~~~Ponyville, 11:09 AM, Year 1002~~~
”Alright! Here’s what we’re going to do girls,” begins Twilight, looking at her friends around the kitchen table of the library sans Rainbow.
All of them look back, each of them listening intently.
“The Princesses have gone back to Cantorlot and left us to care for Anani…Anyo…Anon until further notice.” Twilight says, again stumbling over the foreign name some.
”Twilight, I don't mean to sound rude, but how exactly are we going to go about this?" Asks Rarity with a delicately raised eyebrow.
”I was just getting to that." Twilight says as she levitates over a stack of books and numerous sheets of parchment. ”I was thinking we would go with a two-pronged approach, every day Anon would come here and I could teach him Equestrian the traditional way from the ground up." She says, indicating the books “After we finish for the day, one of us would take him out into town and let him immerse himself in Equestrian in a more practical manner." Twilight finishes with a smile.
Fluttershy speaks up, ”um Twilight, I don't mean to stamp on your plans or anything, but wouldn't it be easier to use some sort of translation spell?" The butter colored pegasus asks.
”Yeah, that does seem like it would be way faster than trying to teach the big guy with books,” Pinkie chips in.
Twilight’s jaw drops at the suggestion “WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!” She almost screams.
Rarity turns her blue eyes to rest on her friends ”Girls, although that would seem like a marvelous solution to this little conundrum, a translation spell would likely just make things even more confusing.”
All eyes turn to her, each one reflecting considerable confusion.
”Think about it, doesn't our guest’s speech sound greatly different when compared to Equestrian, or even any other language?” The alabaster unicorn asks.
Everyone turns to Twilight, expecting the brainy unicorn to shed light on the tidbit of info.
”Well, Yes…”
Rarity nods "Exactly, so the way he speaks must be structured differently than any known language here in Equestria, meaning a translation spell would only make a horrific mess of any attempts to talk.” The unicorn blinks at the incredulous expressions she sees on the faces of her fellow elements. ”What? Any fashionista worth her silk simply MUST have an eye for detail, or in this case an ear.” Rarity huffs.
The lavender magus bites her lip as she thinks. “Well now that I think about it…Anon’s sentence syntax could, and most likely is different from ours, which would mean he would know the words but have no idea what order to put them in and us talking to him with just be confusing gibberish.”
Pinkie’s face drops “Awww…That means we can't ask him what sort of party an alien would like…”
The others can't help but smile at their friend’s kind, if single-minded outward musings.
”Well, we gots our plan ready now right? So what now?” Applejack asks.
"Actually you girls can leave for now if you want." Twilight says, glancing upward thoughtfully. "Rainbow should be bringing him here anytime now."
~Ponyville, 11:43 AM, Year 1002, 22 days until life support failure~
You walk with the sky blue Pegasus in a companionable silence as you do a quick recap of the last 12 or so hours in your mind.
Crash on unknown planet.
Meet the sapient and apparently intelligent locals.
Establish rudimentary communications.
Find out that your suit only has a month worth of power, a week of which was wasted.
And finally the current moment, which is you following Rainbow to some unknown form of civilization, supposedly her home where she would help you learn her language. All of that still leaves an uncomfortable amount of problems still not solved, or even close to being answered.
You need to find a way to give yourself immunity to any bacteria and toxins in the air, least you fall over and die as a melting pot of disease. If you found a way around that gruesome fate, you still have the problem of dealing with muscle atrophy, which you are likely to suffer in the low gravity of this planet. The idea of being nothing but skin and bones is not appealing to you in the slightest bit. You gulp, so much of this could go wrong in a split second, and there would likely be nothing you can do about it. Now you think about it, this is all being going far, far better than anyone else in your situation could have ever hoped. Maybe you aren't being led into civilization to be taught how to speak like the equines after all; it could all be a ruse to lure you away from any forested area so you can't escape later on… You shake your head, that couldn't be it, they had so many opportunities to harm you before and yet here you are still in one piece and alive. Silently, you hope that your trust in them is not as misplaced as you believe it to be.
Back to your most prevalent problem however, you have heard of people making themselves highly resistant, or even out right immune to diseases and venoms by carefully administering small amounts to themselves, perhaps the same would work with the air here?
Taking a look at your HUD, you see the filter settings for your mask are set at 100%, meaning absolutely nothing but carefully controlled air is let inside.
