Birds are chirping, the sun is shining, the flowers smell sweet, and I am having none of it. My back hurts, my legs are numb, the only reason my neck isn't a wreck is because my left arm decided to take one for the team and now looks like a gravel pit. Not really wanting to move just yet I try to clear my mind so I can get another hour or so of rest since I have a feeling that town is not going to be a hop skip and a jump away no matter how hard I wished on the stars last night. Thoughts of only being able to run for thirty seconds distract me from that goal. I recheck my heart rate and it's stable at one hundred and four, running around on new planets cataloging the species may not be super physical but I thought it would at least be better than that, maybe this and the feeling of having smoker's lungs are related.
Having failed snagging a few more minutes of relaxation I get up to start my day the right way, eating the apple that was spared last night and dreading having to find more food. Staying here doing nothing, no matter how relaxing, is only going to depress me. I tell Null Set to mark this cave as Origin Point so I can make my way back here if anything goes horribly wrong. I head back to where the drawings were so I can start moving in the direction of the drag marks since that is my best lead for where civilization is.
Well the thing waiting for me on the ground there makes the decision even more of a no brainer. one of them came back to leave me a care package just waiting to be opened. Hidden inside is a backpack that wouldn't be out of place on an expedition, laden with stuff. Ok, I guess this isn't too odd considering large portable storage spaces with many compartments are useful in pretty much any culture, but it looks like it was made for someone of my body type, not a pony's. Opening the main pouch I find more apples, oranges, carrots, a smattering of other edible plant life, and hay for some reason. I roll my eyes when I see flowers in here as well, roses specifically, for that romantic evening with my newfound girlfriend, Lefty. The next one contains a large filled water bottle, an actual sports bottle, why would they invent this? Hooves are not useful for unscrewing the cap to fill this, there's even a handle! A canteen with a simple stopper sure, hell even a camel pack wouldn't be far fetched, it's like they were expecting... to accommodate a minotaur. Great, now I feel like an idiot. Pouch three containing a blanket and pillow almost brings tears to my eyes. Lucky number four has a compass alongside a map of the region and my new favorite game, guess what the pictures mean.
The quality of these pictures is much better than the simple figures drawn yesterday. If it was Ayla again having time makes all the difference I guess. First up is me wearing the backpack looking like a true mountain man full of confidence standing on top of said mountain, yeah no, I am not going to be scaling mountains for the fun of it. Though I must say if I really look that good doing it I just might climb one solely for the photo op. Message number two is the compass and map together showing that there is the same mark on both pointing to the same direction and that if the compass is turned the needle will not move with it, very handy and not too complicated to understand if we didn't already have the same invention. Number three is a representation of the map with arrows going in four directions starting from the bottom right corner. Three arrows leave the map completely and have question marks at the end of them, so species names and now punctuation have the same meanings, anything else and I am going to have my head examined just to make sure a Babel fish hasn't already taken up residence in there. The last arrow points into the middle of the map along with a six sided star, an apple, and a cloud shooting a lightning bolt. The star I recognize as Ayla's tattoo, I would say the apple means more food but that seems redundant. I vaguely remember Cowboy having an apple tattoo, so that leaves the bolt signifying the pegasus that nearly one shot me. The final picture is four of me heading out in all directions, one towards a desert, one to a forest, one climbing a mountain, and one heading into a town.
So basically here's some stuff, have some navigation tools, our home is on the map, and head off in whatever direction you feel like. I check the map to see if the area is really that diverse and it looks like I have a downsized map. Ayla was kind enough to mark Origin Point for me and it is sitting on the south eastern corner of the map. It looks like someone took a town map, plastered it over the dot that would point it out on a map of the region, and cut the rest away only leaving the surrounding area. Examining the town I find Ayla's Tattoo somewhere near the middle of town and Cowboy's on top of a farm, fitting I suppose. Checking it over three times just in case I have selective blindness I can't find Rainbow's place of residence, maybe it was a cloud and a stiff breeze made her homeless, good. The image of her on the streets about once a week warms my heart to no end. Then again it is only an easily replaceable building material. I'm already thinking of clouds as building material, who am I and where am I keeping my sanity hostage? There are three other symbols on the map, a butterfly on the northern edge of town near this seemingly endless forest, a gem close to the western edge of town, and a blue balloon surrounded by Ayla, Cowboy, and the butterfly. Well this is irritating, I was going to try and make my way there anyway but this is just telling me, “Either strike out into the unknown or come into town to see us.”
