Author's Notes:

It's ROBCakeran's fault.

So a while back I had a run in with a big magical horse.

Nice lady, yes. Very nice, in fact, all soft wings and pleasant tones and general loveliness, but still not the sort of thing that I had expected to have to deal with. Certainly the kind of thing that sticks with you, too. Certainly stuck with me.

I’d just been minding my business one day, pondering what I might have for lunch, when she’d just come wandering in through the kitchen door like it wasn’t even that big of a deal, suggesting bruschetta.

Understandably I was shocked but I did my best to roll with things, stiff upper lip, rationality in the face of adversity etcetera etcetera. So we had a reasonable conversation about bruschetta, it’s merits as a lunch and I ended up making some and we both ended up sharing it before having a cuddle on the sofa.

How any of that had led to cuddling I’m still unclear on, but that’s what it had culminated in. Not bad, like I said, just not how I’d seen my day going at the time.

And then, just like that, she was away again, just poof, gone.

It’s a surprisingly common problem, apparently. Not what happened to me specifically I mean, with the bruschetta, just having a big white magical horse pop out of nowhere. At least if the slowly but steadily increasing support group attendance is anything to go by.

Ah yes, the support group.

Used to just be me and John meeting up in the pub to have a natter until one day another chap overheard us and joined in with his own story. Then he brought over a friend who was in the same boat so to speak, meaning we now had Limbo Guy and Minigolf Guy on top of myself and John, the bruschetta and the entirely-new-life-in-another-world guys respectively.

It was at that point we figured we should start the group. For discussion and support. Or just an excuse for something to do every week. Either way. Look, we were bored and a little drunk, it made perfect sense at the time.

We’ve done our best to make a proper go of it, too, tried to be professional about it. Booked a room and everything. The pub didn’t like us meeting there and chucked us out after a month. We rattled the other customers. They didn’t like the horse-talk, apparently.

Fair play.

Got a fair whack of lads these days. Not everyone shows up all the time but that’s fine. It’s really just a place to vent about anything bothering you, with our shared connection of the pleasant magical horse being a fig leaf excuse to keep the whole thing going. And new guys show up from time-to-time. It’s all good.

We have a new guy tonight, in fact. We call him New Guy.

No-one in the group had to give a name if they didn’t want to, and a lot didn’t, which was fine. It’s how we had names like the Movie Night Guy and the Toast Guy and the Bun Guy and the Sofa Guy, so just ‘The New Guy’ wasn’t that unusual.

Likewise, it was kind of why we weren’t going to force the New Guy to take off his conspicuously concealing trenchcoat or either of his two hats - the one actually on his head or the one balancing on the long, horn-like tuft of what I can only assume was hair poking through the first hat.

We’re not here to judge.

Anyway, as was and is standard with a new guy we’re doing the thing where we go around and detail our own stories, just to let them know they’re in good company and just to get the conversation started. Course at this point most of us have heard these dozens of times already but eh, what can you do?

Just from the way the seating worked out John was the one going first. John had the most involved story. This whole spiel about just waking up in some other world on the edge of death, getting nursed back to health by the nice horse lady, getting into shenanigans, blah blah. I think he was making most of it up, personally, but I’d never tell him that.

Just smile and nod, don’t ask too many questions. It makes him grumpy.

He was going back, he’d told me privately. Was only meant to be here briefly to deliver a letter, he said, but had stuck around a little longer because he’d forgotten how much he missed proper drinks. Horses, he’d told me, didn’t have much time for beer. Fair play to him for still wanting to go back, I suppose. I wouldn’t want to go back if this was the case but that might say more about me.

The New Guy didn’t really interrupt John’s story, to my surprise. Most new guys did. He just listened with a quiet intensity.

The interruptions came afterwards, with everyone else’s story. Starting with mine.

“But you like bruschetta, don’t you?” He had asked, cutting me off mid-sentence and thoroughly disrupting my flow. Undaunted, I carried on:

“I do, yes, but-”

He cut me off again!