Here goes nothing…
Scrolling through the settings for your suit on your PDA, you find the different settings for the mask, and lower the filter percentage down to 99.5%. This is going to be a very slow process, but if done correctly you would be able to live without the magnetic barrier of your suit and without your mask, in theory that is. It would likely be almost a year before you could breathe without some sort of mechanical assistance, assuming that you survive that long or don't find a way off the planet before then.
Even with such a small drop in the filter strength, you faintly smell just how fresh the air is on this planet, the ever so faint, and vaguely familiar scents of grass and foliage. Curious that such a sweet smelling atmosphere could hold microbes that wouldn't hesitate to tear you apart from the inside out, just one of the subtle terrors that evolution can hold you suppose.
Realizing that you had slowed and that Rainbow had not bothered to do so as well, you catch up with her in a brisk walk, making her look back at you as you remain careful not to kick off the ground too hard.
Again you find yourself at peace even though you should be panicking over your current predicament, but something about this place simply takes the edge off of you.
Rainbow stops abruptly, making you stop as well, least you knock her over.
Then you see why she stopped.
In the distance stood a quaint and almost old nordic looking village, all the stone and thatch buildings painted and decorated in bright pastel colors that would seem more in place in a child's coloring book.
A shiver runs down your spine, the whole town seems almost humanlike from the distance, yet another uncanny similarity these little ponies seem to share with your race…It all seems out of place, surreal even.
It's as if the longer you look, the further you march forward, the more knowledge you seek, the further down the rabbit hole you go…
“Your hometown I take it?”
Rainbow turns and makes an eager chirp, signaling you to walk with her down into the town with a wave of her foreleg.
You follow, silently muttering a prayer under your breath.
The trip is far shorter than you would've expected, and before long you and Rainbow are at the edge of the small hamlet. Before you can go any further, a pony walks out of a nearby house, looking at Rainbow with the foreleg raised in what you guess is a greeting, right before its eyes turn to you, making it totally freeze.
With the same shaking hoof, it points to you, stuttering out a fearful string of words.
Rainbow just nods and replies back, her speech rather fiery, you even catch your name mentioned even if it's noticeably butchered.
The other pony gulps and steps out of the way, prompting your winged escort to start walking again with you following along.
It’s the same reaction for every single one that you meet, freezing in place, stuttering, and then you were given a wide berth. All of them hold the same expressions of either fear, confusion, disbelief, and even in a relatively small fraction, hatred. But they aren't running for the hills, which you guess you can count as a small victory.
The only exception seems to be with the youngest of them, tiny equines who barely reach your knee try to peer around their older kin wearing expressions of amazement, who try to shield them from you, in an effort to get a good eyeful.
The walk through town is almost suffocating with the amount of eyes you feel on your back, as none of them want to stare you in the face.
Rainbow is either ignorant or simply ignoring the drama bringing you into the small town has caused as she just keeps trotting forward without a care in the world.
You pan your eyes around, hoping to find something to distract you from the claustrophobic feeling creeping up on you. Looking up, you see guards with wings standing on clouds?
Yes, they’re standing on the clouds, clouds that should be vapor, and they looking down at you with steely expressions while they’re at it. Your head is beginning to hurt from the amount of absurdity you're finding with every turn, so you bring your attention back to the town itself.
Just as you saw before entering town, many of the houses and buildings are made of different types of stone with thatched roofs, others are made purely from wood and other materials that you can't name with certainty. All of this is beginning to look like some sort of fairytale, a bright, clean, town filled with inhabitants that should be given mythological status.
The next thing you know, Ivory and Indigo are actually princesses…
Another few minutes of walking are spent in painstaking silence, until you are led to what seems to be a large tree with windows and a door set into its front.
How in the world was this accomplished? The windows and door imply that the tree has been hollowed out to be lived in, yet it's still alive, its branches filled with green.
The sky blue pegasus walks up and simply flings the door open as if she owned the tree, hollering inside before waving at you to follow. Rainbow must want you to come inside.
Ducking under the low doorway, you find yourself within the tree was just inches to spare above your head, letting you stand at your full height. The walls are lined with wooden bookshelves, all of them filled to bursting with tomes of all shapes and sizes, along with a desk at the back of the room A number of small tables and chairs are scattered about within the front, one of which is where none other than Lavender is sitting, her attention held raptly by a telekinetically held book in front of her face.
Rainbow clears her throat, catching the attention of her friend who puts down her book to greet you both with a smile.
She beckons you over with a wave of a floating quill as she pulls several books from the shelves behind her as well as a sheet of parchment from a stack next to her.