I eat some of the provisions and pick off the rose hips before I toss the hay and the rest of the rose parts. After cleaning out my new backpack I synch Null Set with what way is north and have it store the map so I don't need to waste time pulling it out and putting it away. As I put on the pack the macho part of me speaks up with a good amount of disdain, “I don't need no one telling me what to do or where to go. I'm going to head out on my own,” complete with visions of conquering the planet. That part of me gets shut down before even taking a step, going into the unknown alone and unarmed is a great way to end up with a distinct lack of a heartbeat. At least heading into town I am guaranteed two living beings will not try to kill me and the rest will hopefully leave me alone, be terrified of me, or be awestruck. The last option of most being hostile leads to me being chased by ponies with torches and pitchforks. It might be good cardio but it ends with me being stabbed and put aflame. The last thing I do before heading out is grab the drawing stick. its the perfect length to also be used as a walking stick and if something comes along I can aim for a vital spot more easily and with less risk.
I give up, it's been around five hours of following the forest with nothing to show for it. My, "Town is close by slow down but keep moving," mantra has failed me. It didn't look that far on the map. Before my legs fall off or my lungs and heart explode I need to get comfortable for a bit to rest. Making my way to a tree on the edge of the forest I wrap one arm around it so I can catch my breath for the next part. After a few moments I shrug off my backpack and set it down. Freed of my burden I get rid of my shirt to hang it from a branch in the sun so it can dry off while I take a break. Using my new blanket to make sure nothing embeds itself in my back as I sit at the base of the tree. Slipping more into an expedition mindset I have Null Set start up my night watch routine to boost ambient noise while making it impossible for me to fall asleep. I may not get as much rest out of doing this but since I'm alone and mostly defenseless not being surprised could mean the difference between getting mauled and getting mauled while giving my attacker a bloody nose. Time to zone out and listen to nature for two hours.
An unholy cacophony plays from out of nowhere, panic sets in, my heart is hammering, and I nearly break the sound barrier with how fast I scramble to get away from what's right behind me. I make it to the edge of a nearby river as the music fades and the actual message starts to play out, “Rise and shine Lind, your first trip into the caves and already terrified of nothing, what would your mother say. Speaking of your mom, I do hope you can find something down there for her this time as well, you know how much she loves getting those exotic presents from her precious boy. If you can't top those crystals growing off the backs of those amethyst sloths from that wasteland I will be very disappointed in you. I guess I'll let you deal with waking up the rest of the crew at whatever time you ended up watching, bye now.” I can feel the smugness in that last sentence radiating from every word.
“God damn it dad, what part of this made it seem like a good idea!” I shout back at him, even if he can't hear me it still makes me feel better. I mean really, why couldn't he do something like last time? Getting Null to delete all the vowels from my notes was good, going back to replace all of them was annoying and time consuming. I'm still paranoid that I've switched a few in's and on's. This one cut five years off of my lifespan and gave me a few gray hairs. I am going to find a way back home if for no other reason than to strangle my dad for this.
