16: Far Away from Home
You find yourself in a foreign nation. You don’t speak their language and they don’t speak yours.
This is a sequel to The Trouble with Unicorns
“So how was your Earth vacation?” Blue Belle asked.
Cipher Splash held up a hoof and waved it in a ‘so-so’ motion.
“Oh, come on. You gotta give better than that.”
“Yeah. Tell us all about it!”
“Well, okay.” She took a sip of her cider and considered how to begin. “So, you know about the contest and all of that.”
“Yeah.”
“And—well, I guess I ought to pick up the story after everypony got kicked out of their seats. I didn’t know; I was in the bathroom.” She leaned close and lowered her voice. “’Cause the nachos they had, those were . . . well, if you’ve ever eaten Mexicolt food you pay for it later. Totally had the trots.
“I was so eager to see the end of the game, though. And it was right at the end. They have a big clock that counts down, everypony can see it, and there was time for just one more play. The Broncos had the ball at the line of scrimmage—”
“What’s a line of scrimmage?”
“It’s the place that the two teams try and defend, where the play starts. Anyway, the only chance the Broncos had was to throw a long pass, and—I was kinda caught up in the game, so I was watching from the aisleway and when the Broncos won, the whole crowd erupted and some of them were angry and I was getting nervous so I trotted back to our seats as quickly as I could, and everypony else was gone!
“I didn’t know where they’d gone; I thought that they’d just left in the time it took me to get back there.”
“Didn’t anypony wait for you?”
“Well, I wish they had. But a lot of us, we didn’t know each other. It’s not like going to a hoofball game with a bunch of your friends. Neither of you would have left me behind like that.”
“No, of course not,” Lilac Notes assured her.
“So I went out of the stadium to where our buses were.”
“That was smart. I think I would have panicked.”
“I kinda was,” Cipher admitted. “I . . . I galloped most of the way there.
“But the buses were gone! They’d left without me, and I didn’t know what to do.
“Human cities aren’t like Canterlot or Manehattan where everything is close and I didn’t know if I could walk far enough to get back to the hotel. I can’t speak any Humanish, and what were the odds of finding a human who could speak pony?
“So I didn’t know where I should go or what I should do. I knew that the buses would have gone back to the hotel—we were staying one more night before returning to Equestria—but I didn’t know how to get there.
“I did have the hotel key, though. And it’s not like a proper key; it’s a flat card with a spell in it that lets you use the elevators and get into the room, and it’s got the hotel name on it. And I had some human fiat currency, so I could afford to rent a taxi or something, if I could find one.”
“How long did you look for a taxi?”
“Well.” Cipher paused long enough to take another sip of her cider. “That was an adventure! I thought that since the stadium had lots of entrances, one of them would be for taxis. And when I was on my way there, I saw some policemen on Earth-horses, so I asked them, and they were no help at all. They whinnied politely enough, but they couldn’t understand a word I was saying. So when it was obvious they weren’t going to help, I went on my way through their big pavement pasture and back to the stadium.
“It didn’t take me too long to find the taxis—luckily, they’re yellow with checkers, just like the ones in Manehattan. But instead of telling the taxi pony outside, you have to get in first and then you can say where you’re going.
“Of course, since we couldn’t speak the same language, that was a problem. So I showed my hotel key and he got the idea, and pretty soon we were off.
“We got to the hotel, but it was the wrong hotel—why would they have two hotels with the same name? Who’s gonna know where to go? What if I’d told you girls to meet me at The Tasty Treat but there were actually two of them?
“I got kinda lucky, though. They had movie boxes in the lobby, and some of them were showing pictures of the other unicorns. I pointed to them, and to my hotel card and eventually the people at the desk figured out that I wanted to go there.
“They were really nice, luckily. They got a little bus for me, which was too much, I thought. The taxi was roomy enough for me. The driver knew exactly where the right hotel was. Boy, I sure was glad to meet up with everypony again!”
“That sounds like a crazy adventure, Cipher.”
“I know, right? I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Not until I learn the language, anyway—it’s scary to be all alone after dark, in a strange world where you can’t talk to anypony.”
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Yeah, visiting a foreign land as a pony you’d expect the horses/animals to be able to speak.
Cipher
9314007
Cipher, being an actual word, is not tradmarkable, thus not a pony's name. Blame Hasbro.
9308577
Yeah, you would. It’s a natural mistake for her to have made.
9314007
Corrections made; thank you!
9314687
Actually, according to the trading card anyway, it is Cipher.
Unless they’ve changed it since printing the trading card, which is always a possibility.
All: Which one?
Not necessary. Hell, if you wind up in New York, they'll have you driving a cab if you're not careful.
You got a green card? You're hired.
On second thought, you got a green card? You're over qualified for the job
9703304
That’s a noble calling for a pony. Although, it’s well-known that all horses cannot operate automobiles,
You do some very nice Pony-on-Earth stuff. Wish more of it was up to your standards.
9843670
Thanks!
Everybody else just needs to practice more, that’s what it is.
That kinda happened to me on one of the worst days of my life. Stuck in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country and not avle to speak the locals language
10346113
Fortunately, that hasn’t ever happened to me.
10346113 "In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."
-- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
10407270
Reminds me of a bit in one of Cussler’s memoirs where he was in France and somebody asked him something. He didn’t know much French and meant to say, “I don’t speak French,” but instead said “You don’t speak French.”