Once Wash had jumped back and oh-so-very kindly informed them all with a shocked outburst of xiǎo mǎ!, the crew had turned to face the little purple pony and collectively either also jumped or started just a little, save for Jayne who practically fell out of his chair and nearly went to the floor.
That tickled Mal something fierce, chuckling to himself when he saw the pony was laughing too and trying to stop in a very human fashion of covering her mouth with her hoof. After making the same noises to everyone that she’d made to him back in his cabin, she even waved in a way horses shouldn’t have been capable of. Definitely alien to some degree. This was as confusing and surreal as the time they'd concluded that River was psychic, but at least they'd had the course of a year or so to come to terms with her oddities, this was basically full blown culture shock.
“Alright, listen up,” he looked around to include all of them. “This here’s… well, we... aint exactly got a name right now, she don’t speak the language, so, couldn’t exactly ask, but she aint hostile an’ she ended up here on the ship somehow, so-”
“Mal, that xiǎo zǐ sè guài tāi aint natural!” Jayne interrupted with a shout, hand going to the knife on his hip. “We gotta toss it outside! Space the damn thing!”
“Jayne, sit down! Now.” Mal growled, glaring at the man, already having thought he might have acted out like this. He met eyes with the mercenary of his crew in a challenge that given their colourful history, gave Jayne immediate pause and reconsideration to his ornery behaviour. “She aint hurtin’ no one an’ you definitely aint to be puttin' hands on her. Or, are you afraid of the cuddly little space critter just barely comin’ up past your knee? You afraid she might cuddle you to death?"
The intended blow to the man’s pride did the trick. Jayne glared daggers and mumbled a string of curses, but he slowly sat down with his head low while giving the little pony venomous looks every now and then. The situation stood tense for mere seconds until Kaylee came in from the other end of the galley, and he’d anticipated this one as well, but it was like a gorram chain reaction had been set off.
Kaylee had seen the cute and cuddly little pony. Kaylee had gasped in an expected Kaylee-like manner. Kaylee had then made the same squeak of delight an excited girl makes when her father tells her she’s actually getting a pony for christmas. Kaylee had fidgeted on the spot and tried to contain herself. Kaylee had then failed in a spectacularly girlish manner to contain herself and made another noise almost entirely alien to anyone who possessed a Y chromosome, one which sounded like someone had squeezed an overly joyous unicorn much too hard.
He hoped Kaylee didn't do that to this critter.
Mal wasn’t quite sure, but he felt she’d crossed the gap from the galley entrance to where the pony was standing quicker than River had crossed the gap out on the fore deck. Maybe he should set up a race of who could get to the critter first, take bets on it. He'd make a killing in platinum.
“Oohhhhhhhhh, Captaiiiiin!” She breathed out, her eyes full of such pure happiness and love. “What is she? Oh I aint even carin’ what she is, she’s like a tiny pony! She’s so lovely, I just... I wanna just stroke her! Please?!”
“Little Kaylee, that there aint no normal animal. She’s an intelligent being with a strong
mind, as far as I can wager,” Mal cautioned his mechanic. “So I aint rightly sure if that’s fine, you’ll know she aint comfortable if she... bites you, or somethin’, I suppose.”
“Oh nahhh, she wouldn’t do that!” Kaylee grinned with a wave at Mal, almost flying at the pony. “Would you? You’re just so cute, aint’cha? Yes, you are!”
Baby-talking the critter aside, while she had looked slightly uncomfortable to start, the pony was pushing against Kaylee’s hands with her eyes closed for a brief moment. Mal suspected such a thing wasn’t a motion it had felt too much before, and it was actually enjoying the experience. He fondly remembered that horses did seem to love a good scratch behind the ears, a lot of animals did. Intelligent creature or not, it had that biological instinct going on as plain as day.
That was until the pony cleared her throat and backed off, having had quite enough of that sort of attention. He smiled as Kaylee laughed a little and leant forwards, enveloping the pony in a warm hug. Kaylee took no prisoners on the front of affection, though at least she mostly understood boundaries, stopping the hug before long and leaving the pony be.
Mal shifted and spoke up.
