• Member Since 23rd Jul, 2012
  • offline last seen 13 minutes ago


A little lopsided in the temporal lobe; a telltale sign of a crippling pony addiction.


On a casual hiking trip, a young teen finds himself lured into a land far too close to one's most extreme imaginings. It doesn't take too long for him to settle in, but the dangers of the world are never too far behind.

With the strange, albeit adorable, local fauna as his only company, Andrew sets off to explore the landscape.

On Goodreads thanks to the work of Facedeer.
Coverart originally by Danfango.
Featured 3-5-17 @ 7:05 EST.

Chapters (44)
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Comments ( 570 )


Also, looks interesting, ancient pre-Equestrian society mayhap? I'm intrigued to see where it goes. The writing's good and a smooth read, great job!

This story is great : )

Ancient/Classic Society: Any society that sets the standard for future civilizations.
Thanks for the input. It is much appreciated.

7962076 7965027
Thanks for dropping by and reading.

Pretty interesting so far and weill for the most part. Let's see where this goes.

Thanks! Next chapter'll be out soonish.

And this is how the evolution of ponies started. Being extremely adaptable they just needed the first other intelligent creature to arrive. It also explains why in human in equestria stories, why they speak English. Makes perfect sense.

This chapter was kinda adorable.:pinkiesmile:

And so the first step was taken for a unified pony kind....

Darn these ponies, they drive me to feelsville.

Wonder exactly what was going on there.

I usually leave spiders be, live and let live you know? But on this occasion I may just be tempted to bring out me ol' stompin' boot.

I really like this.

Its an interesting concept, done quite well. I will be following this with interest.

The Monk

Although I do have to admit that I can't make any sense of the cover art. What is it even supposed to be?

It's the rocky overhang in the thicket's clearing.
Thanks for commenting.

I keep thinking his ability to "communicate" with the ponies is something similar to fluttershy, not to mention she is also something similar to a ranger/forester of sorts, perhaps that's similat to a bush Keeper?

Maybe he can tame the spiders ? Maybe?

How did he live...the world may never know.

... but at least he will.

Later, of course.

Another of the three tribes? An alicorn? Oh! Is it a bat poneh?!?

I'm alright with this, though maybe some of the pacing was a little fast. We didn't even hang with any of the earth ponies.


I agree, in a perfect world, we would spend equal time with everyone. However, in the real world feuding tribes that have been backstabbing each other for years, wouldn't spend much time together. The interactions shown here, while unsatisfactory to us fans, would be very accurate. I just hope the Author isn't going to introduce celestia or luna this early. I would be ok with Faust. I also cant wait till they catch him killing for meat. Their reactions will be epic.
The Monk

As if I would introduce alicorns at all.


Also you get 500 points as an Author for not having the HIE piss his pants in utter terror at the site of a tiny pastel colored pony with Technicolor hair that is about the size of a medium dog. I can never understand why Authors make the HIE over react so badly when facing their first pony. It just makes absolutely no sense at all.

So, good job.

(You however used the word 'chuckled' 16 times in your story. Im trying to curb the use of 'chuckled' because of how vastly overused it is on this site, in the stories here. There are plenty of other synonyms.)

The Monk

I'll keep it in mind. Thanks for commenting.

I don't know why I passed this over before...
Whelp into the watched list you go!

The azure mare looked up at him, eyes lacking intelligence and mouth covered in red mush.

When it first talked about an 'azure unicorn' with eyes 'lacking intelligence' I thought he had met a Poison Joked Trixie... "The Dim and Feral Trixie!!", as it were.

Just to clarify, this story takes place before anything from G4. And that comes with the lack of the sisters and any other pre-Twilight characters, as well as post-Twilight characters. You won't be seeing any of them here.

Thanks for commenting.

