After learning that the young pony lady was over a hundred years old, I had to excuse myself, grab the things and go back to my bedroom. They seemed worried when they saw me leave and take refuge in my quarters, but I needed a moment, or some time to digest what had happened.
Over a hundred years old, maybe even closer to two hundred years old.
And I thought those little cutesy creatures were childlike.
And now they seemed like eldritch pillars of wisdom compared to me…
Now I felt like I was the child around them! How could that possibly be! They even behaved in a childish manner sometimes, and they looked like infants! For how long could they live!? How old were their elders!?
I would be gone before I achieved anything of substance in the eyes of those creatures, yet they looked small, approachable, even cuddly sometimes! That’s not fair! I also wanted to have that much time in life to spare!
The box of ‘things to think about later’ was too small to hold such a discovery, and that thought plagued me and made me uncomfortable for the whole night. Maybe that’s why some of them treated me like an animal, or something below them, that’s because I probably was exactly that in their eyes! But I haven’t told them my age yet. As far as they knew, I could be… over nine thousand!
But I was not…
They even managed to achieve arcane powers; they could move stuff with their minds…
They could also read minds, if what Smartylocks did was a common thing. That also freaked me out. It was brief and I was able to ‘defend’ my mind, and she went flying to the opposite wall when her ‘power’ broke down. That was part of why I didn’t freak out too much, I felt kind of in control of the situation, and she is kind of cute, so it was hard to stay mad at her, but I still got that nagging sensation whenever a horned pony was near me. Was I getting paranoid?
I’m going back to bed. I had enough for today.
***
A gentle knock on the door grabbed my attention. Just quiet enough to avoid waking me up, but enough for me to notice if I was already awake.
Smartylocks. Sleepy and with bags under her eyes. He said a few unintelligible words and showed me the notes she had been taking. I looked through the window, it was still dark, and the small equine looked like she hadn’t got any sleep, just like me.
I was again fully alert and paying attention to any weird thoughts and one eye always on her horn, just in case.
Well, whatever…
Stepping to the side, I invited her to my room. Now with some slight reverence for this arcane yet relatable creatures. I could probably put my mind to work on something so the loop of them being centuries old, me missing my home, and general depression could be broken somehow.
She went straight to the point.
After showing me a picture of an angry face, a scared one and a sad one, she taught me the respective words, and then pointed a hoof at me.
*Angry, sad, scared?* she asked.
*No* I replied.
“Neigh *angry, sad* snort *scared.* It sounded more like a statement, and then pointed at the paper about numbers and ages. Then said something more and put a hoof on my shoulder in what I assumed was a comforting gesture.
I could only look down. She knew it, something about yesterday’s session bothered me.
*New… Old… me* She said, then drew the offending three-digit long number.
*New old you?* She asked and passed the quill to me to write it down, and I did in my own human Arabic numbers. I felt insignificant.
After some analysis, Smartylocks seemed baffled. There was something weird with my number. Showing the paper with the dots, she asked again something I didn’t understand, but it had something to do with the dots.
Oh, probably she couldn’t still understand my script that well yet.
I put the number of dots corresponding to my age, and passed it to her. She counted them diligently, tapping a different hoof in turn to the floor as she bobbed her head counting each dot, then scratched her head with a hoof.
*How many?* She showed me the number for her age.
I sighed and started to put dots down, there were over a hundred to put, so this would take a while. At certain point, about the number fifty she started to scowl at me and took the quill away with her magic. She then did it herself and let me count, and it didn’t make any sense…
We went back to our little research papers to find out what was wrong, and only then I noticed something. We only had touched the pony symbols for numbers from zero to three. I took that paper again and then wrote down the rest of the numbers with their respective dots. She looked very surprised at that. Smartylocks then proceeded to add the symbols for the rest of the… WAIT… two symbols for the number four?
They count in fours.
They don’t use base ten, they use base four because they have four legs to count.
That’s it. I had been shocked for the rest of the evening after Purplesmart made that statement about her age being just less than two centuries. I couldn’t concentrate anymore in the lessons they were giving to me. Not that there was much left of the day, but still.
That being said, if they count in fours, their tens are actually four and that makes their centuries just sixteen. If Purplesmart said she was less than two centuries old, and I suppose that she is older than one century, she is actually between sixteen and thirty-two years old. That’s an awfully big margin to begin with. The only useful information is that if she is relatively young for their species, they should live about the same number of years as a human then.
I continued checking my notes about months, weeks and years now having in mind their base for the numbers and doing the right conversions, now it made more sense. Seven days a week, twenty-eight days a month, exactly four complete weeks and thirteen months, that makes a year of 364 days long for them…
Heh… little they know that it’s actually around 365.25 days a year, but for a primitive calendar like that it’s quite accurate. I will have to do some research in their calendars, I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting subject, and it will blow their minds if I tell them why it is like that. Maybe they do know and have their own methods to compensate that I’m not aware of because the explanation they gave me was so basic.
