[Author's Note: Thanks for checking out my story, whoever you are. Just wanted to get a quick word in edgewise. I know that the OC/Self-insert story has been done to death and back, but I think that you'll find that The Melody of Souls does things a bit differently. Stick with it and I promise it'll be a unique experience. Reviews are greatly, GREATLY appreciated. Enjoy!]
The first thing Will saw once he opened his eyes was a bright, blue sky. Clouds drifted aimlessly across the horizon and the tops of surrounding trees sat on the threshold of his vision. His first, groggy thought was, Wow, this is a really pretty day, before promptly closing his eyes and falling back asleep. An hour later, he opened his eyes again. Another, more pressing, question bubbled up from the sleepy dregs of his subconscious.
Why am I outside?
There's nothing quite like waking up to an unfamiliar sight above you. Of the times this had happened to Will, this was the most surprising by a wide margin. He stretched instinctively, finding himself on his back. Something was wrong, however. It felt as if he had slept in a strange position, but now couldn't get out of it. He wiggled impotently, trying in vain to pop his legs back into socket or alleviate the mid-night cramp that had rendered his elbows and knees useless. He instinctively flexed his fingers, only to find that he didn't have any.
At this, Will sat up. Or, at least, he tried to. He sprung up to a sitting position, but the ensuing vertigo and skewed center of gravity sent him falling face-first into the ground again. He pushed himself off the ground and found that it was oddly comfortable to stay on his hands and knees. Or, what he was quick to discover, his back and front legs.
He could only stand awkwardly in the pastel clearing with no fear, no panic, and no emotion save for a deep, all-encompassing confusion the likes of which Will had never known. His hands and feet had become hooves. His arms had become legs and his legs had become...different legs. A new muscle twitched on his backside in what he assumed to be a tail. He refused to turn around and check out of concern of inducing a psychotic episode.
The bushes to the right of him rustled. He jerked his head toward the sound, realizing at the same time that his head now weighed what felt like 15 pounds heavier than it did last night. He staggered against the movement. Tripping over his second set of legs, he fell back down to the ground in a heap.
Out of the bushes came a small horse. This would have been a bizarre occurrence on its own had the horse not been purple. It stopped in front of Will's side-ways vision and bent down. In his confusion, Will casually noted that this was not a horse, but a unicorn.
"Uhm...Are you okay?" The unicorn said.
A talking purple unicorn with a female voice.
"I...have no idea." Will managed to squeak. His mouth and throat still functioned the same as before and his voice remained unchanged. He was thankful for that, at least.
"Why are you lying down in this field?" The unicorn said again.
"I...really have no idea."
"Doooo...you need some help?"
"...Probably."
"Well...Alright." The unicorn set down a saddlebag full of books. What a unicorn needed books for was a question Will decided to think about later. "My name's Twilight Sparkle. What's yours?"
"You have two names?"
"Nope. Just one."
"A first and last name?"
"No...That's my whole name. You can just call me Twilight."
"...I'm Will...I think."
"You think?"
"Well, I woke up today in an unexpected place, at an unexpected time, and in an unexpected body, so I wouldn't be surprised if my name was something unexpected as well."
"Unexpected bod- Nevermind." The unicorn's horn began to glow. Will felt warm air press against him from all sides, somehow including the ground. He levitated off the ground a good few feet, rotated clockwise in the air, and was set down on his own four feet.
"Well...Okay." He said.
"Okay what?" asked Twilight Sparkle.
"I have either completely lost my ability to distinguish fantasy from reality or I am tripping to the moon and back. What did I eat last? I ate ramen noodles last. I made them myself. Could there have been anything in them? Probably not. Could they have gone bad? When your food of choice has the natural consistency of Styrofoam, there's not much more bad that in can go."
Will began to laugh, but was still thinking about ramen noodles. He forgot that he was laughing and managed to laugh even harder. He thought Why am I breathing so erratically? Then he remembered he was laughing and stopped.
The purple unicorn was watching him with a look of confusion that perfectly mirrored his own.
"...I need some help, if you're not busy."
"Oh, of course! What do you need?"
"...Where am I?"
"You're in Ponyville, of course!"
"Well...great...where is that?"
Twilight pointed with her hoof over Will's shoulder.
"Over there."
