//------------------------------// // 13- At least I wasn't mind controlled to bake a cake // Story: Still No Signal // by Axel Azabash //------------------------------// PANIC! The door opened suddenly and Purplesmart was right there! There was no hope, she just saw the setup I had to get solar power, she would definitely try to steal all my devices, and would take them apart to study how they worked and take away from me the only familiar thing I had anymore in this cruel world! Oh wait… It’s the wingless Purplesmart… I kind of startled her with my sudden urge to put myself in front of her to block her line of sight from my stuff, but when I relaxed a little, she looked at me with a baffled expression on her cute face and her head tilted to one side. Then she kind of smiled and waved awkwardly. I returned the gesture. She said something in their singsongy language while looking away from me, then looked directly to my eyes with a hopeful expression. Well, I didn’t understand a word, so I shrugged and got away from her way. She saw that gesture as an invitation to come in, so she did. She had brought some books, paper and quills in her saddlebags which she put on the desk and brought a chair next to it. I sat on the bed near the desk to see what was going on. I needed to get her a name, because Wingless Purplesmart was a pain even if I wasn’t even pronouncing it aloud. Purplesmart 2 was just too silly and lazy. The purple little unicorn had a slightly curly hair and a pale greenish line along it. It had to be dye… It was just too uncanny for a creature to be so colorful. Smartylocks? Fair enough. Probably I will know their real names in their language when I actually learn the language, because right then, I only knew a few words that were little tunes and rythms. Smartylocks talked again and made something that looked like calming gestures and then she lit up her horn. I was still unnerved by this, but she looked sure about what she was doing. Furthermore, I hadn’t been hurt by those light shows yet, so I tried not to panic. Then she pointed her horn at my head, and a little bolt of magic struck my face. It startled me a little, but then I felt numb for a moment, after that I almost fell to the floor, feeling dizzy, though I recovered quickly. What was her intention was unknown for me, but it was creepy. “Unknown. Curiosity about me. Who are you? What are you?” Those questions came to my mind out of the blue, not as questions or statements, but as sheer emotion, the sudden urge to answer those questions to myself. I was utterly confused about why I was suddenly asking this to myself. What was going on? I glanced at the tiny equine in front of me. She was sweating and panting, her horn glowing brightly and sometimes sparkling, pointed directly at me. “Unknown. Frightened to the unknown. What is happening?” Was my mental response to how alien those sudden thoughts seemed to me. Smartylocks smiled awkwardly and did a gesture with her hoof that I didn’t understand. She repeated it a few times. “Come on! It’s not going to last much longer!” The urge to answer those questions and the fact that something was running out of time came to my mind the same way the other questions did. Wait… there was a connection between the gesture and the thought. It looked like she was urging me to continue. It was like she perceived my indecision and was gesturing me to hurry up and answer… her? Wait… was she… inside my flippin’ MIND!? I panicked and stumbled back onto my bed, trying to focus all my efforts in not to think about anything. A loud pop and a few sizzles could be heard and I got all dizzy again. If I were standing, I would have fallen to the floor, but luckily for me, I was already lying on the bed. Once I recovered, I glanced over the little equine that had been launched to the opposite side of the room while I had a little blackout. There was smoke coming out of her horn, and she had a pained expression on her face, with a hoof massaging her forehead. “What… What was that, tiny horse!?” I asked, letting a mix of fear and anger get to me. She looked at me and suddenly understood my gesture and attitude towards her. She waved both forelegs in front of her in a defensive manner, saying something in their language. “Were you… READING MY MIND!?” I took a step back, not really sure if I was more angry or more scared. Probably feeling my hostile behavior, she stepped back towards the door, never taking her eyes from me, a mix of shock and fear on her face. She wobbled a little, putting again a hoof at the base of her horn. It looked like she was in some pain after the thing she did. After this I couldn’t decide what to do. I was mildly angry because of her trying to use that weird horn magic of hers on me, but on the other hand, she probably didn’t mean any kind of harm and I was overreacting, moreover, it looked like she was in pain. Still, I was uncomfortable with the idea of