Chapter 6: Morning Lessons
Celestia Sleeps In
Chapter 6—Morning Lessons
Admiral Biscuit
Lyra sat patiently on the beach, waiting for the creature to return with its kin. She idly watched the lightening sky, annoyed by the way that some of the stars moved about. She had seen a couple pass overhead in a long slow arc, while others flashed red or green or white, and moved about much more slowly, in seemingly random directions. One of those had even approached over the lake—in all appearances as low as a pegasus flew, not high overhead like a proper star—and then proceeded to stay in place for a little bit, before it turned and went back again, accompanied all the while by an odd pulsing beat.
She had taken the time before the sun rose to empty her teaching materials out of her saddlebags. She had to keep reminding herself to pull them out by mouth. Like most unicorns, Lyra had become overly dependent on her telekinesis. The princess had warned her to try and conserve her magic as much as possible, because they didn’t know how easily she would be able to adapt to the local leylines, nor did they know what magic she might wish to demonstrate to the creature, or to utilize in her defense.
So far, she had been unable to feel any of the local energies, but she attributed that to the powerful field emanating behind her. She hoped that the creature would want to move off the beach at some point, since she wanted to explore the island and get a feel for its habitat. That was unlikely to occur during this first true meeting. While Lyra had high hopes, she had to keep reminding herself that progress was likely to be slow: Roam wasn’t built in a day, after all.
Lyra turned her head to watch the sun break the horizon. As chaotic as the night sky was, the sun seemed to be controlled properly, and it was a magnificent sight as it rose above the water. Someday, she would have to take a vacation with Bon Bon to Baltimare and persuade her to watch sunrise from the beach, despite the earth pony’s aversion to being up before noon. It was almost as good as attending the Summer Sun Celebration.
She looked back just in time to see the creature top the slight rise that led down to the beach, unexpectedly alone. He also paused for a moment, gazing out over the waters, before he looked back at her, then at the objects arrayed on the beach.
Lyra frowned. Surely there was nothing here that would cause confusion. She had a couple of books, a small chalkboard, an open box, a dozen marbles, and—of course—the symbols of peace. She followed his gaze to the alphabet which she had drawn in the damp sand. He seemed slightly perplexed by that, too. It would be unfortunate if this creature was illiterate.
She watched as its focus turned back towards the broken weapons. She had placed them near where they had first come into contact, in what she hoped was a very clear message: we come here peacefully.
It moved down the beach, towards the objects, which was a hopeful sign. She was quite surprised to see no others of its kind around. She tilted an ear towards the woods, but heard no noises which could not be attributed to the small creatures which lived in the forest. Maybe its rulers were also nervous about her, and so they had sent the creature back alone. Maybe it—like she—was considered expendable.
She watched it carefully as it lowered itself down by the weapons, bending its hind legs in a way no pony could emulate. It reminded her of a cat waiting to pounce, the way it kept its muscles tense, its rump just above the back of its hooves.
As eager and apprehensive as he was for another meeting with the alien—if it was even there—Dale couldn’t help but pause as he broke out of the trees just in time to watch the sun come up over Lake Michigan. Another good reason to pause was to give his glasses time to adjust: they had darkened almost immediately when he got out of the trees, and for a moment he couldn’t help but think of the peril-sensitive sunglasses in The Hitchhiker’s Guide. Well, if they turned completely opaque, it was probably time to consider running. His canoe was stashed just behind the rise, and he was reasonably confident he could get the craft into the water in very few seconds, given the proper motivation—such as being pursued by aliens. Maybe someday that would be an Olympic event.
He turned away from the water and saw a large section of writing on the beach. He studied it briefly, counting fourteen characters in the first row, with some having more sketched underneath them. The only conclusion he could draw from the display was that the aliens were quite versatile—this seemed to be yet another method of communication. Could it be that they were all short words, arranged to be read vertically? He thought maybe Japanese or Chinese was written that way. No character seemed to be repeated, though, and each character in a following row appeared to be a permutation of the character in the first row.
Well, he was sure it would be explained in due course. It was kind of disappointing that what was obviously a message was written in the sand—he had been hoping for a hologram or something like that. On the other hand, the only successful communication that they had managed thus far had been done in that manner.
He was even more surprised to see the array of objects around the unicorn, and the arrangement of items on the beach where they had first come into contact. The unicorn stayed where it was, motionless, so he approached the nearest items and squatted down to get a better look at them.
