An Epic Tale
I wake up with my face on a rough and irregular surface.
‘Thank god that was just a dream, but why did I have to fall asleep on my keyboard again? Now it’s probably full of drool and I’ll have to go home with “QWERTY” imprinted on the side of my face’
I opened my eyes...
“Crap...”
There was no keyboard under my face, instead there was a small pile of hay. I was in some sort of cell in what looked like a dungeon, complete with the window near the ceiling that I wouldn’t have been able to see out of... at least if I was about 3 feet shorter than I was. Getting up to look through it, I began to notice how sore I was in every part of my body... and that I wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Outside was nothing but green rolling hills as far as I could see, except for the mountain range out in the distance. Slumping back down to the floor with my back against the wall, I notice a big pair of eyes looking at me through the small barred window in the door. They were magenta in colour, and seemed slightly familiar.
Remembering that I was still naked, my eyes darted around the room and found a nice looking blanket, which I quickly covered myself with. A moment later, the eyes disappeared and I heard what sounded like talking in some strange alien language outside. One voice clear and slightly raspy, the other one almost so quiet I wasn’t sure it was even there at all.
After a bit, other voices joined in... then the voices stopped and I heard the lock on the door being unlocked. When the door swung open, I saw six heads around the edge of it, all very colourful, all very much staring at me.
‘Wait... how is that pink one peeking in under the top of the door frame? And... is that one wearing a cowboy hat?’
One of them was pushed into the cell, it didn’t look at all comfortable with the situation, but didn’t run back out either, it was canary yellow with light pink hair and tail, light blue eyes and... wings. Behind it came in a second one, this one lavender with purple hair and tail, except for a pink streak running through both. A horn jutted out between the locks of it’s hair.
The lavender one sat down in a far corner of the cell as the door swung closed. The yellow one jumped a little as if startled and glanced towards the now closed door, but quickly turned it’s eyes back on me.
‘What are these things? The tails, ears and legs remind me of horses, but they’re much smaller’ I thought to myself as the lavender one seemed to try to goad the yellow one on.
‘The legs are thick and stubby and I don’t think I see any hooves at the end...’
The yellow one gulped and slowly moved closer, cooing and crooning quietly in a soothing and relaxing tone.
‘And their heads... they’re round instead of long and... no... this can’t be physically possible... their eyeballs must take up more space than there is in the skull... maybe they’re flat? Would that work?’
As I finished that last bit of thought, the horn of the lavender one started to glow... as did a quill, a bottle of ink and a clipboard that all flew out of a bag strapped to it’s side. The tiny unicorn... yeah, that description seemed appropriate started to scribble down what I assumed were notes with what my brain could only reconcile as magic. My jaw dropped as I witnessed this.
So captivated was I by seeing this one creature blatantly defying the laws of physics in such a way, that I didn’t even notice that the yellow... pegasus? Yeah... pegasus had gotten up right next to me until I felt it softly nuzzling my shoulder, and looking up at me with those huge blue eyes.
After the initial shock of the close proximity had worn off for me, it gently pushed me into a prone position. Lying on my back, it started examining me from head to toe, paying special attention to my hands, feet and head, seemingly reporting it’s findings back to the one taking notes. When it tried to remove the blanket I had covering my more private parts, I grabbed the blanket and made sure nothing too private was revealed. It seemed to accept this and just examined my chest and the bruises on it.
That’s when my stomach grumbled.
It said some things... I don’t know what, but it might have been a question. It was clear enough that it was addressing me though.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, I’m sorry.”
As I said that, the lavender one gasped, said some things too and then furiously scribbled things on it’s clipboard... must’ve been because of the language. I’m not sure why I replied in English myself... perhaps I just reflexively switched to English because they clearly didn’t speak Danish? Yeah, let’s go with that.
The yellow pegasus softly grabbed my head and opened my mouth, inspecting my teeth. It suddenly looked noticeably more nervous, it’s wings flaring out for a second, before folding back in. It then began pulling away from me as it spoke to the lavender one.
The lavender one sighed and then opened the door, which they both exited... the lavender one much more reluctantly than the yellow one. Then the door was closed and locked... and I was alone again, no wait... the magenta eyes were back in the window of the door, staring at me curiously.
I recognized them now, they belonged to the one that held me while another one knocked me out. It was probably assigned to guarding me. There was no hostility in those eyes anymore, they just looked at me curiously, whenever they didn’t get pushed out of the way by a pink head with blue eyes.
It was starting to occur to me that I probably wasn’t going home anytime soon, a thought that scared the hell out of me. Not that I was particularly scared of losing my previous life, I liked my life, but I could easily have torn up my roots and re-planted myself anywhere on earth and made a life there. I wasn’t on earth anymore though, that much was obvious. Humans have pretty much scoured the entire planet, discovering and examining everything there was to discover. There certainly wasn’t enough undiscovered ground left for a whole species of sapient alien mini-horses with magic powers to build a civilisation without us knowing.
So where was I? And how did I get here? Definitely not in the solar system I knew. If I had had any knowledge of astronomy at all, I might have been able to hazard a guess with time and the right equipment. All I knew about this stuff was from back in grade school, and even my fairly good memory was failing me when it came to pre-college stuff. So unless one of these aliens knew how to send me back, and wanted to... I probably wasn’t going home.
Some thirty minutes or so passed like this until the door was opened yet again and the two from before stepped back in. The lavender one already had it’s clipboard out and ready, the yellow one had a bowl in it’s mouth, which it slowly approached me with and set down in front of me.
