Chapter 4: What's been learned and forgotten

I woke up with some very odd questions in my mind. What am I? Well that's an odd question to wake up to. Well, I guess that I am Tommy. I was on earth then I came here somehow and now I'm a pony. Where am I? Oh come on brain, I'm not stupid. I'm obviously in the barn at Sweet Apple Acres. Am I happy? Okay seriously what the hell is this? I could be happier but I'm getting by just fine. What am I doing? Alright I get it, there's some subliminal message here isn't there? Well I don't have anything planned in particular but I have a feeling that I'll figure something out. I expected more questions but instead my mind was silent. I laid there in the hay until someone opened the barn door.

I heard Applejack, "well he's in here if you need to ask him anythin'."

I also heard Twilight Sparkle, "thank you for keeping him over for the night I would've but I was really busy."

"No problem."

I saw Twilight come walking in and look at me funny. Curious, I asked her what was wrong.

"Well," she began, "you don't have a cutie mark."

I hadn't even bothered to look; sure enough there wasn't anything there. I wondered how this went unnoticed for an entire day. Of course it was rather fitting; I never had any real passion back home. I lived a good life but I never had any drive. I was thinking of getting a job in the military, go to college, get an office job, have a wife, retire a rather uninteresting life. I thought about my qualities, while I never had any passion, I was endlessly stubborn. If I were challenged I couldn't say no. maybe something will come up that I enjoy but as for now that blank spot was a little embarrassing.

"Anyways, I came here to ask you some questions, see what you know."

"Like what?" I asked

"You said that this is a story where you are from, what do you know about us?"

"I know the basics. I know about the whole princess thing, I know general personalities of you and your friends as well as your origin stories. I know a little about the town and barely anything of the geography. I also know most major events that you will have for the next year."

"Like what?"

"You just finished up with nightmare moon."

"Yes."

"So I know what will happen, on a very general level, for about a year."

"Yes, but what do you know?"

I looked at her and spoke in a very serious tone, "I know major events, me being here has made a lot of minor events spring up or never happen at all. I won't interfere with most of the stuff that will happen and I won't tell you about it beforehand. If you want I can tell you what happened in the show but I won't spoil anything."

I eased up and continued talking in a more casual tone, "is there anything else that you want to know about?"

"I also wanted to know about what you know in general."

I thought over my years of school, I had made it to 10th grade before this happened so I knew quite a bit.

"I know how to read and write, I know math all the way up to Algebra and I know a little bit of history from my world."

"What about your world's history?"

I began to tell her of what I knew. I started with the Romans and Greece, and worked my way through what I knew of the world's history. I answered her questions as best as I could and by the time I had run out of things to say we had made it to the library that she lived in.

"Your world has an interesting history," She spoke flatly, "very violent."

"Yeah." I thought this over, my world was really violent. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't hear something on the news about some bombing or serial killer. I wondered if I was really cut out for that world. Maybe it was better here after all. I was lost in my thoughts and was standing idle. I remembered where I was and looked over at Twilight standing impatiently in the doorway.

"Come in here, I need to see if you can read our language."

"I said I could read."

"Yes but can you read our letters."

"Oh." I felt like an idiot, it seemed obvious now. Just because we spoke the same didn't mean we wrote the same. She pulled a book out from a shelf. She trotted over to me and held it open in front of me. I looked into it and it looked like gibberish. Some characters were familiar but it looked like a weird mix between English, French, and Russian.

"I can't read any of this."

"Then show me how you write." She hovered a pencil over to where I was and I instinctually tried to grab it with my hand. My brain broke for a second when my hoof had failed to grab it and instead grabbed it in my mouth. I walked over to a table that had some blank paper on it. I tried to write "this is what English looks like" but found it hard for obvious reasons. It looked like chicken scratch and Twilight looked at it with an eyebrow raised.

I quickly defended my writing, "I'm used to having hands to write that."

She looked at me excitedly, "oh you had hands when you were a- a…"

"We called ourselves Humans."

"A Human, so you had hands?"

"Yes, and feet, We really looked kind of like monkeys, except without the hair."

"What do you mean without the hair?"

"We had hair on our heads and not much else."

"Weren't you cold in the winter?"

"Well we had clothes that we wore all the time to keep us warm."

"If you were a human which look like monkeys then obviously you aren't used to be a pony at all. I also was told that you wanted personal flight lessons from Rainbow Dash."

"Yes ma'am."

"Why her?"

"Because, well…" I tried to word it carefully, "Rainbow Dash is my favorite pony so I thought that learning from her would be the most epic thing ever."

"Okay fair enough, I think she has today off so you can probably find her practicing in the fields on the other side of town."

"Wow, thanks!"

I trotted off at a happy pace; I was excited to learn to fly from my favorite character. I heard Twilight tell me to stay out of trouble as I wandered off. Ponyville is a rather large town and I had a good 20 minutes to get to the fields. During the walk I had experimented with running and figuring out how to move better as a pony. I tripped more than once and was a bit bruised by the time I arrived. Luckily I found her flying in the fields just like Twilight Sparkle had said. She was doing all sorts of loops and turns and when she saw me she glided down and landed a few feet in front of me. I was locked up in pure fan boy bliss and she got the first words out.

"Who are you?" she asked.

I managed to pull myself together and responded, "I- I'm Tommy, and I was hoping to learn how to fly from you."

"Oh yeah, Twilight was going on about you earlier today. My only question is why not bother someone else?"

"Well I just thought tha-"

She cut me off, "I mean there's plenty of teachers in town, I'm busy figuring out this new trick."

She stopped talking and I seized the opportunity, "it's just that I'm sort of your biggest fan and I thought learning from you would be super amazing."

"I already have fans?"

"yes, and this fan is asking to learn to fly."

"oh, well when you put it like that of course I'll teach you."

I sighed in relief.

"It's simple really, you just spread your wings out and start flapping."

I spread out said wings and began flapping. First few attempts did nothing more than to stir up some dust, then I really started trying and I managed to get up off the ground. She began to teach me how to move forward and to control my flight. It was odd, once the motions became natural it began to feel like flying a helicopter in battlefield. I practiced with her, trying my best to mimic her tricks. After The sun started to go down I began to fly to the barn and say my goodbyes to Rainbow Dash. As I landed at the acres, exhausted from a day of crashes, I went into the house. The Apple family was having a dinner, luckily it wasn't until then that I realized my hunger. Even more lucky was the fact that they had no problem feeding me. after a fantastic day I went into the barn and hit the hay once more, content with my day and excited for what's to come.

Author's notes

I had some issues with this chapter but I am happy with it. I have planned out the general story arc and I just need to give it a nice build up. I'm planning on this reaching into 20 chapters before I wrap up. Thanks for taking the time to read this and I will try to update as much as I can.