The spear he recognized immediately. It was very similar to the spears that the guards had been carrying, although the shaft had been broken about midway, leaving a short stick on one side and a still-somewhat lethal head on the other. However, when he picked it up and examined it more closely, he could tell that the edges of the spearhead had been blunted. It looked like someone had placed it on an anvil and beat it with a hammer. The reason was unfathomable to him.
He picked up the second item, which reminded him of a curved sword, like the cutlasses that pirates always used in the movies. It was surprisingly light; he had expected that a sword blade would be heavier. The blade was about two feet long, with a dulled edge on one side—it looked like the same hammer wielding creature had been at this blade, too—while the back side had a series of holes about an inch back from the edge with rivets pounded into them. The rivets were crude, and appeared to have been added later. He was no expert in swords, but he couldn’t see how this weapon was meant to be used—if it was a weapon—as there was no way to hold it. Perhaps the closed holes were meant to mount it to a shaft, to make it into a polearm. He turned it over in his hands, noting that the back edge had a concave cut to it, which seemed to further suggest that it was meant to be attached to something.
Both the blade and the spearhead seemed to have been very well constructed. He was no expert in swords, but he did have a lifetime of experience in a machine shop, and it was obvious that a lot of work had gone into both the blade and the spearhead. The long blade had been folded and hammered multiple times—he could clearly see the grain of the metal—and it had been fullered to cut the weight. If that wasn’t enough, the blade had been case-hardened on the cutting edge only, and it had been done the traditional way: he could see the irregular border where something had been applied to keep the heat away from the main part of the blade. On earth, it was usually done with clay.
The spear tip, unsurprisingly, was much less worked. Nevertheless, it too had been hand-crafted. He knew that it was probably made out of a high-carbon steel, but the lack of even slight surface rust told him that it had been well-cared for, up until someone blunted the edges anyway—that was clearly recent. He absently rubbed his finger along the blade. There weren’t any sharp burrs, which he would have expected. When he looked closer, it appeared that it had been re-heated before it was dulled, which was even more interesting, since that couldn’t have been done when it was mounted to the shaft. Someone had put a lot of effort into rendering these weapons useless.
He set it back down, and picked up the claw. His first impression was that it came from a Tyranasaurus Rex, it was so large. His entire hand could barely close around the base of the claw, and it curved forward a good eight inches, to where it was broken at a point where it had thinned to about the thickness of his thumb. He imagined that it probably originally was a couple of inches longer, and he was sure it had ended in a very sharp point.
It clearly hadn’t come from a creature the size of the alien, which was somewhat worrying for two reasons: first, that there was some kind of creature where the alien came from that had claws this size; second, that the alien had somehow managed to get and break one of them. It made him wonder just how powerful they were. Moreover, why had it brought such things? Was it a message that it was easily able to kill him? Perhaps some kind of trophy—these are the things I have killed; show me what you have killed so that we might treat as equals?
No, he decided, that probably wasn’t it. They had not seemed aggressive at all in their first meeting; as surprised as they had acted, he suspected that they had never seen a creature like him before. If he were to assume they were aggressive and kept trophies of their kills, then he would have been an irresistible target. He remembered how big game hunters used to kill animals just because they could, and then display them on their walls for bragging rights, and shuddered a bit as he imagined himself displayed in a trophy room, his head right above the fireplace, and perhaps the alien resting its feet on a human-skin rug. That seemed unlikely.
He picked them each up again, the spear, the blade, and the claw. There was something that they all had in common, and there was a reason that they had all been placed there. He looked down at the beach again, where the alien was sitting amongst a group of objects he couldn’t begin to imagine the significance of—although at least he recognized all of them, which was better than he was doing here.
They were all weapons, he thought, that was one thing they had in common. The spears he had seen before. He had thought, at the time, that they were possibly symbolic, since what advanced race used spears? As he was hefting the blade in his hand, trying to imagine what it meant, it suddenly hit him. All three items were weapons, and they were all broken—in the case of the two metal weapons, obviously deliberately broken. It must mean that they were not interested in violence, since a broken weapon wasn’t useful for anything. There was a proverb about beating swords into plowshares, and this must be the alien equivalent. Clearly, they had decided to show him simple weapons, so that he would grasp the meaning. He supposed that if they had put a broken ray-gun with dead batteries on the beach, he would have had no understanding of what it meant.