Rainbow grumbles something under her breath as you both walk and sit down at the table across from the violet unicorn.
You squirm some in the tiny chair, which squeaks perilously under your weight.
If Lavender was concerned about her furniture, then she hid it well as she scribbled out a long line of symbols on a piece of parchment, before turning it around and showing it to you.
29, individual, rune like shapes stare back at you from the brown paper, all of them holding a subtle difference from the ones on either side of them. You look them over, figuring that Lavender must be showing you her people’s alphabet, and your thoughts are confirmed when she points to the first one with her quill and slowly sounds it out, the letter sounding similar to a short O.
You mimic her as best as you can, and end up chewing the letter into something almost incomprehensible.
She winces and tries again, repeating it several times at different speeds, putting emphasis on the movement of her lips.
That’s not going to help much but you try again anyway, this time sounding much better than before, but if you learned this language entirely than you would without a doubt have a heavy and unique accent.
She smiles and moves on to the next one, this one the faintly rolling T that she used at the end of her name when she first introduced herself.
Half way through a sheet of work that lavender had given you, you swear that you feel eyes on you even from within the tree.
You glance at the windows, only to find nothing.
Looking at the doorway of a room connected to the one you are in you see a small purple form with green eyes rush away the instant you make eye contact with it.
Does the unicorn have children perhaps?
Much of the day passes in this manner, the unicorn teaching about her language as much as she could from the ground up as you slowly picked up on it, along with the small, green eyed form trying, and failing to watch inconspicuously from a distance.
Lavender apparently felt that you had hit some sort of milestone, as she gives you some parchment and a quill with an expectant look on her face. She slowly recites several letters then indicates the paper, wanting you to write them out apparently.
You do so with a grimace, knowing that you are going to miss a considerable amount.
Once you are done, you hand her the paper and she looks over at and marks several of them with X’s. Apparently you hadn't done as horrible as you expected as she smiles and turns the paper to you, showing that you had missed only about half.
Meanwhile Rainbow could only watch with bored, unfocused eyes, apparently she is not one for linguistics or anything of the like. Eventually she gets up and trots off, returning with a book of her own to read, the cover depicting a beige pegasus with the mark of a compass rose stamped onto its flank.
Several hours tick by, all of it filled with you trying to cram as much of this new language as you could into your skull and make it stick.
By the time Lavender is finished with you, you have a limited grasp of the alphabet and several simple one or two word phrases and greetings under your belt, nothing useful but it's certainly progress. You are really surprised by how simplistic their language is, but then again you are going to have to get used to the awkward noun and verb placements as well as practice speaking since they use more sounds than a human does to talk.
Maybe you can use some right here? You think through the handful of words you had memorized, or at least you hope you had them memorized right.
“T-thaaank youuu.” You belt in the pony tongue
Agh, that sounded awful.
Lavender thought otherwise apparently as she smiles bright and says “You’** *******! *’* happy ** help.” cheerfully.
You can't help but smile yourself, even if you really didn't catch most of that, you got the feeling that it was along the lines of ‘You’re welcome’
Rainbow, seeing that the lesson is over, hops up and put her book back before rushing to the door in a blur of color, impatiently tapping her hoof on the floor “***** **!” She exclaims irritably.
You stand and stretch, working the kinks out of your muscles from sitting for so long, before giving Lavender a wave and turning to follow the pegasus. Once outside, you see the sun has started its descent as a number of ponies walkabout the various stands and shops situated throughout the small town, all of them likely looking for last-minute necessities. Again you draw an enormous amount of attention, and by that you mean everyone within sight stops what they are doing to stare and gawk. The self-consciousness from earlier immediately rushes back to you, as you fight back the urge to turn away from all the prying eyes.
Rather than lead you back to your crashed ship, Rainbow plops herself down on grassy spot in front of the library and motions for you to do the same. “*** **** ****, we’** ** ** ****.” She says rather unhelpfully.
What in the world is gotten into her? You don't see a need for sitting around and looking like a sideshow. You try and coax her into getting up and leading you back, but she just shakes her head and points the spot next to her, saying something about listening to someone else, At least you think that's what she's saying.
You sigh and take a seat next to her, idly noting that while sitting you are the same height as her.
Slowly but surely, most of the locals take their attention off of you, and go back to doing what they were before.
What does the colorful equine want you to do exactly? You had caught the pony word for ‘listen’ a few times but that doesn't tell you what she wants. Spacing out some, you focus on what seems to be an off white female with a rose mark haggling with a male over some produce at a stand. You catch almost nothing of what they're saying, but you deduce that the male is trying to rip off the female.
