Marcus sat on his chair reading the newspaper. While reading newspapers was quite outdated, Marcus always found it cathartic to shuffle through the pages. As he continued to read about the constant troubles in the Middle East and the always climbing oil prices, his phone began to ring. He groaned, as he got up from his chair and walked over to the phone. Checking the caller id, he saw that it was Stephanie. He had met her during college and the two became fast friends due to their shared interest in animals. While she had pursued her dream of becoming a veterinarian, he had become a zoologist, but they both loved animals, so they tried to stay in touch with each other as much as they could. He would occasionally visit her as well as her husband, Daniel, who he had also grown quite close to. Finally reaching the phone, he picked it up and pressed it to his ear.
"Hello Stephanie, it's good to hear from you," he said happily.
"Same to you Marcus. I'm calling because I have an interesting proposition for you," she said.
"Oh?"
"What would you say if I told you I had three undiscovered species that show signs of sapience in my garage right now?"
Marcus just stared ahead, his face taking a look of disbelief. Stephanie was not known for one to pull pranks; still what she was saying was an outright impossibility.
"Stephanie, I know you are usually quite serious, but actual sapience, it's just not possible," he replied
She laughed "I had a feeling you wouldn't believe me, so I took the liberty of e-mailing you a few pictures, go ahead and check your computer,"
Now Marcus really didn't know what to think about Stephanie's claims, but he trusted her and knew her well enough to know better, so he walked over to his computer and pulled up his e-mail. Sure enough sitting in his inbox was an e-mail from Stephanie with over twenty attached images. He opened the first image and his eyes almost popped out of their sockets. The creature before him looked... unique to say the least. He had never seen anything quite like them before. They looked equine almost, but strangely... alien. Marcus was no expert with computers, but he assumed that it would be difficult to forge these pictures, especially when he considered that they were from Stephanie and Daniel.
"Are these real?" he asked in shock.
"Oh believe me, they're real alright. The orange one beat Daniel up pretty good," she said.
"What!?"
"Don't worry, he's fine it's nothing serious."
"... If you say so, still, this is incredible Stephanie! I've never seen anything like this." Marcus continued to stare at the images on his computer, fascinated with the images, until Stephanie interrupted him.
"How would you like to be the first, besides myself and Daniel, to get to personally examine these creatures?" she asked.
Marcus was stunned. It was a lot to take in, but this could be the most important decision of his career. He started to feel giddy at the prospect of what he had just been offered.
"Marcus? What do you say?"
"Yes! Yes, thank you! I'll be on the next flight!" he shouted enthusiastically.
Stephanie laughed "Calm down Marcus, they're not going anywhere. Just bring whatever you need and we'll see you when you get here."
"Thank you Stephanie, you won't regret this," he said.
"I know Marcus, see you soon, bye."
"Goodbye," Marcus said, hanging up the phone.
Marcus stood there with a huge smile on his face. He immediately rushed to his room and began to throw clothes haphazardly into a suitcase and began planning to schedule his flight.
* * *
"Marcus should be in on the next flight, he sounded really excited about all of this." Stephanie said.
"That's great to hear, it'll be good to see Marcus again and to finally have someone help us with these creatures."
"Oh? What about your veterinarian wife? Is she not qualified enough to handle a few wild animals?" Stephanie asked, a little anger rising in her voice.
Daniel sputtered "Of course not! I only meant-"
She giggled, "Relax, I'm just teasing. I would definitely appreciate Marcus's help, because right now all I really know is the obvious. Hopefully Marcus will have a better time understanding these ponies."
"Ponies?"
"Well, they do resemble ponies, at least vaguely, and we can't just keep referring to them as 'creatures'."
Daniel chuckled "Alright, alright, but speaking of the 'ponies' we should probably go check on them. Maybe we'll learn something useful before Marcus arrives."
"Sounds good hun."
