//------------------------------//
// The Strangest Minotaur 
// Story: The memoirs of Princess Brighter Skies 
// by Disembodied_Pony 
//------------------------------//

During my time in orbit around Equus, I was learning many things.  Most of which, were vital in the immediate future, the rest; were what I delved into to ward off the monotony and to distract myself from the scope of what was before me.

One of those things, was learning about the ponies culture and life.

I read small stories here and there, translated into my native tongue, though it wasn't perfect.  Utilizing the programming methods available, I had painstakingly, and slowly; built a translation matrix of printed Equish.

The ponies had an amazing library of written works, containing things which I would need in order to prosper in this new universe.  Among those, I hoped I would find advice and instruction on how to use... wings and horn.

Provided that I survived the process which would be the gateway to leaving my eroding form behind, that is.

...

Having collected copies of everything written that I could find, everywhere I could find it; My time spent in distractions, turned to reading their words.

After some months into reading the imperfect translations, frustrations in my translation comprehension pushed me to try learning their alphabet.

Doing so had led me to another point of contention; Pronunciation.  Of which I had no mappings to.  The sounds that I recorded them making via covertly deployed monitoring devices, had no connection to what their written words were.

I had the written, and their assembled dialogs, however no mappings between the two.

I needed somepony to actually speak it out to me.  To demonstrate what sound the letters made.  Even the ponies printed phonetics were beyond my comprehension.

...For how would anyone know what sound the letter "a" makes, without another making it first, and pointing to the symbol that it represents?

Sure they had letters that worked like the letter "a", however they might make an "ql" or an "ng" sound when spoken?

Such was my conundrum, and my next step in trying to understand the natives here.



And so entered; Posy Meadow, the only pony to ever see a human in the flesh.





With my thoughts wandering back to this puzzle from time to time, I eventually devised a plan that I wasn't sure would ever bear fruit.

That plan was to use the ships sensors to monitor the wild-lands outside of the ponies villages and small towns, in hopes that somepony would wander into them.  Admittedly, I'm not proud that this plan depended on a pony coming into harms way while abroad inside the confines of the woodlands, however it was the best plan that I could assemble.

Having set the computer to monitor those areas, I instructed it to alert me should a pony encounter specific non-ponies while there.  Specifically keeping watch for a threatening situation where a lone pony would be in need of rescue or evacuation.

More than a year had passed by since I set the alert up.   Meanwhile, I figuratively banged my head against screens trying to learn how to implement genetic manipulation, where the source genetics were alien equine.  It was mostly all new to me, and simply learning the methods and tools was a grueling effort on my part.

One day while I was reading the same course chapter for the fourth time, the alert sounded and an overhead scan came up on the screen I was reading from.

There it was; a pony running through a swampland, followed by one of those large creatures with three heads; A Hydra as I came to know they were called.

I increased the scan area, and it showed that the pony was running deeper into the swampland, farther away from the nearest settlement.

From what I could tell, she got turned around and was heading into deeper trouble.

Coming to a small bog, she had plowed into it without hesitation.  Though she was making her way through it, it slowed her travel greatly.  The hydra's bulk displaced the water easily as it chased after her into the bog without loosing much speed.

The distance between them shrank at an alarming rate.

I have to admit that I panicked and initiated the transport when I saw the hydra's heads reaching for her.  Though she might have evaded them herself had I not intervened, I didn't know so at the time.

In a mere moment, the fleeing mare appeared in one of the NeminDar's transportation rooms; clean, dry, panicked, confused, and breathing heavily with her heart racing inside her barrel.





Surrounded by suddenly foreign surroundings, Posy immediately backed up against the back wall, where she looked around at everything frantically.

The strange room was big enough to be a living room, or even a small shop, but everything about it was wrong and strange to her eyes.  There were windows all over the place, small and black, except for a big one sitting in the middle of the room.  Even the lights above were bizarre, as they just glowed softly without flickering.

"Am I....did I?"  She gulped as she wondered if the hydra had gotten her, and *this* was ~after~?

After a while, she looked herself over and stepped onto one of her own hooves, eliciting a little bit of pain.

"Ah!  Okay, I'm not sleeping.  And that sure feels real?"  She said to herself.

"Is this a cave?  Am I in... Tartarus?"

Shaking her head, she thought;

"It can't be, that's for villains who get banished.  I've never.."

Shaking the thoughts of doom from her head, she then looked around the strange room again.  The room seemed unreal to her.  Scanning across the windows for daylight, she finally noticed that one had words on it.

It said;



"Hello on board"
"Ship of stars"



Her head tilting slightly working out what it could mean, she slowly approached the black window.

"Hello on a board?"  she asked herself.

