Chapter 6
"Tsk-tsk-tsk..."
You rub your increasingly irritating stubble in thought as you look in the bathroom mirror. A week has passed since the incident in the forest and you've stayed close to Sweetheart since then to avoid upsetting her again, and also to get a better grip on your environment. Not that you had much choice - you suspect that Lavender Lady ordered her to keep an eye on you, as she's become rather glued to your hip and makes sure that either you follow her whereever she goes(usually the market, the library or just outside to tend to animals) or follow a set path whenever you feel like visiting the town on your own. With her tagging along, of course.
This doesn't bother you that much - after all, you are new and there's still plenty to see even with restraint - but you are starting to ponder over how you're going to deal with living here for the longterm. For starters, you're quickly growing bored of washing your clothes every two days, so learning how to sew clothes will probably be in your immediate future. Not to mention finding or creating a razor blade. And the sooner, the better.
You leave the bathroom and return to your cot in the corner of the room. Behind the cot, you pick up a small burlap sack that formerly housed seeds for Sweetheart's birds and now contains all of your few belongings, namely your wallet and jumper as well as a small coverless notebook with a pencil that Lavender Lady happily donated to you. Removing the pencil from between the metal rings, you start writing:
TO-DO LIST
*Get Scooter a new scooter.
*Return to forest for new clues.
*Breach linguistic barrier.
*Find a job(?)
*Check Lavi to make sure phone is intact
Of all of these tasks, by far the most problematic is your continued inability to talk to the ponies. Lavender had tried a pictographic approach with you, associating images with words, but since all the horse words looked like identical lines to you, no real progress was made. You had pointed this out to your bunny friend, and he affirmed your theory that the magic horse language was based on, well, magic and hence only magical creatures could read it. And vice versa, not only were your clothes and yourself immune to magic, but your words as well, making it impossible for them to learn.
No language, no easy way to get a job. No job, no money. No money, no tools. No tools... nothing. You are just stuck, without a clue as to how seriously the magic folks are taking your dilemma.
Poke poke!
But there is always a bright side, you think as you kneel down in front of Sweetheart, whose tiny little snout is curled upwards in a smile. She steps closer to you and brushes her cheek against yours, rubbing it up and down. Nuzzles. You didn't have those in your world and now you wonder how you'd ever survived without them. Wrapping your arms around the petite mare, you draw her into a deep hug, running your fingers through her short yellow fur. Your horse friend cooes at the sensation. "Yeah, I know. Fingers are swell."
Fortunately for you, it seems that despite their increased intelligence, the horses of Horseylvania or whereever the heck you are still retain some animalistic qualities, expressing fondness through physical contact. Which is lucky - you don't think you'd be able to resist giving the adorable little creatures ear scritches even if you tried.
You pull away from Sweetheart and look into her caring, compassionate, open eyes. She has no idea who or what you were, but you are a friend and that is all she needed to know. Your heart swells as you sense her unbiased affection towards you. "What did I ever do to deserve you, you little cutie?" You say and tickle Sweetheart's nose. She scronches her face and pushes you away playfully before unexpectedly taking flight. The pegasus hovers around you and before you can turn, latches herself onto your back by wrapping her hooves around your chest and starts tickling the back of your neck with her cold nose. "Aaaaaah! Okay, okay, stop!" You laugh and run around the cottage, trying to rid yourself of the giddy sensation in vain until the two of you land on the green sofa. You raise your hands in surrender as she finally releases her hold over you and crosses her front hooves smugly.
"I submit to Queen Sweetheart of Wonderland, long may she reign." You say and kowtow in over-the-top fashion. The little horse presents her hoof and you kiss it with a loud smacking noise. The two of you exchange glances and burst into raucous laughter together, collapsing onto the sofa. Suddenly, you feel a pressure on your head and fumble at your hair, pulling out a white bunny. "Heeey, Mini-Me, how ya doing?" You exclaim. "You wanna smooch the Queen too?" The little bunny turns red as a tomato and starts desperately wiggling to get out of your grip. "Relax, I'm just kidding."
You place the bunny in Sweetheart's lap and leave her to play peekaboo with him while you prepare dinner, thanking the heavens that the horses are vegetarians and not too difficult to prepare food for. As such, your fingers and her instructions have led you to becoming quite adept at preparing a variety of salads and other dishes for the many pets hanging around the cottage, one small way of paying back your stay here.
As darkness sets in, you settle down into your cot and drape the covers over your shoulders. With little in the way of entertainment value and no electricity, you've gotten into the habit of going to bed early. This evening, however, Sweetheart rouses you from your slumber and you notice she's holding a lit lantern with her teeth. She wants you to go somewhere with her.
Yawning, you put your clothes back on and follow the little horse into the cold darkness outside. Sweetheart takes you to the apple farm, but instead of going through the gate or heading right towards the forest, she heads left, towards a number of hills overlooking the whole town. Up there, underneath a pine tree, the two of you find an adult male deer, lying on the ground and unmoving. "Ah, shit." You groan, the instinctive wrongness of the situation rubbing you the wrong way. Fortunately for you, your caretaker's clearly got more experience in medical care than you do, as she immediately checks to see if the deer is breathing and then rests a hoof on his forehead.
