it'll take to get there.

Pretty damn fast, as it turns out.

The first couple goes up and down the corridor were tame to the point of boring, but I got to Celestia in the end. I think it was me calling her a wimp that finally got the results I’d been after, though the look she’d flashed before launching me off still gave me chills even once I’d come rolling to a gentle halt by bumping into the far wall.

We may have gone a bit too far though.

“End to end. One push. Bet you can’t do it,” I said.

Up until then she’d done it by either trotting behind and physically pushing or else trotting behind and magicing me along. The results of both had been a brisk pace and this had been good, but I wanted something a little more thrilling. Something with some oomph! Something where I could see her cut loose!

That, and I was just enjoying pushing her buttons.

“Calls me a wimp. After everything I’ve done for him. I brought him toast! Ungrateful human…” Celestia grumbled as she hunkered down behind me, lining me up, making adjustments. I just grinned and braced myself.

“Don’t sweat it. How you’ve done so far makes me pretty confident you’ll get it on maybe your second try,” I said. She whapped me over the head with a wing.

“Shush, you,” she said. “And stay still.”

I stayed still and grinned wider.

The wheelchair rolled backwards and forwards experimentally a few times. I could see in the corner of my eye Celestia reflected in one of the mirrors that lined the corridor - for the corridor was lined with many mirrors, portraits, landscapes, tapestries and all sorts of other random crap - and I saw she had her tongue just poking out the corner of her mouth in concentration.

This was so adorable to see that I was entirely unprepared for when she launched me. One second I was stationary, the next I really, really wasn’t.

I’ll readily admit that what happened after that was my fault.

Celestia’s aim was fine. Hell, it was perfect. And she managed to eyeball the right amount of push she needed perfectly too. Well, maybe a touch faster than she really needed but that’s forgivable. She did nothing wrong. If it hadn’t been for me she could have got the chair all the way to the end with no problems.

Unfortunately I was there, and I was a rogue element. I leaned. Hadn’t really meant to, but I did. That threw off the whole thing. The wheelchair listed, twisted, turned, tipped and flipped and out I went, smacking into the floor and sliding into the wall. The chair also somehow landed on me briefly before bouncing off somewhere.

Don’t ask me how that even works.

“Oh! Oh are you alright?” I heard.

Ahead of me lay two choices.

On the one hand tell her that I was alright - because I apparently was. On the other, pretend to not be alright just to be play a prank on Celestia for no reason. Quite an unpleasant prank at that.

Decisions decisions.

Well. I was a visitor in a strange alien land. And when was I going to get this kind of chance again?

The doctor’s potion was still holding strong, so while I could tell in some dim and distant way that having slammed into the floor had hurt I wasn’t enjoying the full experience. In my book this was a win. I still stayed limp. I had the edge!

Hooves clattered over at speed.

“Are you okay? Oh I’m so sorry!”

I kept quiet. Maybe a little mean? Probably.

Magic seized me and hoisted me up, turning me around. I just dangled, limp as anything.

“Oh no oh no…”

I couldn’t contain myself anymore. I was never any good at this sort of thing. I cracked and I started laughing. Celestia looked immensely relieved at first, and then immensely annoyed.

“The look on your face!” I said.

“That wasn’t funny!” She said.

Touche. Depended on where you were at the time. From my side it was pretty good!

“I thought it was pretty funny...” I mumbled and she just glared and popped me back into the wheelchair which she’d righted and dragged over. Once she’d done that she moved around to stand in front of me, looming.

“That,” she said, leaning in so that her rather angry looking face was mere inches from mine. “Was very immature.”

There was more mumbling on my part and I couldn’t really look her in the eye.

Our little journey resumed after this, much more slowly and in total, stony silence. She was back to using magic to keep the chair moving, and was walking beside me, glancing down every so often, probably to remind me how immature I’d been.

The tension between the two of us was tangible, the results inevitable.

I was the one who got the giggles first, and though Celestia held on as best she could, there was only so much she could do. She got the giggles too. And that just made mine worse.

To my credit though she was the one who burst out laughing first, which I think means I won. Especially since she snorted and laughed too. It was amazing. I was completely vindicated. Totally worth it.

“I flew pretty good, I thought!” I said.

“You did! Not for long, but it was so majestic!”

“I always thought I was majestic!”

“Breathtaking! Sublime!”

