Zecora walks to the creature’s camp. She had almost spent the entire day yesterday planning on learning its language as much as she could today. She had brought ink, quills, parchment, her lunch, and 7 doses of Draught of Common Voice(each dose lasts for an hour), which will let her retain the meaning of any word that she hears it say or writes down, if she finds its meaning that is.
When she got to its camp, she noticed that it had a wall built over the indention in the rock, and its tent was in front of it.
She looked around for the creature. It didn’t take long for her to see it, it was by the lake making bricks. She approaches the creature, and it turns to look at her.
She pulls off her bag, and takes out her ink, parchment, quill, and a dose of the potion. She drinks the potion, and walks up to the creature. She then holds out her hoof, it seems to understand, and it shakes her hoof.
She points at herself and says,”Zecora.” It recites her name with difficulty, but it is a surprisingly accurate imitation. She draws a picture of Twilight Sparkle in the dirt and says, “Twilight Sparkle.” Once again it imitates the name with surprising accuracy. She began to wonder if it was naturally proficient at imitating sounds, or if it drank a potion before she got here, which was unlikely.
She points to it, and it makes a short set of connected sounds and clicks that are presumably its name. She writes down the name on the parchment, as best as she could since she had no clue on how to spell its name.
She points to various objects in the area saying her word for each object, and it said its word for the object, and she then writes down a translation table for others to use in the future.
At lunch time, Zecora pulls out a daisy sandwich from her bag for lunch. The creature wanders off for a few minutes, and it comes back eating some blackberries.
“So it is omnivorous,” she thought to herself as they both ate lunch.
After lunch they continued teaching each other nouns, and towards the end they started teaching some verbs. Zecora continued writing down the translation table as they went, trying her best with spelling.
They even started using very simple sentences, like,”That is a [insert noun here].” So far they can only use extremely simple declarative sentences, so they can’t ask questions yet.
About an hour before sunset, Zecora leaves, and the creatures says what is most likely is “Bye” to her as she walks away. She pauses and imitates it, and continues walking away.
←-------------------------------------------------------------->
That night…
“I can’t believe you learned so much of its language!” Twilight exclaims as she reads the scroll that Zecora has written.
“Perhaps you should compile it, so you that you may file it,” Zecora says as she sips her cup of tea.
“How do you suggest we meet with it?” Twilight asked.
“Any place would do, although I think it may want some space to move,” Zecora replied.
“Why?”
“Always working it seems to be, so it doesn’t like to procrastinate as you may see.”
“Sounds like we should talk with it here in the castle, except in one of the meeting rooms. We should probably have my friends there too.”
←-------------------------------------------------------------->
The days go by in pretty much the same way for three more days. I wake up, run a little, eat breakfast, teach the Zebra some English and learn some of its language, eat lunch, teach and learn some more, watch the zebra leave, eat dinner, sleep, repeat.
On the fifth day however, five white unicorns in golden armor walk to the area and look around, seeming to be a little on edge. The zebra and I go about our routine as usual, though since they don’t talk to us or even come within 5 yards of me.
On the sixth day, the unicorns talk with Zecora(I had just started using her name during conversation and thought) about something. We then teach each other some more of our languages. At this point, she knows enough of my language that we can hold a conversation, but I can’t seem to retain information on their language, except for names, which I remember with ease.
On the seventh day, Zecora tells me that tomorrow she will come here and direct me to a nearby town called Ponyville, which really was a weird name to me, and I would meet Twilight and her friends there, although I noticed that Zecora used a word before Twilight’s name that I guessed was a title. At this point, I was used to the fact that she rhymes, even when speaking in my language. She then left.
←-------------------------------------------------------------->
A few hours later...
“Her potions worked very well, she should be able to be an interpreter for tomorrow.” Twilight says to her friends at the Cutie Map.
“Are you sure it will be okay with meeting us all at once, because some of the animals I’ve met get scared if they meet too many ponies at once if they aren't used to ponies,” Fluttershy said softly.
“Ah’m more worried ‘bout what it might do if we say somethin’ it doesn’t like or finds offensive.” Applejack says.
“We shouldn’t have too much of a problem, Zecora has been learning its language from it, and it hasn’t been offended by her, so I don’t think it's as easy to offend as the yaks at least” Twilight says.
Everypony agrees that this is a good thing.
“Also I think I found a spell that might help, but it is very draining and doesn't last too long, so I won’t cast it unless we need it.”
←-------------------------------------------------------------->
That morning…
I wake up and head outside, to see Zecora walking towards me.
Zecora asks me, in a heavily accented voice, to follow her, I nod. She then leads me through the forest.
I take mental note about a few things on the path that I might find useful, like a large amount of vines, near the path.
We leave the forest, and Zecora leads me into a medieval-style town, which, strangely enough, there are no ponies, or humans, in sight, along the path that I am lead on at least.
She leads me to a massive castle made of crystal that is shaped like a tree.
As she leads me inside and through the interior of the castle, I realize that, somehow, the inside of the castle is bigger than it looks on the outside.
She directs me through a series of corridors and hallways, and while I see a few of the ponies in gold armor, I pay them no mind. She leads me into a decently large room with a fancy table in the center.
There are 7 ponies currently seated, but there are 9 chairs, one of which is roughly scaled to my height. I sit on the chair that is scaled to my size, and Zecora sits in the last empty seat.
