As he awoke facedown in bed, he slowly became aware of the throbbing in his head once again. Uuuuugh, thought Brandon. He wished this headache would leave him alone, but ever since the day after he met Twilight and her friends, it just kept getting worse. He hadn't told Twilight about it yet, but considering he was living in the Dusty Book Room until further notice, he knew it would only be a matter of time until she noticed that something was wrong with him. He should probably ask her to check it out with magic or something.
He'd been reading a lot of books, since he was living in a library and all, and he had learned a lot about how things worked here. The weird thing was that, even though he knew this was all impossible scientifically, it made sense to him. Not only had he accepted the existence of talking ponies, pegasi and unicorns unusually quickly, he also felt like magic was normal, like it fit here. He had no idea why, but everything here seemed to make sense in a way that he couldn't explain with the facts he knew. He suspected it had something to do with his lost memories.
There was something else, too. Besides his splitting headache, he felt good. Very good. He felt totally energized, totally amazing. This didn't make any sense either, since about 5 days ago he'd been at the center of an explosion in Twilight's basement. He should be laying in a bed with life support systems surrounding him, barely holding onto life, at best! He almost hadn't realized it amongst all the other impossible occurrences, but it had dawned on him one sleepless, head-pounding night that people didn't just make a full recovery from a blast like that in two days. Twilight had said that she had not used any healing magic on him either, for fear of damaging his alien body, though she had healed herself. Perhaps this world had different laws than his; this was one reason for all his research. The other was Twilight's insistence that he inform himself on the basic workings of their world, considering it was doubtful he would be returned to his former life anytime soon, even if he did regain his memory.
He sat there staring blankly into space for a few seconds, slowly coming to terms with the pain in his cranium. He then proceeded to trudge downstairs, smacking his head against the low ceiling and groaning in agony as his headache intensified tenfold.
Twilight set her book entitled Exoticae Animalium down and gave him a worried look. "Are you feeling okay, Brandon?" she asked, walking over.
"No," said Brandon, rubbing his temples. "I feel like my head is ready to explode."
"Is it bad? What if you have some sort of disease? I mean, it's possible that there's a disease that we've become immune to but humans are susceptible to it! What if you die? The Princess – mmmph!" She stopped talking, probably because Brandon had clamped his hand over her mouth.
"Have I mentioned that I have a headache?" said Brandon, slightly irritated. Twilight blushed. "And besides, I doubt I have any sort of disease, but that's why I was going to ask you if you could give me a checkup. You can do that with magic, can't you?" He waited for a response, until he realized that he was still holding her mouth shut. He relinquished his hold on her muzzle. "You can do that, right?"
"Of course. I should have done this earlier. I can't believe I didn't think to perform a diagnostics spell..." she mumbled a bit more as she paced around nervously.
"For heaven's sake, stop worrying and just do it!" he said, as loud as he could manage considering his aching head.
"Huh? What's..." Brandon gave her a look. "Oh. Okay. I probably only need to check your head, right? I mean, does anything else hurt?"
"No, the rest of me feels perfect. It's just this darned headache..." he said, as he continued to massage his skull.
"All right, here goes!" As she started the spell, her horn glowed brightly. He figured it was probably the light emitted from her horn, but his headache flared worse the brighter her horn flared.
Twilight concentrated on Brandon's head. She did this often enough when Spike felt sick; casting it on a human probably wouldn't bring up any complications. Her consciousness reached out and began to gather information. As soon as her spell penetrated his skull, however, she was overcome by pure energy. She almost passed out before she managed to retreat from his mind. What...? She rarely saw that much concentrated magic anywhere; in fact, the only times she'd seen more was from herself, Luna, and Celestia. Brandon had told her that magic didn't exist in his world. If what he said was true, how was it that he had so much power? And he only had a headache!
"Uhh, Twilight?" Brandon said, a little worried. He assumed something was very wrong. As soon as she'd begun the spell, her eyes became pure white for an instant, and then she sat down, staring blankly at nothing in particular. He didn't know if it was because he was in trouble, or if it was because she was in trouble. He prodded her shoulder. "Hello-o, Earth to Twilight..."
