//------------------------------// // The More Pressing of Matters // Story: Sing Like You Can't Be Heard // by Desideratium //------------------------------// Once your day of recuperation is done with, Bon Bon doesn’t hesitate to put your nose to the grindstone. With minimal breaks, you’re lugging around heavy bags of flour, stirring a bowls of liquid chocolate with a spoon as long as your leg, navigating the horrendously-cluttered pantry to find obscure-sounding ingredients, and performing a bounty of other tasks that are far out of your comfort zone. By noon, you’re thoroughly dusted with flour, cocoa powder, and cinnamon. Your limbs are aching from the exertion; your mind once again longs wistfully for unicorn magic, anything to lighten the load. You can’t recall any other point in your short life when you had pushed yourself this hard—the trip into space now seems like a cakewalk compared to this. Your “promotion” has thrown into sharp relief how out of shape you actually are. Still, you can’t seem to wipe a goofy smile off of your face. Waiting tables was a fine job and all, but it rapidly grew monotonous. It was fairly decent pay, and didn’t require many prerequisites in order to obtain the position, but it just got dull. One of the only reasons you stayed on was because of Symphonic Keys, and the counterbalance he provided. But with your new position, you don’t catch yourself clockwatching. The work is enjoyable, if a bit strenuous. Your only coworker is witty and pleasant, if a bit demanding. The pay takes a backburner—you come to work for the fun of it. You wipe your brow, dragging your foreleg across your damp fur, combatting the sweat that had started to creep down into your eyes. In front of your face, a pale yellow note is stuck on the metal message board, trapped in place by a small magnet in the shape of a wrapped chocolate. The penmanship is loopy and ornate, and imprinted using a lavender tinted pen. Before actually taking an effort to decipher the letters thereupon, you lean forward and take a deep whiff of the odor coming off of the note, or more specifically, the writing. Your nostrils are filled with the powerful scent of the lavender ink, made to smell like the flower whose color it imitates. It can’t compare to the real thing—the scientist behind the engineering couldn’t quite match that particular odor—but it’s still relaxing. You lean back, your eyes slightly crossed from the powerful smell. The world is fuzzy; everything is just the tiniest bit out of focus—you wonder if this is what it would be like to be taking hallucinogens. You shake your head, which only makes your eyesight shakier—you really need to stop inhaling that stuff. Your brain cells are practically crying out for your cessation. The note reemerges on your field of vision, split into two separate planes that never seem to align properly. Frustrated now, you exert your full attention on that object, willing it to become legible. The note complies. The two, slightly-transparent planes slide into focus, combining with each other to make the final product. Back in a bit. Could you have a couple of cups of tea ready when I get back? Lyra’s coming over. Thanks! - B B B B as in Bon Bon. You mentally shake yourself—you had gone through such an ordeal in order to read the simple message. Then you laugh, silently berating yourself for making as big of a deal as you had over the gimmicky little scented pen. You clasp the note between your teeth and gently tug it off the magnet board, then impale it on the small spike resting on the counter, the spike poking neatly through the “o” in “couple”. It takes its place on top of a growing pile of receipts. You allow yourself to go on autopilot, preparing the tea, allowing your mind to focus on more pressing matters. Your thoughts are initially locked on your new career and the benefits it could bring, but periodically drift further and further away from what you were previously contemplating, causing you to pause and try to remember your train of thought for minutes at a time. At some points, you are so dangerously distracted by your active consciousness, that you nearly burn yourself on the hot teapot that you’re so haphazardly handling. Eventually, you give up on trying to hold on to a specific thought and let your mind wander freely. But now that you’ve permitted yourself to lose focus, it’s impossible for your mind to come up with the whimsical distractions that it was so good at producing before. Exasperatedly frustrated, you decide to place your finicky attention on the tea, given that your lapse in concentration had led to a painful red burn on your foreleg. Cursing the teapot for being so infernally warm, you grip the quickly-cooling handle with your jaw and move the container to a silver serving tray—the weight of the object in your mouth shifts with the very mobile liquid inside. You place the teapot down on the serving tray, happy to be rid of it, and move to the cupboard to retrieve some cups. The small, porcelain objects are stacked neatly on the shelf. Gingerly, you grasp them one at a time, and transfer them to the tray. Somepony taps you on the shoulder. Luckily, you had just set down the cup that you had been carrying. Otherwise, it would have dropped from your gaping mouth and shattered, and it’s a guaranteed fact that Bon Bon would not be thrilled about the mess. Even so, against your will, your mouth lets out an unbecoming yelp. Behind you, quaking with mirth, is a turquoise unicorn with a minty green mane and lyre cutie mark. Lyra Heartstrings, a longtime friend of Bon Bon’s. She waves jovially, grinning a wide, toothy smile. At her side, Bon Bon smiles pleasantly, amused by her friend’s