The Poisoned Barb

by ManlyDerp

Chapter 5: Words {RE-EDITED}

This is turning out to be a surprisingly productive evening. I’ve already written so much in such a short amount of time. I really hope I’ll be able to keep up this pace for the rest of the night; Dusk’s schedule for the coming days looks to be challenging and, more importantly, tiring. I likely won’t have another chance like this, to simply sit back and allow my ideas to flow, for an exceedingly long time. This will be troublesome; without an outlet, my thoughts and ideas will have nowhere else to go. They’ll be forced to stew in my mind as I work, constantly distracting me until I wrangle them out of there and onto a sheet of paper or parchment.

I bring this up now, within the confines of this journal, because... well, I’m not sure what to make of this behavior. I’m sitting here in this room, with a sleeping stallion by my side, simply allowing my mind to wander. For one reason or another, I’m scolding myself for so much as thinking about not finishing this journal in one night. As I allow these thoughts to pass, I ask myself this; why am I being so impatient? Why do I feel as though I need to finish this all at once? Why am I acting childish?

“Because I am a child.”

These were the words that just crossed my mind when I asked this question aloud. No pause, no second-guessing; the first thing that came to the surface was this.

It’s also the correct answer.

This journal is proving to be a great eye-opener. Writing my thoughts down like this has allowed my mind to explore itself, bringing truths both fascinating and grim to the surface. Although my latest discovery is still taking shape inside of my head I will try to translate as much of it as I can into writing. It’s still fresh, but I feel as though this is important.

I’m being impatient here, like a child. A child is what I am physically, but not mentally. An adult is not impatient; I was not impatient as an adult. Therefore my body is to blame for this behavior.

I’ve lived in these scales for years now; there was no other mome- there have been plenty of little moments to prove this theory as true, I’ve just been too naïve to see. I must take better care in the future.

Alright then, in summation; be wary of youthful bodies, those who might one day be reborn. This seems like a good enough concept to cover this time so I think I will do just that.

I suppose I should begin by going over the various stages of growth you will have to sit through for a second time. People and ponies mostly don’t remember these early stages too well, unlike me, so I feel as though a heads up would be appreciated. I’ll try to make this as universal as possible; remember that I’m a baby dragon and a former human, not a pony.

Let’s begin then.

First of all, infancy. I’d imagine most would dread the second infancy. I know that I sure did; constant growing pains, zero control over literally anything, nappies. Bleh. The good news about it though is that, although it lasts a couple of years, your body naturally sleeps through most of it. I even slept through my first Christmas Hearth’s Warming. Unlike a normal baby, however, if you're reincarnated you’re going to still have your mental facilities active at all times. This means that whenever you’re not sleeping you’ll be left with your thoughts. I’ve already shared what that meant for me; how it encouraged me to mourn. How this cosmic timeout will affect you will naturally vary greatly depending on your own situation.

If you’re lucky enough you’ll get a good family or good caretakers to watch over you, like what happened with me. If you’re unlucky though, which if you were reincarnated in the first place you probably are, then I can only wish you the best, and maybe suggest an orphanage, perhaps? I’d imagine that it would be a preferable choice if all other options are bleak. Just make sure that the little boys and girls get the first pick on the really good adopters, okay? Remember that they’re real children, unlike us.

Goodness, I went on a bit of an unintentional tangent there. My apologies. Resuming; after infancy comes toddlerhood. I think I’ll focus on this period exclusively for the rest of this passage. The next one will be dedicated to the preceding step; childhood.

Now then; toddlerhood is, putting it simply, going to be the toughest part of your new life. Learning to speak an alien language, learning another world’s history and lore, working your way through school, proving yourself as an adult yet again; none of these daunting tasks will test your willpower and psyche quite like the second toddlerhood will. I’m actually amazed how this fact rings true on both sides of the fence; for both parents and children alike. Terrible twos indeed.

Let me paint you a picture. After spending years being held, taken care of, and learning how to control your body it’s time to step up to the bat, right? Time to regain your independence and take your first step into becoming your own person once again, right?

Wrong.