Then it hits you, this is why Rainbow wanted you to sit outside with her, to listen to other ponies as they talk to each other. It’s genius, the combination of theory work with exposure to real life situations where the skill learned in theory can be honed. You really have to hand it to them, this was obviously well-planned or at least a lucky break.
Sitting there for about a half an hour, you pick up on numerous different conversations and do your best to guess what they are about while trying to pull new words using the context of the few you know. All and all... You get maybe one or two new words, but it's one or two that you didn't have before.
Seeing as her objective is complete, Rainbow rises and motions for you to follow her back to the crash site. The trip back is quiet as the trip into town, but this time not every pony you and your winged friend come across looks like a deer in the headlights before they jump out of the way. A few even trail behind you for short distances, their curiosity overpowering their fear.
You shake your head, this whole species seems too kind even in inaction. This is nothing like the riot you were half expecting this morning. Taking a final look around at the town before you left its limits, you take note of all the things that seem familiar, yet out of place, adding it's all to your list of questions.
Once back of the ship, Rainbow calls out to you before she leaves. With a smirk she says something that you can't really follow before she flutters up to your height and gives you a light, playful punch on the shoulder.
You smile under your mask and return the favor, lightly tapping her on the wither. She smiles before turning and rocketing away with impressive speed, leaving a streak of color in her wake.
Now left to your lonesome with the exception of a pair of guards who think they're stealthy up on a cloud above you, you hop the gap between the rim of the crater your ship made and into the side hatch that you close behind you. Walking up to the cockpit, you open up a small storage cubby under the center console and dig around some, hoping that you have something useful
You pull out a clear plastic case filled with tiny identical canisters.
Air purifiers, made to be used in the event of an emergency or in smog filled cities, it's a good thing that you can consider this an emergency. You flip the case over and read the instructions... It looks like this is a pack of 10 and they operate by pressing the button on the top and letting the canister release sanitizers into the air. You're not surprised to find that the sanitizers are toxic.
Cranking your mask filter back up to 100% and making sure the hatch was sealed, you pull out one of the canisters and place it on the floor before pressing the button and standing back.
With a loud hiss, a white vapor is released from the top where it diffuses into the cockpit air.
Once you are sure the canister is empty, you pull off your hazard mask with a sigh and wipe a hand down your sweaty face. You only have 9 more and they only last so long, better make them count.
But for tonight, you just want a comfortable night’s sleep without all this heavy gear on you.
Slipping off the hazard suit and letting it’s bits and pieces fall to the floor, you sit back in the leather seat and drift off, dreams of ponies dancing within your mind
~Canterlot Castle, 10:13 PM, Year 1002~
”So sister, how should we deal with the unrest that our visitor's arrival has caused?” Luna asks her sister as they both stand outside in the gardens, admiring the twinkling stars above.
Celestia thinks to herself for a moment “We should deal with this as we would with any other problem, remain honest, think of what's best for the masses, and do our best to remain fair as we let the news of Anonymous’ arrival spread.” She says, watching a star shoot across the sky.
Luna turns to look at her sister “And what of our neighboring countries? The peace treaty states that we are not allowed to hide events of this magnitude from other participants in the treaty, and the landing of the alien is sure to cause a storm of political intrigue.”
”Anonymous, Luna, he has a name” Celestia gently chides “And I am well aware that he will be the fulcrum of much debate in the coming months.” Celestia smirks lightly “Also, you apparently did not read the treaty close enough, for there was an agreement that emergency situations take precedence over obligations to treaty participants, meaning we have several months before we can be called out on this whole situation.”
The Princess of the Night gives her sibling a sideways look “Sometimes you plan so far ahead that it frightens me sister.”
The sun deity lets a small grin come to her muzzle “It looks like everything is going according to plan then…”
”Tia!”
Celestia giggles before sobering “We will need to eventually call a Summit with all the nations, but for now we have plenty of time so there is nothing to be worried over.”
As her sister takes flight back to her room, Luna can’t help but mutter under her breath
”We may not have problems from outside our borders…but I am more worried about problems that may arise WITHIN them.”
She looks up into her stars. “Anon, for good or for ill, I can only hope that we all come out of this better than we were before, we are all going to face some extreme changes…”
The princess spreads her powerful wings and takes off into the air with no sound, flying into the night gloom like a specter where she disappears.