Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

A Brief History of Terms: Behemoth

As with many things, it was Princess Twilight who first utilised the term Behemoth to describe the creature. As with many things, the term came from a book. It had been used, in ancient times, to describe a large terrestrial creature, by a tribe or a species living somewhere roughly near the location of Chrysalis's old hive. Probably. Centuries by the dozens had muddled the waters and there simply wasn't an original source of information to study, rather a multitude of reports all far more recent than the time they talked about.

It was, for example, impossible to tell who exactly had used the term first. Was it a tribe of ponies? Or a different species? No way of knowing. All the texts said was that ponies had learned of the creature from a population of sorts. It wasn't possible to say whether or not the creature had been real or simply a myth, either. The population apparently told stories of it, and goodness knew what that actually meant. Reports agreed that no one had ever seen it, but then again, there were no mentions of ponies travelling in that territory, just of the exchanges that happened at the border.

The description itself of the creature was weird. Rather lacking in many aspects, oddly specific in others, at times contradictory across different sources even from the same time period. The only thing everyone agreed on was that it was big. How big, though? Some said like an elephant, some said like a mountain. Some said the earth shook beneath its steps, other talked about being able to mount it just by jumping off a tree. Some theorised it was in fact just a giant tortoise, while others spoke of horns or tusks or claws.

The name too was of debatable origin. Between the culture the name came from likely having spoken a different language, the shakiness of the translation process, and several instances of transcripts where the pony working on them clearly thought they knew better than the one who'd written the original and had tried to correct perceived mistakes, never mind the language differences across hundreds of years, it was anyone's guess how much the name was actually the right one anymore. It might have had a meaning, at some point, but all that was left was a set of sounds rearranged through time.

Still, it had been a fitting name. Perhaps even more fitting given its mysterious origin. Whether or not the thing in Canterlot was the Behemoth of legend, Twilight had no idea, but it certainly fit the description. Some versions of it, at least. And so, she'd called it that. A large creature, its steps enough to shake the earth, that had come out of nowhere and settled itself in Canterlot, forever changing all of Equestria with its mere presence. Some had argued that perhaps it was a construct, not a creature. No one had dared go near enough to check, so the name stuck. It had a nice ring to it, most ponies found.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Oh. It's still there. I hadn't realized that part, or perhaps I simply didn't want to.

[link4]

10207419
yea, it arrived, and month later, it hasn't moved. an inch.