In the bowl were an apple, some berries... and a fish... as in, the whole fish. With head, scales, innards and all. This would have been a small problem, had I only had the right tools to work on it, since I assumed I had plenty of time to work on the thing.
At least I had an idea why the yellow one was looking at my teeth now.
I ate the apple and berries first while the aliens observed and one of them likely took notes. When I got to the fish I tried to figure out how to skin it with no knife. It smelled fresh, so I wasn’t afraid of eating it raw, I’d had sushi several times in the past and liked it. After a while though I had to give up and just put it back into the bowl, which the yellow pegasus took back with a puzzled expression.
Both of the two aliens left the cell, and it seemed like all of the aliens outside left the hallway, until I saw the pair of magenta eyes in the door’s window once again. They stayed there, watching me for about five minutes before I heard the door slowly unlocking and saw it swing open as the sky blue pegasus with the rainbow coloured mane entered the cell carefully.
It didn’t close the door behind it, but it didn’t matter, where was I going to escape to anyway? So when it started talking, I just listened.
It’s talking was accompanied by a lot of body language, especially as it seemed to get more and more excited about what it was talking about, swooping and flapping motions done by both it’s wings and it’s four legs. I couldn’t help but feel like I was being told about something epic or heroic as the pegasus danced all over the floor.
It soon became clear to it that I didn’t understand anything of what it was telling me, so with it’s head hanging low in disappointment, it exited the cell again and locked the door. I didn’t see those magenta eyes any more that day.
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Another great chapter my friend. And I have to ask if you have an editor becuase your work so far has been remarkably free of errors grammatical or spelling, especially considering the rapidity that you put this out in .
Looking forward to more.
469148
I have some people I let read through it before I post it up, just to see if they have any issues with it. I'm normally pretty crap at commas, so a friend of mine reads through it to check for punctuation errors and then a couple other just read through it and tell me if there's something that doesn't make sense or is difficult to understand.
I tend to write in long run-on sentences, so making sure I haven't just written something that only makes sense to me is a must.
Strangely there were almost no complaints about the second chapter, despite my being a bit drunk while writing the second half of it. So it came out pretty fast.
Hmmm, interesting, a bit short but good.
I think you should write longer chapters, this story deserves the lenght.
469420 I would have liked this chapter to be longer as well, but keeping in mind the storyline and plot I've thought up for this, I didn't really have anything more to write in this second one.
469501
Alright.
You know, you just made me wondering about the next chapter, about what could possibly happen.
I have a feeling that makes me say: we will see a translator spell soon.
469511 I can tell you that there will be no translator spells in this fanfiction... that would completely ruin the fun of having the language barrier.
469611
Awwwww.....
469628 I mean really... What's the point of having them speak different languages if you just nullify it during the first couple of chapters? Check out a fic called Arrow 18 Mission Logs: Lone Ranger by AdmiralTigerclaw here: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/13616/Arrow-18-Mission-Logs%3A-Lone-Ranger
If you're going to have a language barrier in the first place, this is how it should be handled.
This is a gem of an HiE fic that sadly updates very slowly, but still very much worth reading.
469799
Language barrier and no translation spell? I've only ever seen a very few fics attempt that one (yep, Arrow 18 Mission Logs is one of them). Bravo for taking it on, Cordovan! My inner geek is curious to see how our protagonist office-dweller is going to cope with all of this.
Like Gargoyle mentioned above, your writing is very error-free, making for some very easy reading. Thank you for going to the effort.
One last note: I had to laugh when Fluttershy brought in a raw fish. Poor girl; there really was no way she could've known. I can imagine the question going through her head when it was returned uneaten. "Wait, you're an omnivore and you're hungry... Do you not like fish?"
470624 I almost felt sorry for Fluttershy at that point too, but it was too logical and too cute, so I just had to do it. I've got a feeling you're going to like Chapter Three, for which I put a little bit of a teaser in my latest blog post.
470783
A teaser, you say?
Color me intrigued.
471260 You're free to read it... it's on this very same site.
You posted it before I could give my commentary... Waaahhhh.... wait I had no critic stuff to say? oh, ok.
471406 Sorry... I gave about 10 hours I think... I could have waited longer, but the others on the team had little to no critique as well.
Yeah, I kinda got distracted... I was at work when I got the link and I only had time for a quick readthrough, I sometimes wonder why you need us proofing in the first place, you write so well aside from the whole comma issue which I'm probably just as guilty of.
471538 I have a tendency to write long run-on sentences. It's good to have a couple of people reading through my stuff just to tell me if a few sentences stop making sense along the way. General feedback from different viewpoints is also very helpful. That basically the gist of it.
Strange. I usually hate first-person stories. Can't say that for this one. Curious to see what happens...
But sushi's... nevermind.
Awww Rainbow... girrrrrl, don' be dissapointed, ahm here for ya!
Raw fish? I honestly don't think I could eat it without skinning it even if I was starving... OK, I probably could, but you sounded like that weren't the case.
-Glassed
And of course, Fluttershy figures out that he's an omnivore. And she does feed fish to her critters, of course, so she'd know how to get some.
"' 'Twas a Find Chapter Indeed!"
*Smashes Keyboard against the wall*
"I Demand Moar My Fine Sir!"
I haven't read much of the story
(still near the start of chapter 1)
but I thought I was the first to speculate that the
Equine Sapiens Hasbro had flat, as opposed to
spherical, eyes.
There's no room for their brains otherwise!
Some sort of fresnel lens and an addressable retina?
Don't get me started on how their emotional state changes
the size of the iris!