Further wisecracks became impossible due to laughter. We even had to stop moving. Celestia flopped down and held a hoof to her face to try in vain to keep from snorting again, her other foreleg hooking around my shoulders as I collapsed against her.

I, too, may also have snorted.

By the time we were recovered I had to admit I did feel a tiny bit guilty about the whole thing. Only a tiny bit.

“Sorry,” I said, sitting up straight as Celestia stood again, unsteadily. “Chances like that don’t come along every day. I am sorry though.”

Tittering and wiping her eyes with her wings she just shook her head.

“You’re a bad influence on me,” she said.

“Oh, definitely. All part of my plan.”

“You…” She said, smiling. That smile though. That smile! Enough to make a man feel warm inside.

We got moving again.

“Anyway, stop distracting me. We’ll never have lunch at this rate.”

“You may have a point. Onwards, Celestia!” I said, raising my arm as high as I could and pointing. The drama of the moment was less than I might have hoped. I coughed and put my hands back into my lap.

“That might have been a bit much.”

Celestia nodded.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.

“Thanks. My reputation would be in tatters.”

“Can’t have that…”

The room we eventually arrived in was another big, fancy room much like the one Celestia had hid me in, only this one had a big, fancy table. This I was wheeled up against. It wasn’t really a comfortable fit, but it worked.

“Is there anything in particular you want for lunch?” She asked, stood behind me.

“Nah, I’m not fussed. Surprise me.”

“So trusting,” she said before nuzzling the side of my face and moving off away from the table.

These horses were a touchy-feely bunch and no mistake.

There was some kind of dangling cord which Celestia gave a tug on and some moments later a small door opened and another of those tiny little ponies poked their head in. Celestia and this tiny pony had a quiet conversation I could not hear the details of and which was over in moments, the tiny pony disappearing back through the door.

“It shouldn’t be too long,” Celestia said, returning and taking a seat next to me. Horses in chairs. What a world.

“So you just pull that thing and ponies appear? That’s pretty cool,” I said. Celestia actually looked a bit bashful from having been asked this.

“It’s for staff. This is a royal dining room,” she said.

‘A’ royal dining room! Not ‘the’ royal dining room! How big was this place? And if there were only two princesses why did this room have such a whacking great table? Were there more princesses? How many?!

“Ah. Luxurious. Guess princesses don’t really have the time to run down to the kitchen personally,” I said. Bold of me to assume there was only one kitchen, too.

I got the distinct impression from her uncomfortable shifting that this wasn’t a subject Celestia really wanted to focus on.

“Is there anything else I can do for you? I mean generally, not right now. Or right now, if you need something,” she said and I could hear the gears of the conversation grinding painfully and it took me a second or so to readjust to this new direction.

“Uh, no. You’ve really done more than enough for me already. You’re still doing too much! I’ll never be able to make it up to you at this rate.”

“The idea is to indebt you to me for life,” she said and I could tell she was already feeling infinitely more relaxed now that the topic had moved away from royalty. Mental note: try to avoid that in future. Happy, snarking Celestia was infinitely superior to agitated Celestia.

Better - far better! - that she was smiling and telling jokes. I liked that.

Well, assuming she even was joking here. Her delivery was flat enough it was hard to tell. It kind of made me enjoy it more. It spoke to me!

“Cunning,” I said. She just grinned.

The food arrived then, that side door opening again and a small bevy of ponies entering at speed. They worked as a terrifyingly efficient unit, laying places for Celestia and me and setting food down with so little wasted time or energy it was like watching some kind of clockwork mechanism. I kept my hands clear and just watched in awe. The whole thing took seconds.

“Wow,” I said. “Those guys are good.”

I then looked down at the food. Perfectly pleasant looking vegetable stew. Smelt great.

“This isn’t that surprising,” I said.

She levitated her spoon, took up some stew and blew on it with extreme and deliberate delicacy, her eyes closed.

“Thought it best to play it safe,” she said.

I stared at the stew. It appeared perfectly innocuous.

“Hmm. Unless you’ve had something hidden in here. Is that the surprise?”

“Well I’d hardly tell you, would I?”

“True, true.”

Only one way to find out. My own spoon - along with half a dozen other more confusing items of cutlery - sat before me. So close! I could totally do it. Raising a numb and sort-of-but-not-quite aching arm I reached out. Celestia’s eyes were open again, and she was now watching me closely.

