• Published 2nd Nov 2020
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Why Do You Speak My Language?! - Soaring



A human meets a horse. They both speak English... sort of.

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Guess You Have To Put A Ring On It

I woke up to an empty room. It was still dead in the night. I don’t know why I got ejected out of dreamland like that, since I never got to even talk to the mare about anything. All she told me was that I needed to ‘put a ring on Twilight’ for whatever reason. Now, I’m just lying here, wondering why she even said it.

I mean, putting a ring on someone has many different implications. Was that mare telling me to marry Twilight? Or was there another reason that she couldn’t get to because the dream collapsed?

Maybe she was telling me to brood over her words. I needed to sit up first.

I forced myself up, my arms feeling like they were made of jelly. I groaned out of frustration, but thankfully the headboard was comfortable enough for me to lean on.

My mind drifted to everything that has happened so far. I was here, in a land full of horses that could speak. They called themselves ponies, and they had this princess that was a legit psychopath. Her friends were similar too in their behavior and mannerisms, but on varying levels (Spike being the most tame, while Starlight was the middle ground [she nearly suffocated me with a pillow]). Not to mention these creatures had different dialects of the same language like back home, except they were not speaking the same language at the same time. Wingdings weren’t meant to be spoken, at least from what I think. The Wingdings seemed to be effective when written, not spoken, but maybe I'm wrong here. They had specific purposes, mostly to convey emotions and thoughts more strongly, which is kind of what they do, except when spoken, the noises sound like someone’s stepping on a pet gerbil.

That definitely was a good way of summarizing the randomness that was my time in this world so far. But something still felt off. Was I not looking into this enough?

I mean, the fact that they were speaking in the same language as me is still confusing to me. How? Why? There was only a slight difference, and that slight difference made them sound like deranged lunatics that favored waterboarding over simple discussion.

I growled out in frustration. I felt like they waterboarded me with how everything has gone. They would be friendly for one moment, and then the next they would get aggressive. Like, why was Twilight pushing to get closer to me only to be distant in others? Hell, why was she so keen on keeping me hostage in her castle? Why was Spike sounding like he was okay with being a guinea pig when he’s a dragon? And why was Starlight trying to suffocate me with a pillow? I mean, they all explained it but... I don't get it.

Why? Why? Why?

I stared off into a corner of the room as my brain took tabs on the situation...


That corner of the room was a guaranteed prison sentence for me.

I had been stuck in bed staring at it for six fucking hours. It has gotten to the point that I know the exact degrees that the walls intersect at (it’s not a perfect perpendicular angle for some reason). I am worried that the wall will collapse just like it did in my dreams, but oh well. All I know was that these past six hours have been nothing but being stuck in my mind. I had been contemplating whether or not dealing with horses was a good substitute for sewer sliding.

I flicked off the sheets in anger and slid out of my bed. “Why can’t I sleep!?”

I groaned and sat down. Guess my only option is to wait for Starlight to walk in with our breakfast, since the sun was peering into my window and it was only a matter of time before she walked in.

“These ponies, man. I swear.”

I kicked my leg forward, hitting nothing but air. Now I really hoped Starlight would be here soon. I needed that food right now, even if it meant going through another bout of suffocation from a mare with questionable methods.

Looking towards the door, I uttered the one phrase that stuck to my tongue like ice on a pole during the winter. With a growl, it came out with grit.

“Motherfucker.”

“Who’s mother are you fucking?”

“Oh, no one’s but if I could I’d fuck...”

My voice trailed off as I caught sight of Starlight. I expected her to bring in our breakfast today in her magic or something, but instead, she wasn’t using her magic. She had opted to cart the food in for some reason. Not that I’m complaining, as what was in the cart was way more important. The cart carried the most stereotypical breakfast foods of the gods, minus the meat of course. They were horses, after all, so bacon, sausage, and other delicious meat-eating, carnivorous-endorsing foods were out of my grubby hands.