"ship of stars...  I'm aboard a ship?  This isn't like any ship I've seen before...  below decks maybe?  But I don't feel any rocking?"  Posy pondered the meaning.

Reaching a hoof up toward the glass, she asked herself;

"Is it night time-already?  Why would anypony write words on a window?"

However when her hoof touched the glass, a dot formed where she had touched it, and it stayed there when she pulled her hoof away.

Thinking that she made a dirty spot on the window, she tried wiping the smudge away.  However it made the spot wider and longer into diagonal lines where she touched it.

Dismayed that she couldn't make the mark go away, she resolved to let it be.  However after a moment, she breathed onto the glass on another spot and drew the word; "Hi", adding to her unintentional artwork.

What she didn't expect, was that the word she drew, glowed a different color than the rest of the lines.  After a moment, the previous message above disappeared, and the word; 

"Hello"

 drew itself anew.

Jumping back a step in surprise, she studied the window, and the others, for any more changes.

"Does it repeat what I draw?"  she asked nopony in particular.

Thinking it over for a couple moments, she approached the glass again and used her hoof to draw the word; "Pie"

Afterward, the glowing word she drew dissappeared along with the previous message, and the words;



"Are hungry?"

  appeared.

Taking a step back, Posy looked around to see if anypony was looking through any of the other dark windows around her.

"This window must be enchanted or something?"  she thought.

Shaking her head, she spoke "no", however the message didn't change.  

After a moment, Posy wrote 'no' onto the glass, and it glowed and then returned with;



"Ask if are, visit hello"
"Drink?"



"If this is enchanted, it's not done very well.  I can barely make heads or tails of this..."  she said to herself.

She then drew the word 'water' onto the glass, but messed it up.

Scratching through it, she drew it again above the previous attempt.  It then glowed and disappeared.  A moment later, the message changed to;



"Short time"



While she pondered the meaning of the words, she heard a sound to her left.  Whipping her head to the side to focus on the sound, her eyes caught a cup appearing on a shelf built into a wall.

Looking away from the cup and back to the window, showed that the message changed to;



"Water to you"



"What is this place!  Where arm I?!"  Posy shouted aloud to the empty room, feeling like the walls were closing in on her.

She looked around the room huffing and puffing, awaiting an answer to her outburst, but none came.

Meanwhile, a human was wincing as his heart sank.  Thinking that this was going to end badly for both him and the mare in the transportation room; Trauma to the first pony he'd ever had contact with, and failure for his one chance to learn how to speak Equish.

But luckily for them both, Posy was a stalwart pony.

As the moments of silence without answer pressed on, she got ahold of her breathing and calmed herself down.
Finally back to a sense of rationality, she snorted through her nostrils and drew on the glass;

'Where Am I?'

To which the reply was;



"From creature"
"safe far"



Having worked out that she was in fact; still alive, but pony-napped far away, she wrote with renewed alarm;

'What do you want?'

What came back was;



"Help speak?"



"Help speak?...  Pony-napped from a Hydra's jaws, to... but I'm no teacher?"  she thought to herself, her head swimming at such a monumental task.

As she was shaking her head, the message changed to;



"Only sounds need"
"letters"
"short time"
"help?"



Such was my plea to Posy through the (rough) translation matrix, from another room.

She didn't give me an answer for a while.  For a time, she paced back and forth, thinking and talking to herself.  Eventually, she walked over to the cup that appeared a little bit ago, and sniffed it.

Gingerly taking a sip from it to judge it to be simple water, she drank about a quarter of it, and returned to the window.

'Are you enchanted?' she wrote.

I wasn't sure what she meant, so I replied;



"No enchanted"
"Am me"
"Stranger"



'Stranger?' she echoed, to which I told her;



"Far of Equestria away"



'What are you?'  Posy asked me, to which I faltered.  Sensing her impatience, I replied;



"..."
"odd look"



Which I followed up with a simple outline of the human form;

'A Minotaur?'  she wrote after studying the drawing image for a few moments



"no"
"Other"



Dreading the passing moments, I asked her;



"See?"



After a minute of agonizing wait for her response, she eventually nodded.

This was it, I was about to have my first contact with any living creature after years of isolation.  Of that, it was to be a first contact with another intelligent species in all of human history.

Even though I thought I was prepared for it, as much as I could ever be...  I thought I was going to loose conscienceness from the lightheadedness.



"wait"
"difficult"



I replied.

To which she asked 'why is it hard?'



"Long time to another"
"years"



I'll skip over the frantic checking myself over, and the long wait outside the transportation room door as I built up the nerve to go through the doors.

Sufficed to say that I brought a pad with me, so that I could communicate with her through the touch glass translator.