Picking up the spoon was not as easy as I might have wanted it to be. My fingers seemed to be operating on a second or half-second delay and they closed before I’d meant them to at first, and then the second time - when I actually did manage to get hold of the damn thing - I made a mistake and dropped it.

In the otherwise-silent fancy royal dining room, the noise of a dropping spoon was deafening.

“Do you need me to-” Celestia offered but I, gritting teeth and glowering at the spoon, cut across her.

“No. no, I can do it. Watch, see?”

Reaching out and trembling only a little I took up the spoon from where I’d dropped it. This time I concentrated. This time I did not drop it. This time I managed to it into the stew, out of the stew and then most amazingly of all into my mouth.

The stew was really good, actually.

“There? See? Did it. Totally did it,” I said. I think I was sweating.

Why did horses need cutlery, exactly?

“I’m very impressed. Are you sure I can’t help though?” She asked, hovering in close and watching me intently. My spoon paused mid-way back to the bowl. The trembling in my arm was starting to graduate towards shaking. Still couldn’t really feel any of it.

“You’re very keen to help me.”

“I like looking after you,” she said, pouting. The pout was obvious enough that she meant for me to notice. Her bottom lip was even wobbling. My eyes narrowed.

“I get the distinct impression you’re trying to manipulate me somehow.”

The pout intensified, and eyes become exceedingly puppy-like. I was powerless to resist.

“Ugh, fine. But let it be known that this is kind of weird,” I said, putting the spoon back into the stew and taking my hands away. Celestia hopped in place but then recovered her poise and cleared her throat. My spoon hovered up into the air, stew-laden.

“Noted.”

Once again found myself being fed. Yes it was weird. Yes it was also weird how much Celestia obviously enjoyed doing. Yes it was probably the most weird that I was starting to enjoy it a little, though in my defence most of that enjoyment comes from Celestia’s enjoyment. So really if you think about it she’s the weird one. I’m just a victim.

“I wouldn’t let anyone else do this, you know,” I said after a spoonful. Celestia hummed happily and gave me another nuzzle. Touchy feely wasn’t so bad.

“I know, I feel very special.”

“You are very special.”

Okay, I could kind of see how that sort of statement, taken out of context, might look a little strange. But I hadn’t meant it in any way that was bad. I had only meant it in a good way. And not in any good way that might seem weird. Only the good good way.

Celestia clearly needed a moment to work this out for herself as she paused, went maybe just a touch pink, and turned away.

“Thank you,” she said, quietly, while I sat and kept my damn mouth shut.

A knock at the door had just both yelping in surprise. It opened a fraction and the doctor appeared, peering around.

“Princess?” He asked. Then he saw the two of us, flinched, and gave a bow. “Princess, I heard you were in a royal dining room, I just wasn’t told which one.”

“Come in, come in,” Celestia said, waving the doctor in with a wing, not dropping the spoon.

“Ah, yes, forgive the intrusion it was just that I had heard you had, ah, relieved one of the nurses of duty only that was, ah, some time ago now and I was wondering whether you would like to have the patient taken off your, ah, hooves? Now?”

Kind of seemed weird to me that the doctor was so keen to make more work for himself, but then again there were probably wheels within wheels here. Motivations behind motivations I wasn’t even aware of. Was I some kind of hot potato? Probably not. I’d never be that important.

“It’s quite alright. I will send for you after lunch,” Celestia said, taking a tone and a poise that I only ever really saw when we weren’t alone. It was kind of unusual to see. The doctor bowed some more.

“As you wish, princess,” he said, but just before he was about to leave he paused, eyes flicking to me.

The doctor was looking at me oddly, head cocked. He then pointed a hoof at my face.

“Did he have a black eye earlier?” He asked.

“Yes,” Celestia and I said in perfect, instant unison.

Same wavelength on that one.

So stand up and be counted

Author's Notes:

I'm really churning this stuff out, huh?

Why can't I attack my own nonsense with such fervour?! Why?!

Ah well, at least I'm producing something.

Did hope that I hadn’t got Celestia into trouble.

The rest of lunchtime was still fun, obviously, but subdued. Both of us were aware that outside forces were now watching and waiting, which kind of made it difficult to enjoy things the way we had been before. I missed the empty corridor. Getting sent flying and eating shit on the floor hadn’t been great, sure, but being entirely on our own had been wonderful.

As a princess I’d imagine it wasn’t the sort of thing Celestia got to enjoy all that often. Poor Celestia.

