//------------------------------// // 23- Comfortable routine, at long last! // Story: Still No Signal // by Axel Azabash //------------------------------// Routine was a nice achievement. After the ponies realized in what kind of situation I was in, I was allowed some more freedom. The arrangement continued to be the same, though. I lived in a guest room in Purplesmart’s crystal tree castle for the next few days. I would love to have conversations with the locals, and I bet some of them wanted to talk to me, a green horned one even got really curious and followed me here and there. Purplesmart tried to engage in conversations about my origins, but all we could provide were some sketches and some differences about our languages, and many things like cars or airplanes were so foreign that I needed a better understanding of their language before attempting to explain more advanced concepts and abstract ideas. It could be done now, but it was frustratingly difficult and I decided to postpone it for the disappointment of the purple menace. They didn’t even get the correct approach about my language. Every time I tried to show them one of my own words, they tried to replicate the pitch, cadence, intonation and musicality of the relatively plain sound for them in English, not the English word itself, and I didn’t have enough horse words to explain what they were doing wrong; therefore, it was just plainly awkward for all parts involved. So, I focused on my language lessons. After a couple of days, I started to learn about verb conjugations, very simple structures, actually. They didn’t use irregulars, they just added something to the verb root to signal the person, and then something at the end to indicate if it was present, past or future. Slight variations of the present, past and future made more advanced conjugations, but in the end, if you knew the rules, all of the sounds were the same modifications of the originals. It took some time to fine tune my ears to the subtle variations in intonation and pitch, but in the end, it just needed some practice like any other language. The teacher pony helped a lot in that regard. In the mornings I would stay in my room or go to the library to study the language, then in the afternoon I would go to the teacher and review my progress. She was kind of impressed about my advancements. I guess knowing more than one language already made it easy to learn another one, and this one was literally designed be catchy. Another thing to consider about my situation at the beginning. They all communicated using that language, and it was based on singing more than articulating the sounds. Probably my language was so alien to them they didn’t even recognize it as such. And I was completely unable to isolate anything in particular about their tongue until I started to focus on the pitch, rhythm and intonation. Probably, part of why they treated me as an animal was because they thought the sounds my language used were not a language at all. Even if Smiley the teacher got impressed by my progress, it was kind of a natural development for me. Being used to learn much more complicated languages, this one was really easy to remember as long as you were good at singing. I was not, but I got better quickly. You didn’t need skills or a particularly good voice, as with songs, you could always lower your intonation to a more comfortable one and the changes, rhythms and musical notes would still be equivalent. The language WANTED to be known. No irregulars, no weird combinations, really predictable and very simple grammar. It was like Esperanto but made with music, the ultimate easy to learn language. I was still unable to investigate its origin, but it seemed like a specifically developed common language (all the creatures I’ve met so far spoke it), more like the work of a group of scholars and taught to the population through generations. Not at all like a language that evolved and changed and got twisted and turned to become a thing. Not this one, this one seemed engineered. Such a language would require a stable teaching applied through years… even generations… It was an accomplishment on its own. I’m not a linguist, but I’m a curious person, and different languages use different structures, some of them have very difficult verbs, like Spanish, others had an enormous variety of symbols, like Chinese, others were hard to pronounce, and so on. This one is like getting the easy traits of all languages (easy grammar, limited symbols, predictable structure…) and turning it into a song. Or maybe I’m just paranoid and the ‘hard’ part of this one is learning how to sing it… Whatever… As a mnemonic, I started to speak in plain English, but using the musicality of the pony language. Some words were longer or shorter, so I would have to artificially extend some words, like repeating the same vowel a couple of times to get the right musical notes in place, as any singer would do. This way, I could speak in both English and Pony at the same time, and it made remembering words extremely easy. Wait… by using different channels for communication… you can actually SPEAK your original language at the same time as you speak the pony one! Was that intentional too!? After a week of intense study, I was able to remember around twenty different verbs with the respective conjugations and around a hundred other words, so I could start forming really basic sentences, not just repeating patterns and memorized formulas, and if the teacher spoke deliberately slow and used only the words I knew, I was starting to understand what she was saying with a complete meaning, not just spare words. At this point, I started to understand the name of some of the ponies. For example, Purplesmart was actually called Sunset Twinkle, or something like that. Smartylocks was called Light of Star… err… Twinkle, but with other words. The white one who made clothes for me was called Rare Thing, and Yellowings was Timid Wingbeat. The teacher pony was called something to do with cheerful and more things I couldn’t understand, so she got just Cheery. The orange mare with the cowboy hat was Apple something, her little sister Apple Flower. The blue one with the rainbow was Rainbow Run, the pink one was something Pie, and so on. They hang around a lot, so I got to interact with them quite a bit, but not as much as I