Still, everything looked and smelled wonderful.

I took in the smells that permeated throughout the room. This food was about to make me act up, but I kept my restraint as Starlight wheeled the cart to my bedside. She pulled a huge plank thing with a leg attached under each end, and set it on the bed. I helped her scoot it over closer to me, which made her tilt her head a tad, but she shrugged and kept her cool.

While the scent of the best food I’d probably have this week tempted me to grab all it myself, I really was curious and had to prod the mare a little.

“Morning, Starlight.”

I watched as she plopped my breakfast square in the center of the plank. She smiled. “Good morning, Rick! How are you holding up?”

Honesty was my best policy, even if it meant having to divulge what I had been thinking the past six hours.

“Pretty rough, not going to lie. Still can’t comprehend everything that has happened to me.”

The mare slid a cup on it, which was full of milk. “Do you want to talk about that while we eat today?”

“You haven’t eaten yet?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yep. I wanted to eat with you since, well, sharing food with a friend is better than eating alone, right?”

“Sharing food with a friend? Are we friends?”

The words escaped my mouth faster than I could grab them, which was the complete opposite of my entire life story up until yesterday.

Fortunately for me, Starlight looked like she was fine with it, even if her ears were standing up on end. “Of course we are! At least, that’s what I thought. Do we need to talk about that too?”

“Well, if you think we are, then I’ll go with the flow and—”

Starlight waved her forehooves out in front of me. “Nah, nah, homie. Friendship is like a two way street dawg. If we going to be fam, we finna fuck some shit up. Real shit, no 🧢, y’know?”

I blinked. “What did you just say?”

“♓︎ ⬥︎♋︎⬧︎ 🙰◆︎⬧︎⧫︎ ⬧︎♋︎⍓︎♓︎■︎♑︎, ♐︎❒︎♓︎♏︎■︎♎︎⬧︎♒︎♓︎◻︎ ♓︎⬧︎ ❍︎♋︎♑︎♓︎♍︎. ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ □︎■︎ ⬧︎□︎❍︎♏︎ □︎♐︎ ⧫︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎ ❍︎◆︎⌘︎⌘︎●︎♏︎ ♎︎◆︎⬧︎⧫︎?”

“Starlight, you’re speaking in tongues again. Could I get a translator?”

Surprisingly, the mare let out a brief blow, followed by a whinny. She scuffed her forehooves against the floor, before sighing and rolling her eyes. “You know, maybe I should just teach you how to speak it.”

My eyes widened. “Teaching? How to sound like a motorboat exploding in real time?”

“Yes, whatever that means,” Starlight said. “If I teach you how to speak my dialect, then maybe it’ll help you understand me. After all, you are an alien.”

“A human, Starlight,” I said, stabbing the scrambled egg on my plate with glee.

“Right, right,” she muttered. She hooked herself up with a plate of her own food, before activating her magic, which sparkled like fireworks were going off around her plate.

I kept staring at those little exploding fireworks, wondering how Starlight’s magic worked. I mean, her and Twilight glossed over it enough to help me understand it, but it didn’t explain the realness of it, if that made sense. How does it work? How does it affect me? I don’t know how this stuff works. Magic back where I was from didn’t work like this. It was just a guise.

I blinked back into reality as I was greeted by her face once again, only it was full of shock. “Rick? What’s wrong?”

I wiped my face. I didn’t even know what to think, what to say, or what to do. All I felt was confusion, wondering why everything was so off.

Without saying another word, Starlight reached out to me, before turning her attention to the end of the bed. She hopped onto the bed, which made me frantically grab at the plank-thing to make sure I didn’t lose all my food she had just gotten me, while also making room for her to sit down with me. She promptly made herself at home at the end of my bed, her body curling like a slinky being left on its side.

Now that she was on the bed, I knew where this was going to go. She would want me to gush to her about why I thought everything was a bit of whack, so to speak. And, from what I’ve seen, she likes to talk.