Once the stew was all gone I was wheeled out and passed into the care of the doctor who had - somewhat disconcertingly - been waiting outside the door the whole time.

Given her previous behaviour I did kind of expect another nuzzle from Celestia. I didn’t want one or anything, obviously, I just kind of expected one. I did not get one though, as instead she resumed her very regal poise and posture, standing tall above both me in the chair and the doctor behind me.

“I leave him in your capable hooves,” she said.

“Princess,” the doctor said, and I figured he followed it up with a bow.

“I’d bow but, you know, chair,” I said.

Celestia turned away quick but I saw her smiling, I saw!

I got a last look at her cool swishy tail and big picture of a sun on her...whatever the rear part of a horse is called...before the wheelchair was abruptly swivelled in place and we started rolling back, presumably towards the bed.

“What happened?” The doctor asked after a few good corners put plenty of distance between us and Celestia.

“Pardon?”

“I know you didn’t have a black eye when I saw you last. What did you do?”

Damn, and I thought we’d got away with it.

“...s’just a wheelchair accident.”

He sighed.

“Well try to keep the accidents to a minimum around the princess. She has enough to deal with as it is.”

Ouch. Alright mate, Jesus.

“Bet she does,” I said, just to fill the air. He did not reply.

The scale of the palace really was something else, and the more of it I saw the more I became convinced that it was physically impossible. I mean seriously, at no point did we seem to see stairs, but I swear blind that we went up at some point. And how could it be so big?

Probably magic. I imagine it was magic.

The doctor got me back to the room before too long, the nurses appearing as though from thin air, he and the unicorn one wrangling me back into bed with the kind of tired, practised ease one might expect from medical professionals. Magical medical professionals.

“I can tuck myself, I can tuck myself, hold on,” I said before they could do anything with the duvet. I struggled up and reached for it, straining, grabbing and managing to flop back before my back gave out. A little more wriggling had me properly covered, and I’d done it all on my own!

Whatever I’d been given before for the pain was starting to wear off now, too, because I felt that one. The pain which had up until then been keeping a respectful distance was now outside the door, so to speak. Probably just as well I was in bed, really.

If either the doctor or the nurses were impressed by my independence they didn’t say anything about it. If anything they looked a bit disapproving. Probably because I was hindering my recovery. Whoops. Well, too late now.

The doctor cleared his throat, getting my attention.

“Now I know you might find this difficult but you are going to have to stay still for a while. Bedrest is likely only going to be good for you right now. And from the looks of things you’ve had an active enough day as it is,” he said.

Felt like making a joke about me wanting to go running or dancing but I felt this wasn’t the right crowd. Humour is all about timing, you see, and sometimes that timing is not ‘not now, not here, not these guys’.

“Bedrest, got it. Uh, this might come across as a dumb question - and it probably is, so brace yourself - but can’t I just get magicked better?” I asked. This thought had been nagging at me and it seemed like a good enough time to ask.

He gave me a look like he was trying to work out if I was serious or not. I was, and he worked that out.

“Um, okay. Well, first, no, magic doesn’t really work like that and second we’re not wholly sure how magic works on you anyway, so we’d rather not take any risks we didn’t have to,” the doctor said.

Not for the first time I got the feeling he didn’t like me much. Not what you want in your doctor, really. Still, at least I’d got an answer. Guess I wouldn’t want to shove handfuls of magic up the arse of something that had just fallen in from parts unknown. Who knew what might happen?

“Fair do’s,” I said.

I’m not a wizard or a doctor or a wizard horse doctor. I felt comfortable deferring to his expertise.

What followed was a few more fairly minor tests. Lift my arm again, turn my head, look at light etcetera. The results were noted down, and that was that. The doctor and nurses departed, though not before telling me that I should need them they would be on call and around somewhere.

I didn’t think I would, but thanked them anyway, and off they went.

Dinner arrived eventually and I was left to my own devices to eat it. This went about as well as could be expected, but I kept mess to a minimum.

I wondered how Celestia was doing.

And after dinner there wasn’t anything. I was left in the room on my own.

Boredom came on swift wings. I hummed a tune and then gave myself a mild headache trying to remember what the tune was or if I’d just made it up. I stopped humming.

And in this quiet time, all of those unfriendly thoughts that had been so distant earlier came tip-toeing back into my head.