Taking small, deliberate steps with each foot, Will managed to turn 90 degrees to his left, just enough to get a look at the bustling town behind him. Small horses of every color in the spectrum trotted back and forth, in and out of shops. The sight wasn't so much colorful as it was the lovechild between a color wheel and a Van Gogh painting. Some of the horses turned their heads toward him in curiosity as they went their separate ways. A pink one with what looked an afro rode by in a wagon with no driver. It waved excitedly at Twilight as the wagon somehow to an extremely sharp corner with seemingly no direction. And yet, while each sight was a fantastic and unique in its own way, the sight struck Will with a strange sense of deja vu.
He turned back to Twilight. She waved back at the pink horse and giggled. She saw Will watching her and dropped her leg.
"That was...uh...friend...Anyway, how did you get here? Where are you from?"
"Columbia, capital city of South Carolina."
"Oh...Is...that on the outer borders?"
"Yes. Very outer borders."
There was an awkward silence between the two. Twilight absentmindedly kicked the dirt. Will looked over his shoulder to get a second glance at what she had called 'Ponyville.'
" So...everyone here is...horses."
"Ponies." Twilight corrected in a lecturing tone. "We're ponies. And you're a pony. Listen, I'm worried about you. Did you hit your head on something when you woke up? Eat some bad apples?"
The warm air gripped Will's eyelids again and pulled them wide open. Twilight looked him intently in his eye, then did the same with the other. His tongue was pulled out of his mouth and examined as well as top of his head.
"I'm fine...I think." Will managed to mumble under the examination.
"That's not very reassuring." Twilight said as she checked under his hair (that Will was avoiding calling 'mane' as long as possible).
"Wait...Let...me explain." He gently pushed Twilight away from him and sighed. "I...am not from here."
"That's a little more than obvious."
"I'm not from this...reality. Land. Universe. I don't know. Point is, until I woke up this morning, I was not a pony. I was a human. With human legs and human hands and human feet in a human world."
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "What's a human?"
"You...Crap. Uh...a human is...uhm..." Will tapped his chin in thought. He was struck by the novelty of being able to reach his chin with his leg and was distracted moving it about and seeing what other parts of his head he could touch. It was enough of them.
"Uhh, hello?" Twilight said, snapping him back. "What's a human?"
"Okay...do you have monkeys here?"
"No."
"Okay, not have them, but do you know what they are?"
"Oh, yeah. Though only from books and pictures."
"Okay, well...a human is like a really, really tall monkey with no hair."
"...Oohhh...I see..." Twilight said unconvincingly.
"You don't believe me." Will said flatly.
"With the kind of stuff that goes on around here...I don't doubt you're telling the truth, but...it's reasonable that my first thought is just going to be that you're crazy, right?"
"Yeah, I guess I can't argue with that." Will said, nodding. "I'm not crazy, though."
"That doesn't help much either."
"Okay, fine. Maybe I am crazy. That doesn't change the fact that I have no idea where I am and how I got here."
"I can help with that!" Twilight said, excitedly. He levitated her saddlebags onto her back and began to walk past him. "I had to run some errands in town today, so it wouldn't be any trouble showing you around! We love visitors, wherever you may be from."
"Thanks, I appreciate it." Will turned to follow her. He stepped forward, but his foot collided with his front leg. He froze and brought slowly back to its starting position. He tried walking forward with only his front legs, but that only brought him into a precarious position of moving like a caterpillar by bringing his back legs wiggling up to his front.
He looked up bashfully at Twilight, who was watching him with a raised eyebrow.
"Uhm..." She said.
"I got it." Will sighed and decided to take it as logically as possible. Moving clockwise, he numbered his new hooves: 1 for top left, 2 for top right, 3 for bottom right, 4 for bottom left. He moved 1, then followed with 3, then followed with 2, then followed with 4. He found himself moving forward at a baby's pace, but his face hadn't hit the ground yet. Progress was progress, after all. After a few awkward minutes, he was able to train himself to move comfortably at a slow trot.
"Okay!" Will said with sense of accomplishment. "Let's go!"
Twilight smiled and turned to walk. She stopped and did a double-take, looking at Will's side.
"You don't have a cutie mark!"
"...With a name like that, that sounds like a good thing."
"No, look." She turned and moved her saddlebag out of the way, showing a light purple star printed on her side. "This is a cutie mark. You get it when you discover your purpose or passion in life. You look about my age so not having it..." She frowned and furrowed her eyebrows in thought. After a moment, she sighed. "Well, we can worry about that later. In any case, I'm about to be late. Follow me."