would have liked. They talked a lot about me, by the look of it. Their gestures were very relatable and easy to read once I got used to them and learned to read their tails and ears, but not always I was able to figure them out, not yet. *** “Sixteen apples for… tree Bits…” I said. “Here you go…” She answered, giving me a paper coin that I recognized as a four-bit one. “Thank you very much, here.” I gave her a one-bit paper coin back. “Well done! You are a natural at this.” Cheery praised me. “Yeah… I’m cheap too.” She snorted a snicker. “You mean… your apples are cheap.” “No difference.” “Yes difference! You different from apples.” She explained with yet simple words. “Me good at apple, I’m best apple, also cheap.” I replied. “Come on! You know this already; how can you mess this up!?” “By trying really hard?” I teased. She hid her muzzle under her fetlock and looked away, but I could see the smile through her act, and her barely contained snickers. After a moment, when she recovered, she looked back at me with her lips pursed to prevent the curl of a smile. “You fail test.” She said. “So, me get good marks at failing, me very good at failing.” I proclaimed triumphantly. A very loud snort scaped from her barely contained mirth, she broke down in a fit of giggles. “You tell Sunset that…” “Will totally do.” Yeah, that will totally discombobulate Purplesmart. “You free from me soon. Sunset come for me.” “No worry, I’m fine, I’m having fun teaching.” Cheery said. “I’m worst children.” She snorted and pushed my shoulder with a hoof. As friendly as the gesture was, hooves are hard, and ponies without horn and wings are strong, so it was a slightly harder hit than I expected and made me flinch a little. “Yes, yes you are…” We remained like that for a while. After a few classes, we ended up moving into her living room, which was surprisingly clean and tidy now. All the material for the pony children was gone, and every time I came, I couldn’t spot anything I could help her with. “House tidy and clean.” I pointed out, as another topic to practice conversation. “Yes, I clean the house and make all the chores.” She sat a little bit straighter. “Dishes…” I said as I looked to the kitchen. “Done!” She answered, looking at me with a… challenging stare? I looked around. Yep, the house was in pristine condition. “Do you need help?” I asked, I wanted to somehow compensate her for her efforts teaching me. “Nope! I can do it myself! No problem at all.” “Problem the first day. I helped.” She visibly deflated, like physically struck, but quicky recovered. “Bad day, not always. I’m very good at chores. My house is always tidy. You are a guest, don’t worry about my chores.” “Really?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “Really!” She straightened again and puffed out her chest fluff. These ponies do that a lot, and I had to resist messing with said fluff. “I don’t believe you.” I told her and she almost got a coughing fit and snorted indignantly. Our lesson was interrupted by three evenly spaced, average force, knocks on the door. Purplesmart it is this time… This was getting a little bit ridiculous, now they were treating me like a lost child. There wasn’t anything to point my finger to, but I felt overprotected, and not only by Purplesmart, but any other pony always tried to make me feel good or cheer me up. This was a prime example, being escorted back and forth to the teacher’s house. There was always Purplesmart or Smartylocks with me. They let me go for a walk on my own as long as I asked for it, as I mentioned, they allowed me a little more freedom, but in general, there was always a pony offering herself to escort me here and there. And if I was alone, in time there would almost always be a pony tagging along, be it the green and white one, or the one with a rose painted on her rump (that one is as curious as a cat), or any of Purplesmart’s friends, or even the teacher would ‘we-are-heading-in-the-same-direction’ her way into walking besides me for a while… Whether they were a kind society like that to strangers or there was something more behind it, I would never know until I got a better understanding of these little equines. It was nice at the beginning, but somehow it was getting to my nerves. Now that I think about it, Cheery had been preventing me from doing any chores too, any time I tried to help her, she took me back to the couch and did whatever I was trying to help her with all by herself. How peculiar… Cheery went to open the door and let the purple mare in, and after a round of greetings, she directed her attention (and rotated her ears) towards me with a semi nervous flick of her tail. “Hello! What did you learn today?” Purplesmart asked me. “Uh… Learned about money and bits and market.” I answered. “Good, good… Did you do good?” “I’m very good at failing!” I cheerfully told her in a painfully innocent voice. “Oh, that’s very nic… wait WHAT!?” She looked back and forth between Cheery and me, and the teacher rolled her eyes. “You explain me when we go back to the castle.” Purplesmart scowled at me. “Will do!” Sunset… Twin… Shi… PURPLESMART! Was just like that… you could NOT resist to mess with her a little bit from time to time, as she was kind of obsessed with doing everything ‘by the book’. Pleasant times indeed. Little to worry about except for me being lost, probably won’t be able to see my family and friends again, and general existential dread, but I was becoming better at preventing panic attacks and keeping myself cool. Talking with Cheery usually helped, and that got me another idea… These ponies used some kind of currency, metal coins, and I didn’t have any to my name. I ought to push my own weight and find a job or something sooner rather than later, as living off of Purplesmart’s providence was becoming more and more awkward and demeaning for me. I am a hardworking and highly capable individual, damn it! But on the other hand, all my knowledge was probably mostly useless in the job market in this place, their world worked differently. But I am also an adaptable and crafty human being! I ought to adapt and overcome this situation! Nope, no internet job hunting, no social media networking, impossible to send my resume to anyone because, as you all might have guessed by this point (not that it mattered to these ponies, but old habits die hard) still no signal.