I thought about who I was. Sure, I had various bizzare opinions and notions now, but when - if - my actual, proper memories came back, would any of that stay the same? I didn’t know. Was I like this normally, or was this just a passing phase? I didn’t know. And that made me nervous.

And while I was clearly getting better, was that going to keep going? Would I recover fully? Or would it hit some kind of obstacle no-one had forseen and stop there? Would I relapse somehow? What had even happened? I didn’t know. Did anyone?

Normally, when things were lighter and louder, things like this didn’t bother me. I could roll with uncertainty, I could shrug off not knowing. But on my own in the quiet everything felt so much worse. Unavoidable. Every possible point of failure was glaringly obvious, and each one looked like it was going to go wrong on me.

Like being stuck in bloody quicksand, it was. Sucking me down the more I tried to get out.

And how the fuck did I know about quicksand and not my fucking name?!

I wanted to ignore it, I really did. But I couldn’t. It was all I had right then. The only thing that my brain seemed to want to focus on. I couldn’t shake it.

None of this stuff worried me when Celestia was around. Hell, none of it even occurred to me when she was around. Though really I was so heavily biased in Celestia’s favour at this point that I’d probably say the sun shone brighter when I was with her, so clearly I wasn’t being objective.

Thinking about Celestia though immediately boosted my spirits.

She’s really lovely. In a way that I can’t quite put my finger on. Just everything about her, really. Her smile, her laugh, that I can seemingly get her to do both of those things quite a lot. The sound of her voice. That she, you know, saved my life and her continued joy in keeping me in fine health after that point. Her overwhelming, sincerity in all things.

She was just so bloody lovely!

That she’s not human is kind of incidental at this point. Whatever weirdo reaction I was having before had dwindled away to basically nothing, which is great. Now I could enjoy being around Celestia without that irritating, nagging feeling in the back of my skull.

It’s actually kind of cool, now I think about it. We’re like, interspecies buddies. Ignoring differences, sharing dumb jokes, engaging in shinanigens, hugging.

That’s neat. I like that. We’re so cool.

And once I was up and walking it’d be even better! We could go for a proper walk around the gardens! Or hell, maybe even around Camelot, if she’d let me. That’d be cool. She could show me the sights!

Wait, not Camelot, Canterlot. Horses. Ugh.

But still, yes. Walking would be a big improvement. It’d open doors. The sooner that happened, the better.

Looking around the room again I didn’t see anything else demanding my attention and no-one was there to tell me otherwise, so why not give it a shot? If nothing else it’d pass the time and that had to be good, right? Keep my mind occupied, too.

Shuffling up in bed so I was closer to sitting I paused, took a breath, and then twisted in place to swing my legs out from under the covers.

This was not a comfortable or especially easy thing to do, but it was possible and I did do it. Balancing there, legs dangling and feet resting on the floor I took a minute to catch my breath.

The bed looked to have been made more with someone of Celestia’s size in mind than one of the littler ponies, as it was a reasonable enough height off the ground. Certainly, my legs were actually dangling, or at least I didn’t have my knees up around my ears. This would, in theory, make this a little easier for me. I’d have gravity on my side.

Then the next step.

“I can fucking do this, fucking watch me. Not going to stack it like last time, watch this,” I growled, shifting weight onto one leg, then the other, and then slipping off the bed and standing up.

Barely.

But I did it.

“I’m the best at recovering!”

Enthusiastic though I was, I knew pacing myself was important. No sense doing laps of the room of cartwheels or whatever. Start small. Set a simple goal and hit that.

The window. I could get to the window. That’d be easy. I could do that.

Until I got to the end of the bed I was leaning on it, and that wasn’t so bad. After that though I was on my own, and progress slowed considerably.

My legs were working, which was nice, but under sufferance, which was less nice. Both of them felt as though they had only just stopped being completely asleep, both heavy and barely a hair above completely inert. They were an effort to move, basically, and even more of an effort to keep solid enough to take my weight.

But I did it, damnit. One step at a time I did it.

Once the window was in spitting distance I lunged, my trembling legs choosing that moment to give out. I crashed ribs-first into the windowsill and scrabbled to hold on, managing to not immediately fall over backwards. Instead I slipped, winded, to my knees with my arms resting on the windowsill.

This was probably the best result I could have hoped for, really.

“Nailed it,” I wheezed, eyes watering.

I could walk! Agreeably not very quickly and not even across a room, but still! I could walk!