I take it that him thinking of the earth ponies as earth ponies isn't a 4th wall breaking error, but the actually origin of them term? Not him knowing that is what their tribe is called so much as him being the one that actually named them that in the first place? Because they looked more like the ponies he knew back on 'Earth'?

7997257 Well obviously. The interplay between the tribes, complete lack of civilization, and general 'father of civilization' vibe all prove that quite conclusively. Hence the reason I said, "When it first talked about". The reason I even bothered to mentioned it after the rest of the chapter was because the thought of a human encountering Trixie in such a state and then expecting ponies to be non-sapient was rather amusing.

Also, if you respond to a comment without opening the chapter that comment is on the site won't alert the person you are talking to.

The story isn't being told from Andrew's perspective, per se. Of course It's third person, but It's limited, so we can see into his thoughts. There are two different thoughtforms, however: we have Andrew's thoughts and the narration. I see it not as that Andrew is calling them earth ponies, but the narration is allowing the reader to relate to what the ponies are for their knowledge. IE, if someone outside the fandom saw them as normal ponies, but there were also pegasus and unicorn ponies, they could call them earth ponies to distinguish them from the other two races.

TLDR; Andrew's not giving the names to the ponies' body type, It's just a way of writing that lets me say earth ponies instead of regular ponies for the reader's sake...

...and If I call them regular ponies, that would have to change if I were to introduce the magic™ of earth ponies.

I have always preferred longer chapters. I've often found that with shorter chapters it's harder to keep the flow because you end each chapter like a complete thought. Longer chapters are slit easier to pace well.

Porto-tree of harmony, tooth of chaos mcmissmatch person and element of purple smart? That's my theory.

Write however feels most comfortable to you, there is nothing worse than feeling that writing is becoming more of a chore than enjoyment.

Hmm. That happened.

Write however long you feel the chapter needs to be. I don't think you've really had a problem with pacing so far, so I trust that you already have a grip on things.

When you try to speak someone else' language and end up swearing in their tongue.

Bison, chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, ponies, and even buffalo grazed.

uhh. . . Last I knew, "bison" and "buffalo" are the same thing. Unless you mean that he sees both American buffalo (bison) and water buffalo in the same scene??

I'm kind on interested if he is going to be recorded in pony history as bushkeeper and if so how it's going to portray him.

I'm getting lost. The story's laying on the symbolism a bit too much.

I've always seen the continent of the pony lands as a really diverse landscape, with multiple biomes scattered about, as opposed to a world with multiple continents of separated spheres. In addendum, I'd like to throw in that I see the world as one single continent stretching from pole to pole, with lonely islands and archipelagos splitting the areas. I'm no geologist, but I think It's a cool idea that the modern-day country of Equestria is just the right-center between the northern and southern plates of 'Equus,' or whatever you want to call the continent.

Stretching it out very far, but I figured they would mesh well together in the same herd; they are sort of related, after all. Thanks for commenting.

Yeah, I wasn't too comfortable with it either. I think we'll be moving away from most of that stuff now. You won't see it again, or at least not for a while. If you're confused still after this chapter, I'll see what I can do to lay off the messages. Thanks for commenting.

This is really interesting! I like the ancient origin-story vibe, and how Andrew's presence is becoming the catalyst for the pony races' transition from gatherer-tribes to stone age civilization.


Thanks! I've been reading HiE's on and on for the past five years here, and I haven't seen much of humans helping to build up early pony civilization. There are some out there, but I've decided to take this originally cutesy five chapter tale out on an adventure just to throw out my own thoughts on the origins of things like the language everyone speaks in the show. And I figure if I get far enough, Andrew might be going on more adventures northwards across the ice plains and southbound through the desert to meet other species.

In the end, though, I want this story to be the tale of a human placed into Equestria, gone just as quickly as his knowledge had come.

Thanks for commenting.

Why was he upset?

He no like those earth ponies on his unicorn land. ;V

I'm so confused, but I enjoyed it

This fic is really interesting, follow it i shall!

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