“As I was sayin’ before y’all intervened,” Mal continued, making sure all of them were focused on him. “Aint too certain as to what we should do with her, but ‘course we aint just gonna leave her high an’ dry on some border planet to kick rocks, I’m fairly certain any person that aint Jayne would agree anyway.”
"Can I please interject and ask why there's a fuzzy extraterrestrial being from an oaty bar commercial on the ship?" Wash piped up with a slight rise of the hand. "Not that I have anything, yannow, against the... critter, but where did she come from?!"
Mal shrugged lightly at Wash's exaggerated tone. "Don't know that either, but as you might suspect if it didn't occur already, it likely has somethin' to do with that blackout we had earlier."
"Was she in the cargo bay?" Wash wondered.
"No, my quarters, of all places." Mal replied, groaning as he knew that look.
"What is it with you and having strange girls in your cabin, Captain?" Wash said, posing it almost innocently as Zoë chuckled to herself. "I hope you don't plan on kissing this one."
Mal glared as Zoë and Kaylee fought to contain their amusement, and Wash quickly relented from his poking fun and found the dining table far more interesting as the mood settled from Mal's glowering. Mal cleared his throat after a moment to reassert control. "For now let’s just…” he semi-shrugged, looking at the pony. “Let her be. She aint gonna cause no harm I don’t think, an’ we all got things to be doin’. Keep her out of the engine room an' the cargo bay, least for the time being, but other than that I don't know, this is an uncharted space to be explored."
With that he shrugged and took to leaving, noting the pony looked eager to follow him which probably would have been for the best even if his wires were pretty frazzled from all the craziness. He paused mid-step as Simon came onto the scene and raised a hand to stop him from going though. He'd already been standing there watching with interest but now he was getting involved.
“Captain, if I may,” Simon asked, stepping forward and gazing inquisitively at the small pony before him. “This is like no other sort of creature that we've ever encountered, let alone seen, unless she's quite literally a long-lost offshoot of an equine. That's also assuming the Alliance doesn't already have some kind of knowledge on alien life and is hiding the information. I'd certainly like to examine a few things with you here.”
“Her call too.” Mal shrugged, glancing at the pony.
Mal tracked Simon with curiosity as he cautiously approached the pony and met her with a professional looking handshake. The man never ceased to make things look so formal and it somewhat amused him how he was going to turn this situation into something almost academic. He turned back from going to leave and stayed at the edge of the galley as Simon started to examine the creature.
“This is unprecedented, more so than we can grasp for now, but I can see a few key details that give us some insight into things," Simon immediately began, pointing. "You see here, the legs aren’t the same as they are on an equine we know, and equines don’t have collarbones or ball-and-socket joints either, they have basic hinge joints that allow their legs to fold up at certain degrees with a very small amount of side-to-side movement. I'd wager that she does actually have both given that slight ridge over her chest there, and her frankly human level of movement in her forelegs,” he theorised, indicating to the pony’s legs and torso while she sat still, simply letting him talk and watching him do it as if she knew full well what he was doing. It was pretty inquisitive to Mal how Simon could see this with only just seeing her and not taking a proper scan. Mal hadn't caught onto it because he hadn't exactly been looking for it, despite his ranching background, but he could certainly see where the good doctor was getting the idea. “What little I’ve already seen of her basic movement, her shoulder blades are also further back beside the ball joints, it’s what allowed her to wave at us as she did just then.”
“It still doesn't seem right,” Zoë said in a hush, looking lost and trying to keep her calm mask of cool indifference. “That it’s ─she’s─ alien...”
Simon challenged her. “Why not? It’s a very big universe and we haven’t explored all of it, we never will. As I said before, for all we know the Alliance is already aware of alien life, and we just happened to come across it ourselves.”
“How comes y’all know it’s a girl?” Jayne questioned with a look.
“Well... I'd have thought that was obvious, the form is very feminine, don’t you think?” Simon said, pointing to the generous curvature of the pony’s body. “And there, you can see from here as she sits that those are teats, quite large for her smaller size, the croup and haunches too, mare's don't usually..." he saw their quizzical looks and cleared his throat. "If her species follows our own equine biology more than they do in their skeletal structure, then only females of their race should have teats. Given that, it’s also quite safe to assume the bump there just below her teats is the apex of the vulva.”