Unless of course I’m not on the planet Earth and their years are different, but the uncanny similarities between the places I know and this one makes it hard to believe that I’m on another planet. Furthermore, I would expect to be hearing about crazy year lengths like 700 days or 100 days a year, and most certainly the days wouldn’t last 24 hours, because one of the few things that kept consistent was the time I was able to measure with my phone’s clock. Except from the funky thing the sun did (Sun, you are still in my book of grudges for that), days were 24 hours long according to my phone, because the sun set at the same time, and my phone measured 24 hour-long days.
Finally, after some more scribbling with my quill and some note taking, I decided that enough was enough and then hided all my stuff again and went to bed. Probably the only way to go back home was to communicate with these creatures and ask for my way back, or probably ask for clues, maybe work together in finding again the regular human civilization because they looked like they had no idea. Anyways, I was stranded here no matter what, so I decided that I should let it go, relax and sleep.
One last thing before saying goodbye to the purple pony was the realization that Smartylocks had the same number of dots as I had for our ages. She laughed at the realization, like a real laugh, not a horse noise.
I had heard these little equines kind of laugh before, but not this close and not this openly… I could close my eyes and just imagine it was a human girl laughing, the sounds were almost identical, except for a little weird undertone.
She extended her hoof in what I thought was the equivalent to a handshake, but they had no hands. After thinking about it I used my fist to bump her hoof and that seemed to satisfy her.
I still don’t trust you, Locky… I’ll keep you too in my book of grudges for now. I frowned at her for the most part of our interaction, I actively tried to, because these creatures were so adorable it was easy to get lost in that groove and forget about mind reading aliens.
When it became too awkward, she finally decided that enough was enough and left me to my own devices. And speaking of devices! Yes… still secured under my bed. Still no signal.
***
Princess Twilight had to catch up with a lot of stuff, especially with the friendship lessons for Starlight Glimmer. Because of that, the creature was left to himself for the most part of the day. At this point, Twilight realized that she wouldn’t be able to teach the being how to talk and at the same time keep up with the lessons for Starlight and… all the other princess stuff that was starting to come. And a presentation Princess Celestia asked Twilight to do in Canterlot. So, the following day went as usual for her, nothing relevant or different to talk about, just stressful.
She had been able to teach the creature some maths, and that was probably because he seemed to already know them, but any attempt at teaching him anything else was frustrating. They were able to teach him a few words and that took too much time and work. Neither of them were actual teachers, well, maybe Twilight kind of was becoming one, but more like a high level teacher, not one to teach someone who couldn’t even talk. She wasn’t a language teacher either, they needed a specialist in the matter.
Cheerilee was the mare they needed. Her special talent was teaching and she worked as the ponyville’s teacher for foals of all ages. Most certainly she would be able to take care of the creature. Gosh, they needed to give it a designation, or a name, or something like that because ‘the creature’ was getting old very quickly.
That same day, before getting lost in her duties, Twilight couldn’t resist, and after breakfast, she went into the library to reshelve all the books that she had used the previous days. While doing that, she decided to mentally gather all the information she already had about the creature. In her research frenzy she had missed a couple of obvious clues that would lead her to new paths.
Minotaurs, centaurs and other creatures like catfolk and other biped beings from overseas seemed to have something in common, but the original root was lost to the sands of time. Maybe this creature came from the same branch of ancient beasts. He was like a minotaur without the bull part, and looked like a centaur without the equine part. On the other hoof, he had some similarities with monkeys or apes.
After lunch, Twilight had a session with Starlight Glimmer to review her progress, and she would be very busy with all the new assignments. In the afternoon, after Twilight had compiled her thoughts, she decided to call the creature ‘Apetaur’ for now, and she went to his room with the intention of taking him to Cheerilee. She had a lot of bureaucracy to catch up to, so she would be unable to investigate any more for a couple of days.
Twilight gently knocked three times on the room’s door. A sudden noise of scrambling was the response for a few seconds until the door burst open and the apetaur smiled awkwardly down at her.
*Hello.* Twilight greeted him very slowly and waved a hoof at the same time.
*Hello.* He repeated.
*Go outside.* Twilight tried to explain pointing at the exterior through the window. He looked at the window with a puzzled expression, then back at Twilight.
*Come.* Twilight motioned for him to follow. *Go outside to meet a pony*
*…to meet a…?* He repeated part of the phrase, mostly butchering the harmonics, but still looked clueless.
*Go outside. Other pony.* Twilight tried to oversimplify her phrase and it started to lose meaning even for her.
*Walk.* She said while pacing in circles. *Outside.* And then pointed to the exterior through the window.
Finally the apetaur produced a sound of realization and seemed to understand what she was saying. She smiled and started to walk away towards the door, only to realize that he was not following her.