Now is the first time to take your first step, period. Said first step will cause you to fall flat on your face. Said first step will cause every pony in a ten-block radius to flinch and come running to pick you up and coo you into submission. Said first step will cause you to involuntarily cry, making you look just like the baby you were just trying to prove that you weren’t. Say you get past the first step; say you learn how to walk again and get real good at it. Good enough to take you all the way to that special room you’ve been dying to enter; dying to return to using. All so you can regain even a tiny shard of your dignity.

Good luck reaching the toilet seat, let alone the doorknob for the bathroom.

You’ll start potty training when your caretaker says you’ll start potty training and that, I’m afraid, is the end of that.

This training won’t happen right away though; oh no. What’s more important at this point, from both your caretaker’s and your own point of view, is your ability to speak; your ability to communicate with others. It’s important to have this detail sorted out early on. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll be a language you understand, maybe even your original one. If this happens you’ll still need to retrain your mouth and throat into flapping the lips and making the right noise at the right time. This will entitle, as you’ve most likely guessed, babbling. Infantile babbling... But by this point you’ll have grown used to the death of your dignity so this shouldn’t be an issue.

The sooner you can accept your fate is the sooner you can take the important steps towards changing it.

If you’re like me and are instead dealing with a completely different language to the one you started with, have no fear. Immersion is really the best way to learn this sort of thing. Make use of your second infant years to pick up the chatter constantly going on around you; try to associate certain phrases with actions. Infants do it all the time without effort, and so can you if you try. Reincarnation proves that you actually can teach an old dog new tricks.

Joking aside, there is a serious decision that you will be faced with once you finally understand the language you were reborn into. A decision that will shape your experiences with the world around you for the rest of your second life.

What will your first words be?

Will you say “Momma” or “Dada”, and keep up the façade of being nothing more than an innocent babe, or will you instead break the mask, allowing your intelligence to shine through? In doing so you’ll be taking a huge gamble, one that could well end with your new birth family seeing you as nothing more than an infant stealing parasite. If the gamble pays off, however, who knows what could happen? Your guilt could be lessened, your trials made easier; a pathway back home could even be possible.

Of the two choices, you already know which path I chose.

My lips are sealed, my guilt is deep, and I’ve since accepted this place as my new home. This doesn’t mean that I’ve completely given up on the idea of returning to Earth. It’s just a discussion for another time.

Because of my choice to take a figurative vow of silence, I kept mostly to myself in my early days, saying only the bare minimum of what needed to be said to not draw suspicion. A “please” here, a “thank you” there. I never called anypony “mommy” or “daddy”. I never lowered myself that far, not even in the face of the Prince to whom I’ve only referred to either by full name or “your majesty”. It came out adorably as “your mage-es-tee” in Equestrian but that’s beside the point.

Dusk was, as you can imagine, different.

I didn’t know what he was to me in the beginning; my hatcher, my owner, my father, my brother? I didn’t know what to call him.

So I just called him “Dusk Shine”.

These ended up being my first words.

The joy that brought to his face when I said it was indescribable, like a foal being given the keys to a candy store. Wait, wouldn’t that be describing it then? Do I slash out the indescribable part of the description… oh fudge it I’ll just fix it later. The pure happiness radiating off of that colt’s muzzle filled my own heart with warmth; I had done something right for the first time in years. This little fact alone filled me with a feeling I had not felt in all my years on Equus; hope. I had hope, hope that things wouldn’t be bleak forever. Hope that I could actually continue living a relatively normal life.

Hope that I could one day say that at least I had one person in this world to whom I could call family.

And that, right there, is the tipping point I pray hope many of you will find one day. Of all the hardships you will have to endure in your new life, loneliness should never be one of them. Don’t allow it to be one. Endure the humiliation of being unable to walk and talk, endure the pain of never seeing friends and family again, endure the guilt of secretly being an alien.

Don’t endure the heartache of being alone.