Dale thought he should probably also make his intentions clear, although he had not chosen to bring anything along which could be thought of as a weapon except for his Swiss Army knife, and looking at the claw, he figured that would be no more considered a weapon than a wet towel.
Twilight sat on her balcony, books piled up around her. She was having a difficult time focusing, instead looking up towards the Ponyville dam each time she turned a page. She wanted to be closer—even though she knew she would see nothing from the Equestrian end of the portal—but Princess Celestia had forbidden it.
The Elements of Harmony were safely in Twilight’s bedroom, and the bearers were close. Pinkie Pie was at Sugarcube Corner; Applejack was at her booth in market, rather than on the farm; Rarity and Fluttershy were working together at Carousel Boutique; and Rainbow Dash was observing the Royal Weather Patrol keeping the clouds inside the Everfree. She snickered—Rainbow was probably actually sleeping at her observation post.
She faintly heard a pop inside the library, followed almost immediately by a tapping at her Prench doors. Frowning, she closed the book and turned her head to see Luna staring back at her. “Princess?”
“We did not wish to alarm our townsponies,” she said sadly. “We feared if we flew in unbidden they might believe some disaster were ahoof.”
“Is there some—“
“Fear not, Twilight Sparkle.” The diarch stepped onto the balcony, carefully keeping herself close to the body of the tree. “Our duties were done for the day, and we did find ourselves unable to sleep. We wished to place ourselves closer than Canterlot, and we felt that thou mayst wish company for thy vigil. We are also curious if we can feel any of the creature’s magic interspersing with that of Equestria.”
Twilight stomped her hoof in frustration. “That’s why I wanted to be there! Where I could see what was happening! I know the Princess, um, Celestia wants me to stay here, but I could have teleported back in an instant if anything went wrong!”
“As thou didst teleport thyself free of Sombra’s crystal prison?” Ignoring the blush on Twilight’s face, she continued. “Hast thou practiced seeing magical fields, as Trixie taught thee?”
Twilight’s ears drooped the rest of the way. “No, I can’t. At best, I can get a faint glimmer, but I think I’m overpowering it with my own magic.”
“Hast thou a quill and parchment?”
Twilight brightened, and produced the requested items. Luna wrote a page, pausing frequently in thought, occasionally looking at Twilight critically. The unicorn desperately wanted to know what she was writing, but couldn’t bring herself to stare over Luna’s withers. Finally satisfied, the princess floated the parchment over to Twilight.
“We did craft a cantrip to allow thee to render thy magic invisible to thy sight. With practice, thou shalt need not utilize the spell, but ‘twill enable thee to clearly see the fields. We shall procure a treatise by Starswirl the Bearded which doth detail magical energies in every facet, and grant it to thee. Now, however, we wish to study, and we suggest that thou continue thine studies.” The princess lifted the book Twilight had been reading back up. “Principles of Language. Art thou planning a translation spell?”
“We don’t know enough of the creature’s neurology to even attempt one,” Twilight protested.
“If it hath writing, than its written words can be magically translated,” Luna retorted. The two began discussing the possibilities in earnest.
Lyra’s hopes fell as the creature examined the weapons. At first, it seemed it wasn’t sure what to make of them. She had thought that the metal objects it had held during their first contact indicated it had experience with metalwork, but now she was more convinced it had been given those object by its master. Surely it shouldn’t take five minutes of examination to identify a spear blade—unless these creatures had no natural enemies. But that thought was ridiculous: if it had no natural enemies, why was it frightened of them?
It picked up the spear and held two halves of the shaft together. Lyra suddenly worried that it did know what it was for, and that it was prepared to use a mending spell on it. If she remembered her cultural anthropology class correctly, it was considered an act of contempt in minotaur culture to kill a foe with her own weapon. Was their culture similar? Even if it didn’t use it on her, the act of mending the spear was practically a declaration of war.
Unnoticed by the creature, she took a step back, towards the safety of the bubble, and prepared a defensive spell. As it pantomimed breaking the spear, she breathed a long sigh of relief. It might not be terribly quick-witted, but it seemed it desired peace, at least for the nonce.
When the creature was about two body lengths from her, it stopped, and sat down on the beach, looking calmly at her. She figured this was the time to present the book. She turned her head—it was difficult to levitate objects when they were out of sight—and as she did, remembered that she was trying to conserve her magic.