Still fuming, I kneel down to get some water, feeling how cold it is I figure I may as well take a dip to get cooled off. Going back to my rest area I grab everything and move back to the river. Before wading into the river I soak my shirt, wring it out, and hang it from a nearby branch to dry. The river only comes up to my waist but I am lucky enough to find a boulder to sit on that lets the water reach just below my neck. As the water washes away the sweat and dirt I calm down about the prank my dad pulled, after all it did only do what Null usually does for me. Just at a level far above what I would have liked. Finally able to relax I take in the scenery around me. The water here is crystal clear with nothing in it, no fish, no logs, no anything but me and river rocks. The trees stretch into a canopy far above my head with streaks of light breaking through at just the right angle with the forest floor to give off a soft natural glow to the whole area, feeling like the perfect place to come to just so you can feel connected to nature. No animals are in sight but the birds are singing a melody that further enhances the serene feeling I get from this place making me wish I could stay here for a few more hours. After ten minutes I regrettably get to the bank and dry myself off with the blanket quickly so I can get redressed and moving again. Just not before taking another ten minutes to eat, refill my water bottle, and enjoy the view a little longer. One final thing to take care of as I shoulder my backpack one more time, “Null Set, mark this place as Serene Glade.” This is one place I will definitely be coming back to for a nice day away from everything.
Back on the trail my thoughts wander back to other jokes he's pulled. Back on Crater, the wasteland planet of sadness, misery, and crushed dreams. He had Null Set set up a HUD that identified everything we had as ( _____ of the last resistance of man). Overgrowth was the most annoying one, having a mosquito buzzing around your ear is bad, having it happen so often it becomes white noise can drive a man insane. At least he had the decency to program it so it stopped when I tried to sleep.
Bringing myself back to the present, I focus on what happens next. Most of the time when I went around looking at new animals I did it from far enough away. Now, I'm heading straight into a town of them hoping that nothing bad happens. I need to learn, “I come in peace,” as fast as possible.
Once that hurdle gets jumped, I wonder if there's a way to bottle magic, if it could heal me that simply, imagine what it could do for stuff even more serious. Or stop aging, immortality can't go wrong can it? Ok, I'm getting out of control. First I need to meet them, then I can fantasize about having magic powers.
Three hours of walking and distracting myself I figure it's about time for another break. Now that I have gotten at least a little used to carrying something on my back again I don't collapse when I stop under a few trees isolated from the rest of the forest. It's starting to get late, so I will go look for a suitable place to settle down for the night since making it to town in the dark is unlikely.
Fifteen minutes after settling down at the tree I hear something making a bunch of noise, glancing around it turns out it's Cowboy hauling a cart. She doesn't see me so I try to get her attention by giving a little shout, “Hey Cowboy, over here,” she is startled a bit and looks everywhere for the noise, I make myself more noticeable by waving my arms around over my head. She quickly unhitches herself and comes over and looks glad to see me alive and well. She stops a few yards short and tips her hat before saying something.
“Howdy there,we didn't think ya would come here after it started getting late,” After a second she remembered that I can't understand a word she said and stopped whatever she was going to say next. I use the lapse to pull out the map from one of the pockets in my backpack.
Unfurling it I put the map in between us on the ground and point to where Ayla's mark is and drag it back towards the farm. Even if she can't understand what I say I ask anyways, “You think you can get unicorn here so I can try talking to her again?” she seems to get it as she looks right at me, waves me down to stay put, and jogs out of sight over a low hill. A few seconds later I hear a much louder yell than what I gave.
“Rainbow get outta my trees and get over here. Stay low on the ground too.”
I hold my ground for now, if she decided to call for the militia then I'm screwed anyways. It takes a good five minutes before she returns. She motions to follow her after hooking the cart back up. Our final destination is a barn, one that has seen better days... and months.
The inside is much safer looking with no rusted broken tools and a solid support structure. Someone needs to paint the outside, condemned is not a good look. I help her put away the apples so we can get to the next place faster. Cowboy is content to wait however, so in order to pass the time I grab an orange from my pack and start tossing it in the air. Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. I finally get bored of this after who knows how long and decide to eat my fruity toy.
“AJ, are you two still in there?” someone says from outside.