* * *
Twilight was awoken by the sound of the door creaking open. She didn't remember falling asleep, but she must have nodded off sometime after one of the most interesting math lessons she ever had. She saw that the two bipeds had returned, and once again they had brought paper and their wonderfully advanced writing utensils. Twilight nudged Applejack and Fluttershy, with her hoof, trying to wake them up. Applejack let out a yawn but stopped when she noticed the two sitting in front of them and sat up. Fluttershy barely even stirred, so Twilight decided leave her be, after all, she had been seriously injured on top of the stress of being in an unknown area with strange unidentified creatures.
~"What should we do?"~
~"Well we know they're smart enough to understand math, so maybe we can teach them some English."~
~"Okay, but where should we start?"~
~"Why don't we just start with names and work our way up from there?"~
~"Alright, I'll go first then"~
The first creature that Twilight assumed was male turned to face them before saying something else in its guttural language.
~"Daniel"~
"What's it doing Twilight? Is it tryin' to tell us something?"
"I think it's a he."
"Whatever," Applejack snorted.
"But I'm not sure what he's trying to do,"
~"Daniel"~ He repeated making pointing motions with its arms and hands seeming to be pointing to itself.
~"Daniel"~
"I-I think he might be trying to tell us his name."
"Ya sure?" asked Applejack.
"Not entirely... but I'm going to try and respond,"
"Da-nayal," Twilight tried mimic the creature's tone and pronunciation as best she could, but it came out strange and too high pitched to possibly be correct, but she must have been close enough because both of the creatures smiled excitedly as if they had just learned that their foal had successfully used magic for the first time.
~"Wow they understand! Let me try it now!"~
The other one who Twilight assumed was female scooted closer before saying her name as well.
~"Stephanie"~ She made the same motions that the male had.
Her name was longer and even harder to pronounce than the male's name had been.
"Stef-hony" Applejack mimicked almost perfectly.
Twilight stared at Applejack, her mouth hanging open in shock. It wasn't so much the fact that Applejack had talked to the creatures to say something besides a threat, but rather the fact that she pronounced the name much better than Twilight had. Apparently the other two were just as surprised at Applejack's success, but nonetheless thrilled.
"Applejack... how did you do that?"
Applejack shrugged "Don' know, ah suppose it's just easier for me to pronounce."
Twilight would have laughed at the irony of the situation, except for the fact that this now meant it would be that much easier to establish communication with their guests, so she settled for saying "Huh, well, great job Applejack."
Applejack beamed with pride, it wasn't that she was overly impressed with what she had done, but Twilight seemed to think it was something special, "Thanks Twi, it was no big deal."
While they had been talking the male had taken the liberty of writing out a string of characters across the paper. It looked like writing, that much was obvious, but none of the characters seemed to repeat so it probably wasn't a sentence. Twilight counted up all the characters. There were fifty two in all, or maybe just twenty six, Twilight wasn't sure if the pairs of characters represented one sound or word, or whether they meant something else entirely. She watched as he then proceeded to write out two more groups of symbols separate from the others. Twilight discovered that they were both composed of symbols from the above group.
"Okay, I think I understand. I'm pretty sure that this is their alphabet, and that these two are their names," Twilight said pointing to the symbols in question.
Now that Twilight had access to their alphabet translation could really start moving. She even had some spells that could help speed up the process if she could get their two guests to let her use her magic. She still didn't know what they had against it, they clearly must have used magic in order to create their house and their fascinating tools... Right?
However, those questions would have to wait. The male began making the same gestures it had used earlier to indicate its name excepts now it was gesturing towards them.
"Oh, of course, they want to know our names," Twilight cleared her throat before clearly pronouncing her name while trying her best to imitate their punting gesture, "Twi-light Spar-kle."
"Twi-light Spr-kl," they both tried their best to mimic her name but seemed to have a hard time pronouncing Sparkle. To be honest, Twilight found the way they said her name to be a little creepy sounding. Still, she was happy that they had gotten it mostly right. Twilight nodded her head in approval.