hijinks. “Thanks, Lyra,” you say feebly. “As if my heart wasn’t already close enough to exploding as it is.” Lyra, evidently uninformed about your new state of hearing, begins to mouth out a series of words, to which you can only stare helplessly. Bon Bon let’s her go for a full sentence, then taps her on the shoulder and whispers into her ear—a useless gesture, since you wouldn’t have been able to hear her even if she had screamed it. Lyra’s eyes widen and her mouth falls slack—the perfect comical model for utter bewilderment. The sight causes you to smile, but with little mirth. You pick up the tea tray, leaning back to counterbalance the weight of the heavy liquid. After making absolutely sure that all the objects on the tray weren’t about to make a wild leap for freedom, you carry it out of the room. Lyra continues to stare after you, dumbfounded. Bon Bon follows you out, and you remark to her, “Lyra isn’t taking this quite as well as you did.” The mare shrugs noncommittally, since she doesn’t have her pen and pad with her. You are getting better at interpreting gestures, but this one is more open-ended then most of Bon Bon’s others. Lyra emerges from the back room slowly, her eyes now narrowed to suspicious slits. She advances on you, sticks her face uncomfortably close to yours. You can make out the individual strands of mint-colored hair in her mane and the slight sheen of perspiration on her upper lip. “Problem?” you inquire, moving your mouth as little as possible. The unicorn backs away, still studying your face intently for some unknown anomaly. “Guys. This conversation is feeling really one-sided.” Bon Bon reaches into her saddlebag and roots around for her channel of communication: her notepad. With a sort of triumph, she clicks the end of her pen to expose the nub. Black ink is spread across the blank page in thin lines. She writes, “Funny joke, mister.” “I’ll take my shots when I can,” you reply, shrugging. You nod in Lyra’s general direction. “You want to give Lyra a go? She seems to have a few things to say.” “Sure.” Bon Bon jabs a period after the word, and passes the paper to the minty unicorn. Lyra’s horn ignites to accept it, not looking at it immediately, since her eyes are still firmly locked on you. She takes the pen as well, the small object popping out of Bon Bon’s mouth and zooming across the room in a small black streak. Lyra presses the pad against the wall to give her a solid surface on which to write on and presses the pen against the paper. She deliberates for a moment, then starts to write. You observe her penmanship, noting that it seems very similar to Bon Bon’s, but only slightly less meticulous. Same wide, looping letters; same minute tilting to the right. Lyra finishes writing, and holds the pad vertically for you to read. The message thereupon reads: “Have you seen a doctor yet?” You shrug. “No. I haven’t figured that I needed to.” You gesture at the tea set that you had worked so hard to produce. “Would you like to sit down?” Lyra complies, sliding into the booth and scooting right up next to the wall. Bon Bon follows her, eyeing Lyra’s strange manner of sitting and shaking her head. You sit opposite the two mares, and plant your elbows on the table, looking at Lyra expectantly. She frowns disapprovingly, and lowers pen to paper again. You wait patiently, apprehensive of what venom could be forthcoming. She swivels the pad around, the words becoming legible once right side up. “I really think you should. It may not be permanent. You never know, and it doesn’t hurt to check.” “It’s permanent,” you say resignedly, a hard edge on your voice. “I don’t know how I know. . .” You hold up a hoof to stop Lyra—she had already begun to write again. “It just feels like this isn’t going to go away. Gut instinct, you know?” Both Lyra and Bon Bon shake their heads in unison. “Well, that’s just what I think. I’ll go see a professional, though, if it it’d make you feel better.” Lyra crosses out what she had written previously, and wrote a simple word instead. Even upside-down, you can see that the word is “thanks”. You nod, a quick head bob that shows that you understand. Bon Bon tugs the notepad out of Lyra’s grasp. “What now?” she writes. “I dunno. What do you want to talk about?” “A better method of communication?” Bon Bon suggests. “Okay. Shoot,” you prompt. Lyra jumps into the conversation, her magic pulling the notepad away from Bon Bon. She starts to write furiously, excitement showing on her face. You sit back, once again apprehensive. “Have you heard of sign language?” she writes. “No.” Lyra’s nose is almost touching the table, so intently is she writing. “Well, it’s something that deaf humans used to communicate. They make shapes and movements with their hands to represent words.” Bon Bon, who is reading over Lyra’s shoulder as she writes, buries her head in her hooves at the mention of the word “humans”. You laugh weakly. “Lyra?” you say. “I don’t have hands.” “I know that.” “Also, humans aren’t real.” “Yes, they are.” “No, I’m pretty sure they aren’t, but let’s not get into this argument right now, aye?” Lyra nods reluctantly, now quite ready to let the subject go. “I don’t really like the idea of sign language. Sorry, Lyra, but I just don’t think it’d work. I mean. . .” You look down at your hooves. “I mean, how could I walk if I’m using these to talk at the same time?” Lyra, for the first time since you’ve known her, seems to be at a loss for words. Not necessarily distraught, but puzzled. Interestingly enough, she doesn’t seem too concerned about the issue of communication—her face suggests that she’s thinking more about the big picture of it all. Why the deafness? You sorely wish that you had an answer for her.