“Yeah, there's still some stuff I need to do. So take over watching him for me will ya?” Cowboy replies as we both get up and move around before Ayla makes her way inside.
She comes in hauling a covered cart and a whiteboard, they have those here? Cool, let's give this thing a spin, “Null Set, hook me up with a whiteboard marker,” I command as I feel the static charge build in my right index and middle fingers. When I get to the board I start trying to write the word test to see if it works, much to my disappointment, it fails completely and I feel a bit dumber for thinking they had the same kind of whiteboard. I can't keep the dejection from my voice as I stop the static, “Null Set, cancel whiteboard marker.” I don't even bother trying to keep my voice down at this point, I can say I feel like hunting down and eating the flesh of you lesser animals and none of them would panic if I managed to keep a happy tone to it. Luckily two markers senses the tone I used and floats from the covered cart over to me and Ayla. Wow this is old school.
I grab one and the other continues to hover around Ayla, I gesture to the board giving her the first chance to draw something. She starts with the sun, three of them in fact, being connected with an arrow pointing from the left one to the middle and from the middle to the right. Under the left one she draws herself, Cowboy, and Rainbow sitting on a hill looking off into the distance, the middle one is her alone on top of the hill, and the right one is her dragging this big ass whiteboard. After that, she draws me under the first one with a question mark next to me. The only reasonable thing that could be is she's explaining her day and asking what happened to me. I erase everything but the suns and draw me walking, and walking, and walking to the barn. She's looking at me slightly confused, as if she can't comprehend me taking so long to get here if all I did was walk.
As I reach out to start erasing everything an eraser starts its job and wipes the rest away. Ayla points to me with her marker and motions over to the board, giving me the chance to draw a question. I was expecting a barrage of questions, not this, but hey whatever works. Since its been bugging me for a while now I draw my cave and the box that was there this morning. I want to know how it got there so early. The reply is more involved than I needed. Ayla here put it together at night along with the other two, then Rainbow flew it out to me. I hope air mail isn't expensive here.
The eraser again makes a clean slate and we are back to Ayla asking away she takes a quick look at me and then draws my ear with Null Set in it, draws an arrow to it and places a question mark. Really, you can't wait until we understand each other before going for that one? I facepalm as I try to think on how I can possibly put this into a drawing. I guess I could draw everything that Null Set can do, but that would take a long time and I don't think they have half of those things here anyways. I can't simplify him down enough to draw effectively after five minutes and I just give up. Ayla recognizes that I am stumped by just erasing the question. To her credit, she takes the fact that I failed at describing Null Set pretty well and instead of asking something else, she lets me have my second question.
As fun as letting my stunted artist free is, I think we should try to actually try to speak to each other. I draw my mouth open with lines coming out of it and a pony ear listening in, then I do the opposite with a pony mouth speaking into my ear. Damn, she's about as lost as I was a few minutes ago. I think I can save this, I draw three crude pony shaped blobs around the voice lines adding wings to one and a horn to another. As I point to them I say their species name out loud, “Unicorn. Pegasus. Earth pony.” Taking it a bit further I continue naming other species names from mythology, “Dragon. Griffon. Hydra. Cockatrice. Basilisk. Manticore. Garuda. Cerberus. Dryad.” Come on, understand that all I want is a way to speak to all of you.
Ayla suddenly has her marker spring to life, drawing a pony on one side, me on the other and a line separating the two. Under the pony she writes something that wouldn't be out of place in the Hebrew language and says, “Harpy.” Oh right, actually writing down words would have helped, but I was thinking of verbal communication only when drawing mine. Oh snap, we are going to build an entire dictionary word by word.
“Null Set, begin a translation sheet, tie together the word immediately before the trigger, me snapping twice in quick succession, and the foreign word that comes after. Whenever a foreign word is spoken that has been translated do it automatically for me.” The double speak that I know will happen because of that last command will be worth it since it means I understand stuff. I write down harpy and instead of writing down and speaking another species name to continue the name game with words we share I grab my backpack to pull stuff out of. When I return not only is there a marker floating around, there's also a quill, some ink, and a piece of paper. How did it take me this long to put together that it is Ayla making the marker move and not some piece of tech? It takes a solid half an hour but we nail down all of the items in the backpack along with a few basics.