“Let me get ready.” He made some of his complex noises without any harmonic pattern and then went to the bathroom and closed the door.
Twilight groaned in frustration. *Gah, stallions are always the same…*
***
Purplesmart kind of told me that she wanted to go out with me, so I went to the bathroom and made myself presentable. At least as much presentable I could be after a few days without shaving and without deodorant or any other supply. Anyway, I washed myself a little bit and put on one of the outfits that Squiggletail made for me.
We went through the quaint town. The ponies there were already going back home after a day of work and hardly noticed me. The ones who did though, stayed as far away as possible from our path.
We arrived at a cute little schoolhouse. It was a relatively small building, hardly bigger than a regular house and had a little playground as a garden. Purplesmart knocked on the door.
After a minute or so, just as the purple mare was going to knock again, the door opened, leaving Purplesmart with a hoof raised and knocking on the air. A dark pink pony with a two-toned hair that was just two shades of pink slightly lighter than her fur coat was on the other side, she looked at us with bright green eyes. For the shape and size, it looked like a girl-pony.
The mare smiled tiredly at Purplesmart and greeted her, and then she wearily looked at me with a questioning look. After that, they chatted a bit in their language, way too fast for me to understand. The new mare’s smile was getting more and more awkward, taking fast glances at me from time to time as the purple winged unicorn explained something to her.
After a few minutes exchanging pony words, Purplesmart asked a question and Smiley nodded, still smiling awkwardly. After that, the purple mare waved at me and turned away. I tried to follow her but she stopped me and pushed me back a little with a hoof, then pointed at the other mare.
*Goodbye.* Purplesmart said, then she trotted away, leaving me behind with just the other unknown pony. Smiley frowned at the other mare as she walked away. When she disappeared from sight, she sighed, then closed her eyes in concentration and suddenly looked back at me, smiling again.
The subtle bags under her eyes, her slightly messy mane and an almost imperceptible eye twitch indicated that she was not okay with this.
I just noticed the small roundish dust mark clearly visible on my dark clothes, where Purplesmart had pushed with a hoof. I awkwardly rubbed it with a hand to distract myself.
Sighing she lowered her head and motioned me to enter her house. She was obviously uneasy about me because she kept shooting nervous glances back as if I were going to attack her or something.
Smiley (She had a trio of smiley flowers for butt marking) made me sit in a worn off couch and went to another room. The interior of her house was slightly messy. There were some dirty bowls on the table and the surfaces were quite dusty. Also, there were a lot of papers everywhere, in addition to open books here and there.
She prepared some kind of drink and drank it quickly in one go, then she set the mug on the kitchen counter and groaned slightly, did it smell like coffee? After that, she took a nervous glance at me and when she noticed that I was looking back at her she smiled awkwardly. It was definitely a fake smile.
We went through a short corridor and arrived at a quaint happy go lucky classroom with a lot of tiny chairs and desks. Their regular furniture was already too small for me, so their extra small furniture for foals was too much, kind of ridiculously uncomfortable for my size. Mumbling something unintelligible, she went into her home again and came back with a regularly small chair for adult ponies that I could use in a reasonably uncomfortable way.
I realized that she was one of the normal kind of ponies, the ones without horn or wings. As she had no horn, she couldn’t wingardium-leviosa the chair and brought it with her mouth, and finally, she pushed it with her muzzle until she was satisfied with where it was.
The arrangement was similar to the one in the library or in my room. She was on one chair and I was on another, one in front of each other so that we could see what the other was writing. The regular one to one session set up.
Once she finished with the arrangement and sat on her chair, she cleared her throat and suddenly she was all cheerful again, though I could see how tired she was and how she didn’t like the idea of having to give me lessons. Probably she was still a little bit scared of me, because she was quite twitchy and jumpy at every movement I did, just to return to her smile every time, but a little bit more awkward.
Smiley opened a textbook that looked like it was designed for little children and started to go through the simple pictures in it, showing me what was what and how to say it and sometimes even write it.
I was more concerned about her wellbeing; therefore, the class wasn’t very productive. She didn’t want to teach and I was worried about her, and her always cheerful tone was sometimes too artificial and awkward.
After a couple of hours of awkwardly happy suffering, the doorbell finally rang. Purplesmart had returned to pick me up and go back to her castle. The happy and oblivious mare was waiting in front of the door. She greeted both of us and then motioned me again to follow her.
As I was walking away, I looked back at the pink mare. Sneakily gesturing at Purplesmart when she wasn’t looking, I put a hand on my brow and shook my head in an exasperated way to show how frustrating this mare was sometimes. Smiley seemed to catch the meaning of the gesture, as she snorted half amused, smirking genuinely for the first time.
Also, while Purplesmart wasn’t looking I checked my phone in the short walk back to the castle. Still no signal.