Bound with your caretaker, become close with your "parents", watch over your new brothers or sisters. As hard as it might seem to do, and as strange and different you might feel you are in comparison to others, don’t abandon them. Don’t leave their side unless you are completely certain it is hopeless. I tried to go it alone for the first two years of my new life; two out of my seven here. I didn’t realize how much I regretted my choice, or how unhappy I was until I made Dusk smile and laugh. I didn’t realize how much the isolation was chipping away at my soul. If I had decided to ignore the colt’s boundless youth; if I had decided to continue cutting myself off from others as I was doing, only one dark path comes to mind:

The path in which I remained an unhappy, silent mute.

A path that would have continued to eat away at me until I forgot why I was even trying at all.

How easy would it have been then to simply… slip away? How easy would it have been to simply sit back and accept my fate? Without the same curious drive that pushes normal infants forward, I imagine I would have simply stopped altogether. I would have remained a babe forever; both in form and, eventually, in mind as well.

The thought still chills me to this day.

Thusly I implore you; make some friends quickly while you’re here. Ignore the fact that those older than you will look down on you at first simply because of your age. This will change over time. Ignore the fact that those close to your age will be true children. This will change with time as well.

Become a child’s friend, become a mother’s child, become a caretaker’s favorite charge. These early connections will blossom along with your body as you slowly but surely grow into your world. Try not to make enemies, try not to hurt your connections, try not to rush things. These are the lessons I learned in my second childhood, and through the trials and tribulations I faced growing up alongside the not always saintly Dusk Shine.

If I were to describe how I dealt with the occasionally difficult colt in the instances I will be sharing in the next few passages, in a single word, it would be this; patience. Don’t let your body dictate your actions, use your invaluable experience instead. Experience is your sword as well as your shield in these trying times.

Allow me to continue to share with you my strength, as I’ve done thus far. Let me teach you, to prepare you, for what is to come.

Let me teach you how friendship is magic.

Comments

[PegaSeraph]

I enjoy this story...
moar please!

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

I really can't get enough of this story, you really have a way with words and creating moods. The conclusions Barb comes to and implications she makes are quite powerful; it's a fascinating read and I have quite a lot of hope for the future of the story. I really could read this all day, no matter if it's just theory crafting, emotional revelations, retelling her history, or even turning into a diary of events of MLP proper.

[ManlyDerp]

5488612
Thank you, I'm glad to hear that you've been enjoying it! And thank you for also pointing out WHAT it was exactly that you enjoyed about it; I'm always aiming to improve myself so it really helps when I'm told when I'm actually doing things right So far I haven't received any negative critique, (the downvoters didn't leave comments, so I don't know what it was they didn't like ) so I'll just keep on keeping on then!

See you next time!

[Seether00]

It's just heartrending given her real age. At least if she was younger she wouldn't have the memories of a whole built up life and family, and the annoyance of younger beings not listening to her.

[Rocinante]

This is like the Dianetics of Final Fantasy House.

[Aether Spark]

This doesn’t mean that I’ve completely given up on the idea of returning to Earth. It’s just, well, a discussion for another time.

Just wait till equestria boys.

[ManlyDerp]

10221235
Literally can't

[Ash Bark]

not a style of story I read a lot. I'm hoping there are more snippets of narrative that shine through as it continues because I love the premise

anyway, this is probably not relevant considering barb has a fully developed consciousness inside an undeveloped mind (despite the fact that the consciousness develops with the mind) but the language thing caught my attention. Children have an incredible ability to learn language that just isn't replicatable by adults. Adults can, through effort, time, and memorization learn to fluency and even then, most never attain fluency even close to their first language. In contrast, children can learn new languages or multiple languages with an ease that takes a fraction of the time. Maybe if an adult was put into the same situation a child was they'd be able to match the learning rates of a real child but I doubt it. They learn it in a different way, they aren't cognitively linking together grammars and listing out vocab, they're just internalizing and eventually understanding. none of this particularily matters to the story, but Barbara's brain in development as a real child would be better equipped to learn the language than barbara's brain as the consciousness of an adult. Further digging into this would mean dealing with how an adult mind could function in a childs mind and that isn't something I want to get into.
Edit: more than I already have, damn. muzzling myself now before I decide i've written too much and delete the whole thing.

[KvAT]

Fimfiction needs an "Introspective" tag for things like these.