Kaylee giggled at his straightforward description with a light blush given the subject matter, while everyone else other than Simon, River, and Mal looked slightly bemused at the bluntness of such talk.
“You’re awfully comfortable describing anatomy, aren’t you?” Wash wryly pointed out.
“I’m a doctor.” Simon stated equally dry and matter-of-factly. “It’s just a basic description of a body, and I've studied the anatomy of various animals in case I ever wanted to get into veterinary care. It’s nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about,” he continued on, either oblivious to the bemusement or just outright ignoring it as simple childishness. “All female creatures have the exact same sort of reproductive organs on a basic level, that more or less function the same.”
“Alright, so, moving past that part, Doctor,” Mal intervened, hopefully before the young prodigy started trying to theorise how the alien-pony’s reproductive cycle worked. “She’s a bonafide girl, that’s apparently officiated by a doctor now, what else are you wantin’ to say?”
“She was speaking then, trying to communicate with us,” Simon smiled, getting to his feet and going to grab some paper. “She has a wide range of gestures and emotions given Kaylee’s interaction and Jayne’s… being himself, and while we couldn’t understand what she said it was certainly a language, there were common phonetic sounds in her speech alongside the equine sounds.”
“Pho-wha?” Jayne asked with a raised lip, as if he were both confused and disdainful.
“Phonetics,” Simon started, looking at Jayne as if this should be something even he should know about. “The sounds we make when we speak? Ah, buh, cuh, and so on,” he explained, which amazingly Jayne did nod in his understanding. “It means that while her language is different, because of the certain sounds she’s already made it’s more than possible she could pronounce all other sounds of the phonetic alphabet.”
“So she could learn English. That’d be quite something.” Mal nodded, with everyone else giving varying degrees of a nod from their understanding.
“That's my belief, yes,” Simon continued, starting to write something down on the paper he'd acquired. “That is of course assuming she has just as many muscles in her facial structure as we do, and given the shape of her face I’d actually wager she does, by a greater amount, her range of expressions is going to likely be better than ours.” After a few seconds he turned towards the pony. “Here we go─oh, she took it off of me…” Simon laughed, the creature almost snatching the paper from him as he started to pass it to her, with her hooves no less. “This is probably the most basic manner I can think of to indicate a greater intelligence, as well as the simplest means of communication.”
“What is it? Pictures?” Wash asked from where he was standing.
“Arithmetic,” Simon answered, handing his pen to the pony. “Just watch.”
They all did, with varying amounts of interest, as she somehow used her hoof to hold the pen and write with it. Everyone’s reactions more or less fell between either awe or bemusement, and she soon quickly handed the paper back to Simon.
“Incredible. Look at that, it’s her own numbers for one through ten where I marked our own, and she's gone up to one-hundred in her own numbers or numerals. I put basic sums in there as dots in place of our numbers with the key to denote them, and she correctly answered those as well. A perfect score.”
“Woah, good horse.” Wash said in a hush.
“That confirms she must have a language, not that I had any doubt of that after a few minutes of studying her. It's clear that she's sapient.” Simon said, more to himself than anyone else.
“Because of numbers?” Jayne asked, an eyebrow raised as he dared a look at the alien.
“Yes. Mathematics. Or… one of the most basic levels, which is arithmetic; numerals and elementary arithmetic, that is,” Simon explained again. “That coupled with how she gestures and makes sounds all points to the idea of an oral language, the evidence is undeniable. It would be amazing for her to learn to speak with us using English, the same as it would be amazing for us to learn hers, assuming we could accurately mimic the slight equine sounds she's been making. By all means I should be able to pull up basic teaching methods on my datapad, establishing communication is one of the most important barriers for any people to overcome, especially in a first contact situation as with ancient peoples from Earth-That-Was. She certainly seems interested in learning given the speed with which she wrote those numbers down.”
All this time they’d been talking, the small pony had almost been bouncing with an ear-to-ear grin, if not outright vibrating with anticipation.
“Very interested.” Simon added, giving her a polite smile.