Finally, I stood in front of the doors and pressed the open key.

The doors opening with a swishing sound, Posy jumped and backed away from the doorway toward the far side of the room.  Near to where the cup of water materialized.

Trying my best to remember everything I had read about equines from my world, I kept a few things running through my mind;

1. no sudden movements, they are alarming
2. never approach a strange pony head on, as it was what a predator would do
3. remember the forces of push and draw, let a pony approach you when they are comfortable enough to.  In fact, face slightly to the side, as to appear not standoffish, and more so nonthreatening
4. keep sounds to a low intensity, avoid low octaves, or excessively high ones

Slowly raising my arm, I waved to Posy slowly.  This appeared to be a universal greeting.

Afterward, I placed my hand on my chest and slowly nodded in her direction.  I hoped this would be interpreted as a respectful bow, and not a charge.

Entering the room, I walked perpendicularly to the console in the room, which was behind the touch glass.  Touching a few of the controls, I increased the lighting in the room in hopes that Posy could see me better.

Hopefully this would subtly help her to evaluate the strange creature she found herself in the room with?

I glanced at her from time to time, finding her eyes locked onto me; studying my movements I presumed.

Turning away from the console, I crossed the room to the farthest side; From Posy's left, to her right.

Sitting down on the floor, I assumed a laying position on my side, facing the touch glass; My head propped up with my left arm.

Thinking it through beforehand, I presumed that taking a sitting position would do little more than decrease my imposing height over a pony's.  Being unfamiliar with a human, she wouldn't be able to discern whether I was sitting or springing for an attack.

A laying position however, is pretty evident that a creature is not alarmed or prepared to strike.

Tapping my pad a few times, I sent a message to the glass;



"Is me"
"Hello"



Glancing over to Posy, showed that she hadn't taken her wide eyes from me the entire time, and hadn't read my message.

Directing my gaze to the glass and nodding to it, and back to Posy once more, eventually got her to glance that way.  Eventually she realized that the message had changed.

Nervously lifting a hoof, she gingerly pointed it in my direction, to which I nodded.

Tapping a few more times, I said;



"Nice see"







After a couple hours of awkward communication, I thanked Posy by giving her a sight that no other ponies, save Luna herself had witnessed.

It was then that she realized what 'Ship of stars' meant.  I will always remember the look of wonder in her eyes as she looked at Equus from the assembly room window aboard the NeminDar.

When I transported her back to the outskirts of Ponyville, just beyond the confines of the Everfree Forest, I was terribly saddened.  I felt that I had lost a promising friend, forever...

Nearly Eighty years later, during my tutelage by the princess sisters, we met once more.  She, a pony with many summers behind her by that time, and myself; very different in form.  

I remember the day quite clearly.  I was invited to sit in the princesses court to observe.  Word spread, and many came to see the strange pony attending court with the princesses, aside their thrones.
In the audience one day; was an older mare who kept watching me intently.  Every once in a while, I'd look to the audience to see how ponies carried themselves in the presence of the rulers, and observe their reactions to their decisions and decrees.

Most were how you would expect, some eyes wandered to and from me.  However one pony just stared, as if they she were trying to remember a face, or muzzle in this case.

When the court came to a close, the other ponies filed out, however this mare came closer to the thrones.

After bowing to the princesses, she turned to face me and asked if I was from a 'ship of stars?'

When I spoke to answer her, she smiled.

And in a very forward fashion, she exclaimed;

"You look better with a coat and fuller mane, but your claws give you away.  Only one creature in all my years had claws like those.  I remember you, stranger"  she finished with a confident nod.

Stunned, I couldn't believe that this pony had sought me out after all this time.  She hadn't dismissed the event as some dream or hallucination, and connected me to the creature she had met only once. 

The other two princesses present, when asking how I knew of this mare, Posy answered for me;

"She?  Saved my life... by pony-napping me.  So in turn,I taught her how to talk"  she explained, brandishing a sly smile.

Momentarily glancing to princess Luna, Posy didn't mention the gift I gave her.  
Simply giving the princess of the night a curious wink, Posy left it to me to later explain what it was about.

The sisters giving us leave to catch up, we reminisced for hours more than the actual event lasted.  She told me about her life, her family, the 'fiction' book she wrote about a visiting Minotaur, and how nopony believed the first draft of the story she penned of it.

Posy visited the court every day I attended from that point after, and we chatted regularly now that I could converse with her properly.

I made a friend, many many decades after meeting the pony.



The legacy of that fateful trip Posy took from Ponyville that one day, is still heard now.

The smallest of that is;
To this day, my dialect remains to be of their central region, with tinges of their southern habitations influence.  All thanks to Posy's help to a strange looking Minotaur.