Next, Applejack stood up and did the same with her own name, "App-le-jack."
"Applejack," they both repeated almost perfectly. Twilight didn't know if it was Applejack's accent, but somehow it was easier for the two creatures to understand the down to earth farm pony.
The female creature made the gesture towards Fluttershy, wanting to know her name as well. Applejack seemed almost happy to oblige, "Fluttershy."
"Fluttersh-ie," they said getting the pronunciation almost right, but still probably better than if Twilight had tried to teach it to them.
After they did this. The male held out it's writing utensil to Twilight. She grabbed it in her telekinesis intent on writing out the Equestrian alphabet as well as their names. Once she grabbed it, both creatures flinched, but didn't do anything else. Twilight, noticing their reaction, kept the device in mid air not wanting to frighten them, or worse anger them.
~"Wow, I sees what you mean now, that is kind of spooky, but really awesome too!"~ The assumed female chattered excitedly to her male counterpart.
~"Yeah it is, but we better be on the safe side"~
~"I'm going to touch it."~
~"What? No! That's like the exact opposite of safe."~
~"If we never take risks we'll never learn anything, this is obviously something that these creatures are used to and probably do regularly, so it stands to reason that we should try and learn as much as we can about... this."~ The female waved in the general direction of the still floating writing utensil.
~"You make a good point, but is touching the strange glowing cloud of God knows what really the best course of action?"~
~"I guess we won't know unless we try"~
The male let out what Twilight assumed was a sigh ~"Alright, just be careful."~
~"I always am!"~
The mare scooted closer to Twilight walking on her hands and knees. Twilight didn't know what to make of the current events, but decided to let them play out. She reached her hand out and touched the writing tool hovering in Twilight's magical field.
She shivered ~"Ooh, this tingles. It feels like a electricity is running over my fingertips."~
~"It doesn't hurt does it?"~
~"No it feels fine, it just tingles is all."~
~"Alright, well I think that's enough for one day,"~ The male reached up and pulled the female's hand out of Twilight's magical grip.
~"Huh, my finger's a little numb."~
~"Let's wait until we know more about whatever it is that she does, before we try anything more serious than that."~
Now that they both seemed to be done 'examining' her telekinesis, Twilight set to work writing out the Equestrian alphabet, as well as their names. She wrote the alphabet underneath their alphabet. Twilight didn't know how to feel about the fact that they had more letters in their alphabet than the Equestrian one. The Equestrian alphabet only had thirty-six letters and their alphabet had fifty-two. After Twilight had finished writing they both examined what she had written.
The creature's musing was interrupted by the ringing of bells. Twilight and Applejack looked around trying to discern where the sound had come from, but had no such luck. The creatures got up and walked to the door leading out of the room uncaring of the mystery sound. The ringing had woken Fluttershy, she raised her head up looking around.
"Oh, what time is it? What's going on?" she asked timidly.
"We're not exactly sure sugar cube, but it's definitely something," Applejack replied, trying to sound reassuring but coming across as unnecessarily ominous.
Both creatures made what seemed like calming motions with their hands before opening the door and stepping back inside.
"Well, now what?" asked Applejack.
"I guess we just wait and see."
* * *
"Damn, is it already that late?" Daniel asked.
"Well you know what they say, time flies when you're teaching a group of ponies to speak English."
"I don't think anyone says that."
"I say that," Stephanie smirked.
As they entered the entryway, Buldger was already at the door barking incessantly.
"Alright Buldger, come on, back up. It's Marcus, you love Marcus," Stephanie said, pulling Buldger away from the entrance by the collar.
Daniel opened the door to see Marcus standing there, a large duffle bag at his side.
"Hello Marcus, it's great to see you again,"
"It's great to see you too Daniel, hello Stephanie, hello Buldger."
"Hey Marcus!" Stephanie said happily.
Buldger woofed.
"Now, where are these ponies I've heard so much about?"