* * *
Mal had just finished up helping Wash with something on the bridge regarding the blackout messing with the control systems in place, when he turned around to the sound of footsteps clunking on the metal stairs up to the cockpit, seeing Simon partly winded in the airlock. The doctor wasn't unfit so Mal would have guessed that he'd likely run across the ship from the Infirmary or his quarters in the passenger dorms at a hurried pace. He was trying to form words and stumbling over himself in the attempt.
“I… Captain, I… look, just come! It’s unreal! It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before!” he managed, seeming both shocked and amazed at something, and there wasn't a whole lot on the ship that ever fascinated him so Mal would put platinum on it being to do with their new arrival.
“Slooow, slow down, Doctor. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack, y’aint meant for those ‘till you’re older.” Mal scoffed, following Simon as he rushed as fast as he could back through the ship. With his wound he was a little slower going through, but he caught up as Simon waited for him at points. They passed through the galley into the aft hall before Mal spoke again. “What’s ruffled your fancy feathers anyhow?”
“Real, pure honest-to-God magic.” Simon breathed.
Mal tutted, still following as they went down the stairs off from the aft hall leading to the Infirmary, nodding to it. “Alright, forget me then, you’re clearly feelin' scatterbrained, might wanna check yourself in.”
“You just, you have to see it to believe it.”
The pony was in the hallway between the dorms looking incredibly guilty as if she'd broken his mother's fancy china, which if it had anything to do with the apparent real magic Simon was describing, would make for some fun. Mal looked at Simon who knelt down next to the pony whose entire body language denoted worry.
“Captain, I’ve only spent the last two hours with her teaching the basics of English exactly how I taught River when she was younger.” Simon spoke while then looking at the pony, smiling at her and making placating movements. “She’s already picked up the alphabet and how to pronounce the letters in almost as much the same time as River did, but she’s moved well past that and also started to learn words and their pronunciation using a basic language library on my datapad.”
“How did that work out?” Mal wondered.
“I pointed to an object like the wall, and she would either remember what she’d seen in the library as each word that can have an image applied to it does, and said what it was I was pointing at. I only did a few of those because that’s kind of basic, but she can also write down exactly what I say, some things she might not know the meaning of yet, though she can say the words based on the sounds and apply something to it in most cases. Like...”
Simon directed his attention to her, with a gentle smile he spoke. “C-h-a-i-r.”
“Chair.” She perked up a little from her worried state, saying the word with a nod, then going over to the small sofa behind them beside the dorms and patting it, looking back at them. “Chair.”
“Well, that’s not a… I guess she gets the basic idea,” Mal nodded. “Doctor, what’s this thing you said about magic?”
“Right!” Simon started again, beckoning the pony over to him again.
He knelt down, taking a pen from his waistcoat and holding it in one hand with the palm outstretched, gesturing moving it from one hand to the other, then nodding to her with an approving look that told her everything was going to be alright. She looked worried, glancing from Mal to Simon for a moment, before taking in a deep breath as if preparing herself for the worst.
Mal only had one word for what happened next. She… levitated the pen from Simon’s left hand to his right, and then back again. Her horn had glowed and then burst into a blazing magenta aura, and that same colour aura had surrounded the pen in a sort of mystical haze, and it had moved without her touching it with her hooves.
“Shíme tāmāde...” he whispered, a certain level of chill running down through him as he witnessed what was quite possibly a historical singularity, placing his hand on his head for lack of anything else to do in the situation. “That’s… that happened.”
“Entirely unheard of,” Simon nodded, looking at Mal. “It’s… well, it’s telekinesis, which should be impossible."
Mal's brow furrowed. "The Alliance..."
"Yes, we've heard stories from people about the Alliance trying to create something that could do this," Simon cut in as he stood up. "From what you've told me of the time you found that ancient Generation ship they were trying to create a psychic with such powers, but they never could perfect it because it’s impossible.”
“'Cept I just saw fairly compellin' evidence says otherwise,” Mal gave a dry laugh. “I think this day is shapin' up to be the craziest I’ve ever had, an' we fought off a bunch of River's class of crazy assassins. I keep thinkin' the other shoe has dropped in our lives but apparently they keep on goin' down a very long road."