I only recognize 2 of the ponies at the table, Zecora and the purple unicorn/pegasus(Twilight Sparkle wasn’t it?), but I notice that Twilight is now wearing a tiara. Twilight and one other pony are sitting opposite me. The other pony sitting opposite me is a light pink unicorn with a purple mane with a light blue stripe, she says something to me, which Zecora translates as her introducing herself as Starlight Glimmer(Zecora also specifies her gender, so that I don’t mix up my pronouns). To Twilight’s left is an orange pony with a yellow mane and is wearing a Stetson hat, and introduces herself as Applejack. Zecora is sitting to my left. To Zecora’s right is a white unicorn wearing a pink-ish dress, it has a purple mane that is styled. She introduces herself as Rarity. To Rarity’s right is a cyan pegasus with a rainbow colored mane, who introduces herself as Rainbow Dash. To my right is a yellow pegasus with a pink mane, which she is currently trying to hide behind. Zecora tells me that she is Fluttershy. To Fluttershy’s right is a bright pink pony with a pink mane who seems to be struggling to not jump out of her seat. She introduces herself, very quickly, as Pinkie Pie.
I introduce myself as Gerald, which Zecora translates, and all of the ponies say,”Hello,” or some variant of it.
Twilight says something to me, which Zecora translates,”She says,’Hello, I am Twilight Sparkle, the…” Zecora’s voice trailed off as she struggled to find the word for it.
I looked at her, the confusion evident on my face, but I was slightly annoyed, which I tried, and failed, to keep off my face. Twilight starts looking a little worried, and her horn starts to glow with a familiar purple aura. The aura gets another layer on top of it as she focuses and concentrates on whatever she is doing.
I look at the aura with curiosity, and a sphere of the aura explodes off of her horn, engulfing everything in the room.
I yelp and jump back in surprise, which causes my chair to fall back, because my chair is out to kill me, apparently. My head hits the floor, which disorients me a lot more than it should. I stumble to my feet, and step forward, which causes me to trip on the table. I push myself off the table and back onto the floor, and decide to wait until I regain my senses before I try to get back up. Except I don’t regain my senses, rather, I fall unconscious for no apparent reason.
←-------------------------------------------------------------->
The ponies look in shock at the unconscious creature in front of them.
“Umm. What just happened?” Rainbow asked.
“I don’t know,” Twilight replies,”I only cast the linguistic spell I told you about.”
Fluttershy rushed over to it to make sure it was okay, and she let out a sigh of relief when she realized it was fine.
“What should we do if it thinks we attacked it?” Starlight asks.
“Maybe we should worry about that later, it could need medical attention,” Fluttershy replies.
Twilight uses her magic to levitate the creature. The moment Twilight’s aura touches the creature, its right arm moves up a few inches, then it relaxes and returns to its previous position, relative to his body, while he is lifted by her spell. They all notice this and are slightly confused by his arm moving while he is unconscious , but Twilight starts to walk at a rather brisk pace out the door and towards the infirmity, levitating the creature behind her.
The doctor is understandably surprised when he sees the creature, and repeatedly says,”But I don’t know its anatomy at all, let alone how to perform medical examination on it, I might do more harm than good if I try to fix any problems I find,”but when Twilight explains that he might be injured, and keeps insisting that he try to check for injuries, he gets to work, reluctantly. He does the best he can, which wasn’t much, although he manages to identify it as male, and, as far as he can tell, none of the bones are broken.
The ponies talk amongst themselves, and decide that only one of them should be in the room with it after it wakes up, so that they don’t make it feel too threatened. They decide that Fluttershy should be the one to go in the room to speak with it when it wakes up, since she is generally non-threatening, and is good with animals.
After about an hour, the doctor steps out and says,” He seems to be regaining consciousness.”
With a large amount of coaxing and reassuring, Fluttershy walks into the infirmary.
←-------------------------------------------------------------->
As I regain consciousness, I notice that I am not where I was, and I feel like there is electricity crackling through my veins, oddly it doesn’t feel painful, it strangely feels natural, even though I
haven’t ever felt this before. From my observations, I seem to be in a hospital.
I look over, and I see Fluttershy. She seems timid at first, but then she starts to walk towards me. I immediately put my hand up in a gesture for her to not come any closer, while saying,”Don’t come closer.” To my surprise, she is surrounded in a light yellow aura almost immediately, and she freezes, unable to move forward, or in any direction for that matter.
A look of surprise crosses her face, which quickly changes to a look of fear. I look at her in confusion, my arm still outstretched. I put down my arm, and the aura around her disappears. She immediately turns and runs out of the door.
←-------------------------------------------------------------->
About a minute later...
“But why has it only just started to use magic?” Applejack asks,” Ah reckon we would have seen it use magic before, would we ‘ave?”
“He probably had them the whole time, but just started using them now that he feels threatened.” Twilight replies.
“I think we should stay on its good side, since we don’t know the extent of its powers,” Starlight says.
“It seemed surprised when it stopped me in place with its magic.” Fluttershy says.
“I’ve heard of cases where emotions cause magic to misfire,” Twilight replies,” I think he used his magic on accident because of fear.”
“If that was on accident, we could totally take him!” Rainbow Dash exclaims with certainty and excitement in her voice.
“I don’t think we should actively make it angry though,” Twilight says.