“And cuddles?” He asked.

Harder to carry on from that, all my momentum was gone.

“...I’m not averse to a cuddle,” I had to admit.

“She was soft too, wasn’t she? And warm?” He pressed.

“...I can’t deny that.”

These were qualities we had all, as a group, very much agreed that Celestia had, though we didn’t like to dwell on it too much. Sometimes we got carried away reminiscing about the cuddles - the cuddles being a very common element of all our stories - and it just made us all feel a bit awkward. So it was kind of an unwritten house rule to keep mention of them to a minimum.

The magical horse’s name is Celestia, by the way. Probably should have mentioned that by now.

And the New Guy’s interruptions just didn’t let up!

When it was the Bun Guy’s turn to speak he was there with:

“She did make you cake to make up for it though, didn’t she? For eating your delicious buns?”

“Well, she tried to make cake,” Bun Guy had said.

“It’s the thought that counts,” New Guy had countered with, nodding sagely.

“Um…sure?”

It had quite taken the wind out of his Bun Guy’s sails, let me tell you.

The New Guy then went on to praise Celestia’s flexibility while Limbo Guy was trying to tell his story, her witty commentary while watching films for Movie Night Guy, her ability to remain cool in the face of unexpected visitors when Toast Guy had his turn and her unparalleled athleticism while Steeplechase Guy was talking (we don’t see Steeplechase Guy that often).

Really, it was kind of odd. Mean sure, despite none of us asking for a magical horse lady to gatecrash our lives we all did share a certain fondness for her. It was hard not to. But New Guy was taking it up a notch or three!

None of us could deny what he interrupted us to say, of course, and we all had to agree when he pointed out how Celestia was this or that great thing, but that’s just not cricket, is it? Making a guy say what he actually thinks about someone? Is that how you get your jollies, hmm?

Something about this New Guy seemed fishy.

Maybe it was the way he was clearly and deliberately pitching his voice lower. Maybe it was the curiously multicoloured tail-like thing I saw him keep having to tuck back into his trenchcoat. Maybe it was the way - when he got up to leave when the session was over and done with - he clearly struggled to walk on two legs, suggesting perhaps a great familiarity walking with a number of legs greater than, say, two.

Three legs maybe. Or five. Or somewhere between those two, whatever that number might be. Tip of my tongue.

I don’t know. Something about him just rubbed me the wrong way. So, cunningly and quietly, I followed him, to see where he was going and, hopefully, see what he was up to.

He did not leave the building in which we’d hired the room for the group. Rather, he went upstairs. This took him a while, as he seemed to have considerable trouble with the stairs, clinging to the handrail the whole time. Still, he got there in the end and I kept on following him as he headed to another room - one that was, weirdly right above the one we’d been in.

Funny old world.

Into the room he went. I waited some seconds for the door to almost close and then dashed in, catching it while still a sliver open, and I had a surreptitious peer inside.

And I was shocked. Shocked!

A whole room full of Celestia’s! Dozens of them all sat in a circle!

Mean sure fine, that’s a thing. It’s a surprise I’ll grant you but there being more than one Celestia was a theory (one of many) that the group had been tossing around for a while so if anything it was nice to have some proof at last, but that wasn’t what really struck me at that moment. What struck me was this:

The New Guy was selling us out! Spying on us! Betraying us!

He’d gone to our group to gather our stories, entrap us into admitting all the nice things we secretly thought about Celestia and then come up here to relay the information for their sick, vicarious enjoyment! You turncoat swine, New Guy! How could you!

You ate the free biscuits! I saw you! And this is how you repay our hospitality?

I was all set to storm in and be loudly indignant when the New Guy removed one of his two hats. I stopped dead in my tracks, stunned, double-shocked, aghast!

Oh my God! It wasn’t a horn-like tuft of hair at all! It was an actual horn! Cunningly concealed behind a brace of hats!