those freaky unicorns though. In the end I settled on just scowling at her. She recovered a little from her own dizziness and looked back at me. Her horn was still smoking from her efforts. When she noticed my scowl, she smiled a little, and when that smile didn’t work, she tried harder, making that smile awkward and a little bit creepy. Purplesmart was a very creepy thing, and if Smartylocks was somehow related to her, it was normal to believe that she would behave in a similar manner. I missed Yellowings. Yes, she was cuddly and didn’t know a thing about personal space, but at least she had been nice and I could somehow understand her and she understood me more or less. In the end, that winged pony was adorable, but those horned ones? They were kind of scary now. I should probably kick her away from my room after what she did, or maybe try to run away from her, but part of me wanted to know more. Smartylocks went to the desk where the books, paper and quills were and started to manipulate them by hoof after her horn sparkled again and a new wave of cute sounds of pain came out of her. It looked like she had run out of energy for her horn, and that gave me a little more confidence, so I decided to let the equine do her thing in order to see what she wanted. She set up a little area for studying. She changed around the desk and the chair in a way that I could sit on the bed and she could sit on the chair at the other side of the desk. The purpose of this arrangement became clear as she offered me a quill and she started to draw stuff with another on a large piece of paper. Her mouth-writing and drawing were terrible. That was probably because after the little incident she had to use her mouth and couldn’t wingardium-leviosa her quill, but we managed to draw some simple items like a stickman figure and a… squiggle that resembled a pony. She was definitely not a teacher, because she got frustrated very quickly at my initial inability to match the sounds she was producing. I felt like I was making a fool of myself imitating the sound of a horse. Then I remembered what happened back in the kitchen, and back with the ‘word’ I said to Yellowings… I had to imitate kind of the ‘music’ of the word, not the actual sound or vocalization, so I would have to ‘sing’ what she sang, and it didn’t matter if it was a whinny or a snort, I could just use my regular voice. With that, I got mildly successful, but not as far as Smartylocks was expecting, probably. We exchanged drawings and tried to imitate each other sounds, but she was unable to do mine because she always focused on copying the rhythm and intonation of my words and not the actual vocalizations. Me, on the other hand, succeeded in some words and even managed to say some words in my language, but doing the sing-songy thing that made them mean that very thing for the ponies. Of course, there were words that didn’t have the proper number of syllables to do that trick, but those which did became really easy to remember. Apart from that, in order to make her understand the basics of my language I tried to say a word but doing the most plain and robotic intonation. She was utterly baffled. The books were probably textbooks for pony children. They had a lot of images with little scripts under them, most likely some kind of childish dictionary. Smartylocks made a point about me reading those, but without a teacher to actually explain and read those, it was going to be of little use for me. She wasn’t very good at pantomiming, so I didn’t understand most of the things she tried to communicate. The mare went out of the room after a couple of hours of interaction, and I was kind of relieved, because mind-reading unicorns freaked me out. I learned a few new words, but in general not a reliable way to communicate. Pony, bird, house, horn, hoof… I spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening with my… kindergarten lessons… Looking at the pictures and the scripts kept me entertained. I identified all the different symbols I could isolate and started to associate how they were repeated in words. For example, the word for ‘pony’ had five symbols; comparing those with the word ‘bird’ I found that they had one symbol in common. I already knew how those two simple words were pronounced and discovered that the specific variation, a sudden but subtle rise in intonation, was the same in both words at the point of the common symbol. Did they write sounds? It seemed like they wrote like if it was a music sheet, with all the musical notes but in their weird squiggles that represented them. That could be really challenging or an advantage to learn the language, because I wouldn’t have to worry about checking the spelling of every single thing, but on the other hand it was utterly alien. Those activities kept me busy from checking my phone, but anyways… what was the point anymore? I already knew that there was going to be still no signal.