As darkness overtakes the barn I tell Ayla that I'm going to sleep so I can get some time to myself but she stops me and starts drawing one last thing for the night. It's another map of the area and basically she wants me to go to her house to sleep. As much as Morgan and her “romance” novels seem to think otherwise, no, I don't think she's bringing me home to hide me in her special little love dungeon to share me with her other playthings. It's only been two days and sleeping inside, hopefully on a bed as well, sounds so fantastic I almost don't hesitate to go. Then I envision being stampeded by a bunch of mob ponies and being set aflame. I express these concerns via picture as best I can much to the horror of Ayla. Eventually we strike a deal that I will head over there with her once everyone else falls asleep. Ayla pulls out some more ink and paper, along with a small floodlight of all things from the covered cart.
Urging my plans for relaxation to push forward as I start listening to some music and open up a book that I downloaded for those times where the caves ran too deep to get a signal. Cowboy comes bearing gifts not too long after we start our own activities, those gifts turn out to be apples, why am I not shocked. What does shock me are the variety of apples and apple based foods, if it's possible to be addicted to a food I think I found compelling evidence for it. Ayla expresses her thanks and digs in, I on the other hand, just grab a few fresh apples and eat those. Cowboy starts saying something and waves over the cooked offerings so I'm guessing she wants to know why I don't get some of them.
Even if she doesn't understand a word I give it a try, “Because I have no idea what's in them Cowboy. This, I am reasonably sure is just a plain old apple,” I say as I grab another one, as odd as having familiar food here is, “but even if those appear to be delicious apple based foods,” as I wave my arm over said foods, “I have no guarantee that the way they are made will not poison me in some fashion,” as I grab my gut and bend over as if in pain. Cowboy just gives me a flat look while Ayla stops the situation from going south fast. Ayla tells her of our plans since I hear the words sleep and midnight pop up. Cowboy says her goodbyes and we go back to our respective pursuits for a few more hours.
Walking through town is eerie, it's almost as if I'm in a small village on a fledgling colony and I just so happen to be an extra foot or so taller than the settlers. We pass by a giant gingerbread house that really makes me want a good brownie with caramel sauce, or a cinnamon bun with honey. As soon as I get distracted thinking about everything sweet a chill wind blows causing me to snap out of my sugar induced trance and shiver a little. Ayla walks right up to a giant tree with a telescope coming out of it. A literal tree house, nifty, I follow her inside. Holy hell that is a lot of books. It looks like one of those libraries my dad told me were a big thing before all of it went digital.
As she leads me to a door I wonder if any of the books here were made with the tree we are now inside. The light turns on downstairs and much to my surprise it actually is a love dungeon. All of the equipment here is for the pleasure of mistress science. I always figured magic and technology were at opposite ends of the spectrum but I only got here yesterday so what the hell do I know. Microscopes, vials, a lie detector, if it screams science back home its probably here as well. The scant minute I use to take all of this in is enough for Ayla to pull together some blankets and a pillow arranging them on a table large enough for me to not have anything dangling off of it.
Before she disappears to the top of the stairs I express my gratitude, “Thank you for everything so far, healing me, giving me supplies, and giving me a place to sleep for a night. This has the potential to be the most positive first encounter thanks to you.”
She actually replies with something mostly unintelligible that will hopefully be unraveled soon, “I still can't understand most of what you're saying. Go to sleep, we are going to need all the energy we can get.”
Once she closes the door I grab everything from the table and set up an area on the floor to sleep. Ayla might be nice, but sleeping on a table in a lab is just inviting nightmares of being vivisected. I turn off the light and fall right to sleep, tomorrow is going to be a very long day.