The second hat took a little more wiggling to get off but once gone it only confirmed what I’d just suspected - concealed horn! And then the coat came off and all was fully revealed - New Guy was just another of this multitude of magical horse ladies in disguise!

You magnificent bastards, Celestias! If you had a book I’d read it.

Of course, I had unfortunately stopped dead just after flinging the door open and so was now stood gawking in the doorway, in full view of the whole room of Celestia’s, all of whom were at that point staring at me.

They stared at me for what felt like an awful long time.

“Uh,” I about managed to say before they, as one, leapt into action.

“Get him!” Came the shout as they lunged for me. All at once I found myself grabbed and lost in a blur of hooves and wings, dragged into the room.

“Unhand me, horses! Unhand- wait, no, unhoof me I say! Oh God you’re all so soft!”

It wasn’t the time to be distracted but they really were, I’d quite forgotten how overwhelming it was when there’d only been one of her. This many was just unfair. It short-circuited the brain, such softness!

What happened next was difficult to determine, as while it happened I was in a dogpile of multiple horse princessi. Could just about flail my legs a bit, but that was about it. I tried not to think about what bodypart had ended up in my face. I doubted there were any good answers. Or at least, no polite answers.

At length I heard a Celestia ask from somewhere amidst the heap:

“Who’s is this one?”

To which another answered:

“Mine!”

“Right,” said the first voice.

The heap quivered and shifted and I was drawn up and through it, passed hoof to hoof and wing to wing and out of the heap and into a waiting set of legs, ending up nose-to-nose with one particular Celestia who did seem oddly familiar to me somehow.

“Hello again,” she said, smiling as wings wrapped about me.

“You’ll never get away with this,” I said. “Whatever it is.” I added.

And she giggled, damn her. The giggle would mean that even if she didn’t get away with it (whatever it was) I’d forgive her for it anyway. And she knew that! Damn her and her wonderful giggles. And smile and warmth and all those other things. Damn her.

“I think someone needs a cuddle,” she said, doing the nuzzle thing.

“I’m being cuddled!” I pointed out. It was difficult to hold onto any sense of grievance when being nuzzled but I’m a strong, serious adult and so I did my best. After all, I hadn’t planned any of this!

Again giggles, again I melt.

“That’s lucky, then,” she said quietly.

A shadow then fell over us, the fluorescent lights of the rented room blocked by a bevy of be-horned heads. I squinted up at them, the other Celestias.

“Were there any biscuits left? Asking for a friend,” asked the foremost one. The others appeared to be listening intently, peering down at me.

There had been biscuits left, this I knew, and they would still be downstairs right now even with the group having left.

“...I’m the one in charge of putting them away...and I haven’t done that yet...so yes…” I said, cautiously.

Every last one of their faces lit up and in a tangle they scrambled from the room, a good three or four of them getting wedged in the door and blocking it for the rest of them. Or, at least, the rest of them that hadn’t forgotten they could just port straight into the room below, which a handful had done instead.

Honestly...

The only one who hadn’t completely given into their lust for baked treats turned out to be the one still holding me, who hadn’t budged an inch. Her eyes were closed, and her smile was a smile of utmost contentment. I had to crane my neck a little to see this, given how she’d tucked herself in against me.

“No biscuits for you?” I asked and she just sighed and shook her head, squeezing me some more.

“No,” she said. “I already have what I want.”

Drat. I’d kind of halfway-planned on escaping in the biscuit kerfuffle. No such luck, it seems. Now I’m just going to have to be affectionately held in this cosy embrace for an indeterminate length of time. Again.

Life can be a struggle sometimes. This must be how Sisyphus feels.

Oh well. No sense in fighting it. I shifted about a little to get more comfortable then just gave in and put my arms around her at last.

“You’re a strange fish,” I said.

On reflection, I felt I had to clarify, particularly given the sounds of bickering over the last Bourbon I could clearly hear coming up from the room below us:

“All of you.”

Another sigh from my Celestia.

“We have our moments,” she said.

Couldn’t argue with that. I mean, don’t we all?