Resting by the window and figuring it’d probably be a good idea to wait a minute or two before making the arduous trip back to the bed, I looked out to see what I could see.

It was much the same view that Celestia had shown me, the one that had made faint. It didn’t make me faint now, which I appreciated. Gave me a chance to really take it in.

The sun looked to be on its way to setting by now so all was clear. The city itself - Canterlot, ugh - looked a little odd to me, I’ll admit. What bits and pieces of Earth I could dredge up served as a reasonable enough comparison, and while back home things were pleasant enough they often tended towards the grey, the dirty and the dilapidated. At least as far as I could remember.

Here there was none of that. Everything was so bloody whimsical looking and so clean you could probably eat off every surface. Though, to be fair, I was looking out of quite a high window. And this was a royal city. So who knows? Maybe this place was unique.

Certainly, the place looked nice. I did hope Celestia showed me around some time.

Noises outside the door pulled me out of that and dropped me right back in the present where, with certain icy dread, I remembered that the doctor had been quite clear on the ‘bedrest’ thing. And there I was, not in bed, not resting.

Oops. Silly me.

Girding my loins I lurched to my feet and tottered back to the bed as I fast as I could, falling forward onto it and missing faceplanting on the floor by inches. Doing what was possibly the best worm I’d even done in my life I writhed back into position under the covers with my head on the pillow. All of this hurt, of course, but at this point pain was getting a little dull.

Change the record, body. I get it already. Everything hurts, yeah, cool, great.

Face turned away, eyes closed, I heard the door open. Was I being checked up on? Seemed likely. I kept still and pretended to be sleeping, which seemed the right thing to be doing, and a few moments later the door closed again.

“Fooled them,” I said to myself, before promptly falling asleep through sheer physical exhaustion.

We are indestructible

Author's Notes:

Dream chapters are little.

My friend wanted my help. She wanted to become a trifle.

Being a good friend - or so I liked to think - of course I helped. Eagerly, in fact. Why wouldn’t I? It was what she wanted after all.

It was only once it was done and dusted that I realised the gravity of the situation, that I felt the full weight of what I’d done.

My friend! Gone! No more conversations! You could talk at trifle, you couldn’t talk with trifle!

What had I done!

Sadness overwhelmed me as I stared at the many, many dishes of trifle my beautiful friend had become. They knew I was there, somehow, and I knew they knew, somehow, but that wasn’t enough. It was gone, all gone!

“This is new,” I heard someone say and, turning my head and wiping tears from my eyes, I saw Luna.

“Oh hey Luna,” I said. Then I paused. “Wait. Why are you here?”

“You’re dreaming again.”

“I am?” I asked, goggling at her and then looking down at the trifle I was holding in my hand. Without eyes it looked back at me, so familiar yet now so different.

Maybe she had a point.

“Okay, I am, let’s go with that,” I said.

If I had a better grasp of who I actually was as a person I might have felt more affronted by the repeated invasion of my privacy. As it stood, I still thought an ability to just go wandering into dreams was kind of cool. And it wasn’t like I had anything to hide anyway.

“Trifle?” I asked, proffering the tub I was holding. Luna looked at it gingerly.

“Um, no, no thank you. I’m here because I wished to apologise.”

“For what?”

“You and I may have got off on the wrong hoof, and I believe it was my fault. I have treated you shortly and with discourtesy.”

“Uh,” I said, not really sure what other input I could make.

Hadn’t I only spoken to Luna once? And that hadn’t even been in real life? The only time I’d seen her in reality she had mostly just been talking to Celestia, I’d just been in the same room.

Maybe that’s what she was talking about? Some people apparently find that kind of thing rude. For whatever reason.

“You are not to blame for the circumstances you have found yourself in, and I am not disappointed in or angry with my sister for what she chose to do. Not really, anyway. I may not have done the same exactly, but I can understand her motivations. It was more that my sister was keeping secrets from me at all, than what those secrets were. You are here through no fault of your own, and taking out my displeasure on you was unkind. For this I apologise.”

Wordy. I chewed that over.

“Oh, right, well, it’s fine, really. You don’t need to apologise. I’m a big boy,” I said, at length. Kind of an anti-climax after what she’d clearly practised a bit but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. An apology just wasn’t something I’d expected.