The pegasus nods once to herself and then motions you to come closer before pointing at the deer, then at you and then back the way you came. "Y-you want me to carry him?" You say, pointing at the deer and then at your own shoulders. Your words don't reach Sweetheart, but your question does and she nods, picking up the lantern with her teeth again.
"Ohhh-kay, let's see..." you mutter to yourself, awkwardly wrapping the deer's legs around your shoulders and praying that you don't screw around with his insides or something. "Here we go, OHHH that's heavy, agh!" Mental note: get some exercise soon.
With herculean effort, you force yourself up and start trudging after Sweetheart. Though it feels like hours to your bony shoulders, you make it back to the cottage soon enough and lay the deer down onto your pet cot, where Sweetheart immediately starts tending to it with help from her bunny. From what you can gather, the deer had a fever or something of the kind, as she forces him to take some sort of liquid and then makes a cold compress for him. You scowl, upset at your inability to help her in any way. "Fucking useless..." You mumble under your teeth. Even the bunny knows more about medicine than you do... and can understand his owner.
You open the door and step outside to vent your frustrations, drawing in a deep breath of the icy midnight air. It's a gorgeous night - the galaxy shines above your head. However, you were never any good at recognising constellations - it was all a big pile of dots to you. Some of the stars shine so bright that you can't even decide which one of them's the North Star. "Arrrgh, for all I know, I could be in the Pegasus galaxy." You snort at your own lame joke.
A shooting star streaks across the sky, so fast that you're not even sure if it was real or not. But you decide to believe it was. "I wish..."
that I could go home.
"... that I could talk to them."
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They may be unable to understand his spoken language, but in order to be unable to read his written language they would have to be incapable of visual object recognition.
He's devoid of magic, and they can recognize him, therefore they would be capable of learning his writing system.
He could try gesture-based communication, or he could draft up a sheet for them to write words on where he can write his equivalent and then point to their words on the sheet.
Picto-graphs are a great idea! He should carry a notebook and crayons for conversation!
Well that got sad at the end
9393881
As I stated clearly, the ponies' language is tinged with magic. Their written language is identical lines.
Like this:
------------
-------------
-------------
Our hero has visual object recognition, but he cannot read that, and the ponies cannot read his distinctive language. Because one is magic and the other isn't. Think of it like a mental block. Or like trying to read with no eyes or ears. Or even fingers, if we're going full-on Helen Keller.
preview.redd.it/02uxgi1uxqjz.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=ab675acdc4140cac6eda215b1e14292f89e705d7
9396264
Bingo.
But... I like pets
Love it! Can’t wait for more!
9399194
Dammit!
9390392
How so?
I find angels little crush of fluttershy adorable haha
If I were in his shoes, I'd ask Angel to translate to Fluttershy for me. Although, I'd be putting a lot of faith in that little fur-ball to not purposely misconstrue my words to the ponies.
Hmmm, not quite crafty enough to work around limitations. But that's fine....
Sweetheart's a real cute nickname, I reckon.
9446455
The trouble is Angel cant talk to fluttershy he can only understand her. He would be translating what you are saying by using vague hand movements so it wouldn't really help.
wherever
For language I say numbers are a good idea. 1 always stays 1
10381407
idk about that, I mean, this is one of the ways to write 1 in chinese numerals; 壹
For wrotten communication to be impossible it woukd require ponies to be impossibly stupid and have a complete lack of pattern recognition. Twilight SHOULD be able to match his writing to words eventually, if she isn't a moron.
Qnd dissapointingly nothing following up on how Anon got the shit kicked out of him by two seperate ponies after he saved the CMC. That none of them apologize at all just says they can beat the shit out of him for any reason and bot face consequences, which just ruins his relationship with.... everyone honestly. Hopefully they do something about that, because I really was liking the story before all that.
Think i can understand why they're having trouble with communication if their number/lettering system is like the ones on the Cash Register from S8E4
Great story. Odd i didn't comment on it before. Complicated situation with languages so different...
Wait... Are Deer not Sapient? Or is there a split? Like some are and other rather not so mutch...
That is...a weirdly difficult choice: choose to wish a way back, or find a way to communicate with the affectionate creatures that have given you so much affection.
9394395
Him being unable to see a magical language is fine, them not being able to intuitively discern a pattern in his writing is fine, and would make translating efforts a lot harder. But the only way they would be impossible is if they cant see the difference between a blank sheet of paper and his writing. I would however accept the explanation that they dont see it as writing and gave up early, needing more evidence to realize that it is indeed a written language.
11716186
Imagine if ponies all suffered from the human equivalent to a severe form of dyslexia. That’s the best way to understand what the author is saying.
11716186
Know its an old post but i see it as colourblindness. Remembered Someone explained how when pinkie got discorded (greyacaled) nothing changed since they where green blind so she was gray still.
So the ponies write in pink while we write gray (not picking up magic) and since we cant understand pink since we cant really see it we get what we have