I sighed.

Before I could open my mouth to say something, Starlight decided that the cart was no longer an important guest. Instead, she magically shoved it away, having it careening towards the corner of the room. It ceremoniously crashed into the lamp that was just minding its own business. Luckily, Starlight noticed her power was overwhelming, and grabbed the lamp before it could break into smithereens. With a bit of skill, she was able to fix the accidental disharmony she had caused, while also turning on the lamp. The already bright room was now just a tad bit brighter.

“Hehe,” Starlight began, her muzzle trying to feign embarrassment. “Sorry about that. Forget how strong my magic is sometimes.” She chuckled behind a hoof. “Besides, we can’t eat in the dark, can we?”

“It wasn’t that dark in here before…” I mumbled out. My voice was dry, but as I chewed and sipped on my milk, it started to get better. “As for anything that’s wrong… Besides not being able to sleep after having a dream of the century, I’ve been in my head as of late.” I looked into her eyes. “You’ve ever had that happen?”

The pone with the goods sighed. “Yeah. I get stuck a lot too. You’re not alone in that.” She paused to take a stab at her scrambled egg, only for her to gently cut into it. Coward. “Got stuck thinking about everything after Twilight offered me her friendship. I was like, ‘Why do I deserve this?’”

She took a moment to eat that piece of egg, which she chewed happily on.

“What did you do that made you think like that?”

She swallowed her food and frowned. “Well, I hope this doesn’t make you hate me.”

“Hate you? I mean, I was annoyed with you when you tried to strangle me to death but—”

“Strangle you? I didn’t do that,” Starlight said with a head tilt. She sipped a bit at her drink before plopping it back down. Licking her lips, she continued, “I just tapped you with the pillow. What…”

She was blinking rapidly, way more than I could. If what she’s saying was true, that means that something else was happening. Maybe I was right, maybe things were off—

Starlight’s sudden whiplash from her shaking her head told me otherwise. “We’ll figure out that later. Right now, it’s about you,” the mare said, pointing a forehoof in my direction.

I nodded. “Okay, so why—”

“Why do I not deserve Twilight’s friendship?” I gave her another, more chaste headbang, which spurred her onto continuing her sorrowful spiel. “Rick, it’s pretty bad. I basically enslaved an entire village for the sake of power. I used them for my own personal benefit. I made everyone equal by stripping them of their identities.”

“You stripped them of their identities? How so?”

The mare glanced over at her ass. “You see the mark there?”

I didn’t know if I was to say anything, so I just absent-mindedly bobbed my head.

“Great, because that mark was the key to removing their identities. It’s called a Cutie Mark. It’s part of growing up for everypony. It helps us figure out what we’re meant to do in life. My view was that if I took that cutie mark away, they would be equal. There wouldn’t be disharmony, only equality.”

I chewed on my food and her philosophy at the same time. “And the ponies who you ran into bought that?”

She hummed an affirmative, while also devouring her food too. “Yes. Looking back on it, I’m surprised they bought it too. But that’s not the point of this.” She sighed. “The point is that I was able to hurt so many ponies by telling them that what their cutie marks were was hurting them, when in fact, that destiny was part of what made them who they were. I ruined ponies lives by doing this, Rick. I made them hate themselves because I was selfish. How did I deserve forgiveness for what I did? You know how crazy this all is?”

“How crazy it is that you’re here now or?”

“Both, Rick. Both.” She swallowed a particularly huge bite she got before she spoke again, “I mean, do you really know how lucky I am to be here?”

“No, but from what you just told me, it’s pretty crazy that you are here.” I stabbed more of my food and shuffled it into my mouth like I was a Tonka truck dropping off some damn fine amount of dirt and gold. “Back in my world, you probably would’ve been tossed in a prison cell for eternity… or sentenced to death by any means necessary.”

