First discovered in the year DCIV of Her Majesty's solitary reign, the inscriptions are a set of square tablets, two nails tall, their sides measuring a leg and a quarter, of an unknown substance. They are currently located behind protective casings, to ensure no damage may come to the observers. They are bereft of markings on one side, which has led some to speculate they may have been originally affixed to a wall, or the interior or exterior of some other construction.
They tell of Fire, Heaven, and a timeless land beyond the sea, yet their true meaning still eludes all of ponykind, from its youngest citizen to its ancient ruler. For they are, perhaps, even more ancient than she.
These are their contents, as they are understood, and the story of the pony tasked with spreading that knowledge to the world.
An entry into the 2nd A Thousand Words contest, under the "Experimental" category.
Prereading and cover art courtesy of Reviewfilly.
Interesting work, well worth the read!
I'd quite like to know what's the correctly translated text, if there's one, for I like it but I'm horrible at deciphering this kind of thing. Putting this in spoilers for any extra information can ruin the experience. I love the reveal at the end!
My interpretation is that the text relates to Celestia's capacity to become Daybreaker. A fiery perversion of her heavenly self, her equivalent of Nightmare Moon.
Discord, perhaps?
A fascinating read!
gottem
interesting… what creature is this? a snake? Changelings?
guess Fire has to get up a little earlier in the morning to get one up on Heaven here
dang sucks to be Fire
that must be quite the fiction! Heaven can do it all
that sure is a lot of halls and coveting
sounds like… Discord? or an artifact of Discord being a mishmash of creatures. trying to get some sort of a handle on this here
i would be annoyed if a linguistics paper explained anything this unclearly
ok so that’s Discord, right?
and this is… character growth?
well it is definitely correct to speculate a separate author for this section
so 13 Feb 1019? what relevance does this have i wonder
ok so it was a diary the whole time, possibly of someone known to Celestia, though the author doesn’t sound like Her and must be somepony detached from the “they” whose writings are freely circulated enough that they have to imagine the fact. from context and character tags i would guess it is Opaline. but sadly, even with all this translating this work myself is beyond me. well, thank you for writing!
Fascinating stuff, though I cannot in honesty say this is just a thousand words. The author’s notes contain not just some helpful background but also the true resolution to the story.
Still, this is exquisite work, especially the bits where I’m pretty sure I see consistent mistranslations. If you want to post a better translation in a blog at some point, I’d love to read it. I have some hypotheses, especially regarding the possible origins of many of G4’s antagonists, but confirmation would be nice.