“Should I… continue telling you my findings?” Simon asked, looking back at the pony, who seemed to be taking Mal’s reaction to the magic usage acceptable.
“By all means,” Mal wildly gestured outward as he rested against a snaking exhaust pipe running through the ship. “Can’t get any weirder.”
“O.K, good. So, uh… she’s already memorised the alphabet, like I said. But most important of all, she can just write sentences based on the few words she knows or say certain words, and she knows what it is she’s asking. She’s going to learn everything there is to know if she keeps this up.” Simon smiled, shaking his head.
“So what can she say in writing, or in English?”
“I thought it best to do the basics, so she knows ‘I am hungry and/or thirsty’ as well as ‘I am tired’, and of course ‘I need to use the bathroom’. There are some words here and there that are based on areas. Like ‘galley’ and ‘infirmary’, basic for now, you know?”
“I gotcha,” Mal nodded, crossing his arms. “That is mighty impressive for an alien pony an' for just three hours work.”
“And a good half hour of that really was spent keeping River busy. She kept saying things that didn’t make sense and wanted to hang around.”
“What things?” Mal frowned.
“She talked about a... a giant tree, a place of refuge, uh… castles on mountains and apple orchards,” Simon tried to recall. “There were other things, like the stars moving of their own accord, honestly it was on par with her usual rambling. I think recent events are driving up the imbalance in her brain chemistry, so her system is fighting the medication more than usual. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind going to the galley while I taught our guest, so we've had some peace to study."
“Speakin' of our guest, we aint got name for her yet,” Mal said, then smiled. “Thought of anything we could call her? ‘Least ‘till she learns to tell us herself?”
Simon actually chuckled at that. “Actually, I did. You saw that marking on her haunch?”
“Yeah, the weird pink star.”
“I just called her that,” Simon said. “Star.”
“Well it’s certainly a startin' point ‘till she can tell us what it actually is her own self,” Mal hummed, thinking on the simple designation. “It works, easy identifier in any case. Fantastical magics aside though, an' I should probably tell the others about it later… I got work to be done, so I’ll leave you to it.”
“Actually, it’s pretty late. I was going to go to bed, and I hope you don’t mind, Captain, but I took the liberty of making the bed in the dorm across from me ready for her.” Simon told him, gesturing to ‘Star’.
Mal nodded his approval. “I’d already been thinkin’ on somethin’ like that,” he nodded, then lightly scoffed. “I was gonna stick her in with Kaylee, but she’ll probably actually manage to sleep this way without bein' used as a gorram dolly.”
With a brief wave to the pony they were now calling Star and a nod to the both of them, Mal soon walked off. Simon stretched for a moment before pulling the datapad from his pocket and checking something, then asked Star if she was tired, who very much nodded in response with a gentle smile. He wasn’t surprised after the day she’d had. They had no idea how she’d gotten on the ship and they couldn’t exactly ask her, but given her sudden appearance and all the excitement, coupled with the fact she was very clearly a long way from home, the poor girl must have been quite drained of energy.
Beckoning her into the opposite dorm, she looked around and back to Simon before gesturing to herself. He nodded as yes, this was her room for the time being. He felt his heart melt a little when she gave a very thankful bow with a very sincere smile and her hoof upon her chest, it was rather cute and would have probably made Kaylee make the noise she’d already made earlier.
He was going to go but before he could fully leave she made a noise that sounded like a polite cough used to get one’s attention, so he turned and saw her looking curious and hopeful as she now sat upon the bed. She had amazing expressions that conveyed so much with so little. She pointed a hoof at the datapad in his hands and pressed her hooves together, which clearly meant ‘Please?’
Simon never stood a chance against such weaponised cuteness, really.
That and he also wanted her to learn a great deal more by herself, as he believed she was quite up to the task. He wanted to see the telekinesis again, so he held it outstretched on his palm, and she didn’t disappoint by taking a hold of it within her gloriously purple magical field ─it almost tickled as the aura brushed his hands─ and floating it over to herself, letting it land safely in her hooves.
He bid her goodnight, leaving her light on and sliding the door closed.