She shook her head. "That's an interesting expression..." she said. "Do humans say that as a way of attempting to reconnect their fellow humans with reality?" Yup, she was back. "And if so, does that mean that humans have the mentality that their own world is the only reality to which one might connect with? If I may say so, that is a rather shallow line of thought..."
"I think it's a little simpler than that, but could you tell me what you saw?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh, of course," she said, her expression becoming serious. "You...er...well, didn't you say that magic didn't exist in your world?" she questioned.
"That is correct. Well, I guess it hasn't been scientifically proven that it doesn't exist, but it is generally regarded as –"
"Well, that makes a huge difference!" said Twilight, now piecing multiple theories together in her mind and determining which was most likely to be true. "My hypothesis, then, is that humans simply have not discovered that magic exists. But...no, wait, that doesn't make sense..."
"Could you please," said Brandon, very calmly, "Tell me what is going on here?"
"Based on what I observed in your head, humans must be capable of using magic..." rambled Twilight, still mostly to herself. "So why do they think that it doesn't exist? Surely, as magic wielding creatures, they should have discovered it by now..."
Brandon didn't follow. "Wait, what?" he sputtered, ignoring his headache's protests. "WHAT did you SEE?"
"Your head. It was full of magic." She said this as though it were obvious; being lost in her own thoughts, it had not yet occurred to her that he didn't know what she'd seen.
"Oh, yes, that makes perfect sense. My headache is caused by magic." He was being sarcastic, but after he said it, he thought, Why not? After all, this was a completely different world he was in. Why shouldn't there be magic-induced migraines?
He left Twilight to be in her own little world for a while; from what Spike had told him, she was pretty much incapable of communicating when she got like this. She rushed over to a bookshelf and began rifling through its contents.
He went back up to his room, careful to avoid the treacherously low ceiling, and sat down on the bed. He picked up the book and started reading again. Even though it wasn't fun, what with his headache and all, he figured it was more productive than laying there in pain.
The book he was reading was actually a book on magical spells. Not that he had expected to be able to use any, but Twilight suggested it because she thought he would need the knowledge of what unicorns were capable of. Huh, he thought, smiling to himself. Based on what Twilight said, maybe I could do some of these after all. He flipped through the pages of the book to the most basic spell: Levitation. It was basic because it only required that you imagine something was floating, will it to happen, and theoretically, it would float. Of course, you needed to be able to use magic as well. Well, here goes. His eyes searched the room for something to practice on. They settled on a book; not surprising, as that was the most plentiful object in the room. He closed his eyes. This is ridiculous, he thought. It's never going to work. But regardless, out of curiosity, he tried anyways.
He imagined the book floating up into the air, suspended by nothing but pure force of will. Immediately, nothing happened. He barely had enough time to feel disappointed, however, when suddenly he felt something click in his mind. Something was happening! He felt the magic flowing... but then it all went wrong. After the first instant, the sheer power of the magic started to overcome him. He now realized why Twilight had looked so stunned at first; there was a lot of magic penned up inside his head. And he couldn't control it. The book went from floating in midair to shooting skyward at ridiculous speed. It punched through the ceiling of his room and through the roof of the house. An alarmed whinny came from outside. He managed to stop the spell, after he remembered that all he needed to do was stop imagining that the book was floating.
He sat there for a second, not quite believing what had just happened. But the angry pegasus outside, knocking on the window and rubbing his head where the unintended missile had struck him, was proof that he had just performed magic. Somehow, he was able to not only levitate a book, but send it through the ceiling of Twilight's house.
On another note, his headache felt a little better. Interesting. This definitely 'merited further research', as his purple friend would say.
Hey everypony, thanks once more for all the comments! I'm getting lots of positive feedback! And thanks to minjask6572 for catching that error in chapter six!
I am back on track! Soon I'll be on spring break, and "Spring Break" = "All the time in the world to write chapters"! Soon I should have chapter 10 out! :D
To be honest, I only have a general idea of where this story is going; I'm kind of letting the characters write it for me. I hope to have the next chapter done in... about 5 days maximum. I hope you are all enjoying this as much as I am!