Where even was I? Like, location-wise. The dream hadn’t clarified, so beyond the trifle - which stood in heaps of little pots, all of them somehow watching me - my immediate vicinity didn’t actually have any detail at all. Things just weren’t there, and my eyes didn’t want to look at anything that wasn’t there. It was disturbing, so I mainly just kept looking between the trifle and Luna.

“No, I have acted poorly and it is only right I apologise. Of course, you are more than welcome not to accept my apology…?”

The more thought was unbearable to me.

“No no, I accept, don’t worry about that. I just don’t see the need to. But if you do then fine, I accept. It’s all cool, all fine. We’re golden. Right?”

“Right,” she said, though she somehow managed to make the word sound unfamiliar. I imagine she was doing it for my benefit. Which was nice? I guess?

The two of us then stood in the formless, trifle-filled void of my dreamscape in total silence for a minute. Kind of awkward.

Luna cleared her throat before too long, the first of us to break.

“Celestia tells me you are having issues recollecting your past and your world.”

Kind of a long-winded way of putting it, but sure, yes. Also, was this small talk?

I was exchanging small talk with a horse who had stepped into my dream. I guess my life could have been worse, really.

“I’m a little fuzzier on some of the details than I’d like,” I said, and would have been happy to leave it there but a detail from Luna’s sentence caught up with me: “She told you that?” I asked. Luna nodded.

“She has spoken of you more than I would have expected her to. And I must admit, my sister has been happier these last few days than I have seen her in some time now.”

“That’s probably just a coincidence,” I said, utterly refusing even to consider any other possibility.

“I think you do yourself a disservice. She has become somewhat fond of you, this much is obvious.”

This was straining credibility.

“Come on, I’ve only been conscious for, what, two or three days now?”

I hadn’t been keeping exact track but this sounded about right, and it was certainly more than enough time for someone to dislike me, but nowhere near enough for anything like fondness. That sort of thing, with me, could take years. If I was lucky. Surely!

“Why are you arguing over whether my sister likes you or not? Would you rather she didn’t?” Luna asked.

“Ah, uh, well you see, ah - “ I floundered.

Good point.

“She’s very nice,” I said, to cap off the floundering, shifting in place and staring at the tub of trifle I was still holding. I remained acutely aware that the trifle was staring back at me. Dreams are weird.

Now it was my turn to clear my throat.

“Anyway,” I said before that particular topic of conversation could be pressed further. “How does it work having two princesses anyway? Are there many others hiding around the place I just haven’t seen yet?”

“You appear to be changing the subject,” Luna said, her eyes narrowed.

“No I’m not. Well, I am, but we were done with the last one, right? This is just the conversation flowing naturally onto the next topic. It’s fine.”

“Is talking about my sister something you’d rather avoid?”

“What? No. Yes! I mean, well, what else is there to say? She’s nice. I don’t really - look, listen, uh-”

I was getting played in my own dream. How humiliating.

Only then though did I notice that Luna was grinning at me so I stopped putting my foot in it and frowned.

“You’re just trying to get a rise out of me, aren’t you?” I asked, wagging the trifle in her direction. She stood up straighter and tried - and failed - to stop grinning quite so much.

“Whatever might give you that impression?”

“Har har. Look, right? One, she kept me from being dead, that makes me pretty well-disposed to her to start with. Two, she’s the only one here who, well, she’s my only friend here, really. That’s it. Happy now? I like to think that she’s my friend.”

I’d counted these points off on my fingers and only once I’d finished speaking did I realise that I was now making a rude gesture at Luna so I quickly dropped my hand back down again. Thankfully, this little faux pas was lost. Cultural divides and all that. Lack of fingers. Probably just as well.

“I hadn’t asked, but thank you for clarifying,” she said, with tactical-level coolness and reserve, all deployed with crushing expertise.

I would have had trouble keeping up with this conversation even had I been conscious. And I wasn’t! This was patently unfair. Magical horses invading my dreams to get under my skin with their snide insinuations and knowing grins. What do they know? I don’t know.

“Urgh, you’re worse than she is,” I said, finally tossing the pot of trifle back over my shoulder. From the sound of things it didn’t land anywhere. I looked around at the void. “When did I even fall asleep? I didn’t notice that.”

“No-one does,” Luna said, only she wasn’t there anymore.

I had the distinct impression of something very big rushing towards me.

“Oh for fucks’s sak-”

Next Chapter: Every link is allied to our mighty cause Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 3 Minutes
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