Her eyes practically popped out of her skull. “Uh… wow. Guess I am lucky to be here, huh?” She smiled happily at me. “What’s even more crazy is that you’re here too. Speaking of, what are you thinking about? What’s keeping you up?”

I threw my arm into the air. “I don’t know. Mostly just what I’ve been thinking about since I got here. Why, out of all people, am I the one stuck here? Why was I the one that got suffocated by you? Why do you all speak the same language as me, but also murder it in a back alley?”

Starlight sheepishly smiled. “Well those are some pretty important questions—”

“And why this Luna character wanted me to marry Twilight and—”

“What?!”

The mare was completely and utterly shocked. Her eyes were about to roll out of her head like marbles being scattered after being dumped out of a bag, while her ears were standing at attention. I was afraid they were going to fly off her head.

“Isn’t that what ‘put a ring on Twilight’ means?”

Starlight nearly knocked her head off that neck of hers. “No! There’s something else that she meant there. Why did Luna tell you that?”

I tried to recall back to the dream, but it wasn’t as vivid as I thought it was. I still tapped my chin like I knew what I was doing, or whatever—it works for other people, right? Makes them look more sophisticated or something—Starlight stared at me, looking like she expected some type of answer.

Hope she didn’t hate me afterwards.

“I don’t particularly remember. Maybe I might’ve assumed, considering a horn ring may have a different meaning and—” I stopped to let Starlight cackle like a maniac. “Why are you…?”

She quieted down, and somehow, throughout this entire gigglefest did Starlight not spill a single damn thing. She wiped away a tear from her cheek, still trucking on that high called life. “I was laughing because you assumed immediately that getting told to ‘put a horn ring on Twilight’ meant marrying her!”

“Well what else am I supposed to assume? She didn’t tell me anything else before my dream disintegrated like my hopes and dreams!”

She nudged me with her hoof. “How about asking instead of assuming, silly.” She chuckled a bit. “Well, I can tell you that you don’t have to get married unless you want to.”

I snorted. “Real funny. So if it’s not to do that, then what did Luna mean?”

“Well, a horn ring can be used to nullify someone’s magic temporarily. As long as the ring is slipped on the unicorn’s horn, then it will not naturally leak out magic.”

“So your horn is like a magical leaky faucet?”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “If that’s how you want to visualize it, then sure.” The mare turned and held her head low. “□︎◆︎❒︎ ♒︎□︎❒︎■︎⬧︎ ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ■︎□︎⧫︎ ♎︎♓︎♍︎🙵⬧︎, ❒︎♓︎♍︎🙵...”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing, Rick.” Her voice was as flat as can be. “Nothing at all.”

“Well, I’m glad, because I have no idea what you said.”

She gigglesnorted behind her forehoof. “Good. I’ll teach you sometime, but right now… I need to help you figure this out. Why would Princess Luna tell you to just randomly stick a horn ring on Twilight to nullify her—”

Suddenly, Starlight’s eyes widened. “Rick. I think I know why Princess Luna wanted you to get a horn ring.”

“Why?”

She slid over closer to me. “It’s going to help us figure out why everything is not as it seems, because, let’s face it, I know for a fact I only tapped you with a pillow. Something else is interfering with this, and if Luna says it involves a horn ring then…” Her muzzle scrunched up as her voice trailed off.

Without any warning, Starlight blinked away from my sight and reappeared right at the foot of her bed, her magic now capturing her empty plate and mug. “I’ll be back. Don’t move.”

“Are you going to take the—”

My words fell on deaf ears. She was already out the door.

The cart stood in the corner, looking like a pissed off inanimate object.

I sighed and finished my food in silence. Hopefully, whatever Starlight realized would help me out. I did not want to get strangled again.

Author's Note:

Hope you all are enjoying this story! I've been seeing the comments range from positive to being absolutely confused. I hope this provides you all some more clarity. I hope you all will stick around to see this shitpost unfold!

Thanks for reading!