This would be the second hurdle, Lyra supposed. Thus far, they had never gotten closer than slightly beyond its forelimb’s reach, but there was no way it was going to figure out that she wanted it to pick up that book. She could tap it with her hoof, and then back off, and it might come over and take the book. She could also just float it over, but if she started doing that now, by the end of the day she risked being completely exhausted.
She looked at the creature again, thoughtfully. It was much bigger than her, and—despite the shuffling gait it normally used—it could probably move quite quickly when it wanted to. Still, with its rump on the ground, it was unlikely to be able to get up to speed before she could defend herself; and if they were ever to truly befriend each other, they were going to have to get closer.
Lyra grabbed the book gently with her teeth, and walked towards the creature. When she was almost within touching distance—and easily within its reaching distance—she dropped the book in front of it, before quickly backing up to her original location.
The creature tentatively picked it up and opened the cover. The first page bore a likeness of Princess Celestia, which it seemed to recognize. It slowly turned the pages, its brow furrowing in concentration. She watched its eyes move, which suggested that it was at least trying to read the pages, although it was obvious it didn’t understand the languages. Lyra was hardly surprised; she and Twilight had both thought it was a long shot, but worth the try.
Dale looked at the book resting before him thoughtfully. Before today, he would never have described a book as a new-looking old book, but this book fit that description. The cover was a tight cloth appliqué, with an embossed fairyland type of castle highlighted in gold. It was a fairly simple drawing, much like a woodcut. He could clearly see a damp arc where the alien had carried it.
He tore his attention away from the book for a moment, and looked back at the alien. He had been reminded of the Black Lab he’d had as a kid when it brought the book over in its mouth. Did it want to play fetch? Surely it could have found a better object than a book to throw—there was a forest less than ten yards away. Besides, who came all the way across the vast reaches of space to play a game of fetch?
A moment’s consideration of the alien’s physique made him realize that there was no other way it could have gotten the book to him, unless it pushed it with its nose. The alien’s feet—hooves—would have a very hard time grasping, especially if it did wear shoes. He giggled: here he was on a beach with an alien creature that looked like a unicorn, and of all the questions that kept popping into his mind, the one which seemed to vex him the most was whether or not it wore horseshoes.
He picked the book up tentatively, being careful not to touch the part of the spine that had been in its mouth. There was no telling what kind of diseases could be contracted from alien saliva—the only upside was that if he got one, there would probably be a new disease named after him. In retrospect, he wondered if he should have worn a Hazmat suit, although it was probably already too late for that.
When he opened it, the first page had a likeness of the winged unicorn he had seen on the beach before, which validated his assumption that it was important. Underneath was some sort of writing which reminded him of runes, and below that was a more elegant, flowing script. He looked at the two lines thoughtfully. The first was shorter, and he could see that several of the characters were repeated. Looking over at the symbols the alien had carved in the sand, he realized that each one of the seeming runic characters was also written on the beach, as well as many more which were not under her name. Clearly, this was writing, although its meaning was unknown. Most likely it was a name and title.
The detail of the picture was near-photographic quality, when he allowed for the roughness of the pages, although he was surprised that the writing under it seemed to have been written by hand, rather than printed by machine. He looked a little more closely and discovered that what he had taken as a decorative border to the picture was in fact concealing printed text. It was very artfully done, but to what end? If it was something the aliens were trying to conceal from him, they needn’t have bothered—it was going to be quite a while before he could even hope to puzzle out the meanings of the words, assuming they were even going to teach him. Alternately, it could have been a correction made after the book had been printed. He had frequently seen that back in the days of printed parts catalogues. He even had a old catalogue which had a sticker covering the entirety of one page, because it was cheaper than re-printing the whole thing to correct an error.
Turning the page, he was confronted with a wall of text in the same quasi-runes as those on the beach, while the facing page was filled with the flowing script which made up the second line of the title page. He scanned over both for a while, mentally counting the distinct characters. It seemed that there were more in the cursive than the runic, although he wasn’t absolutely sure. The cursive had entirely distinct letters, while the runic frequently had additions to the ‘base’ character. He suddenly realized that they were probably accents, which made the message on the beach clearer—it was the alphabet, and the other forms of the letter were beneath its primary form.
He turned to the next page, and saw two more blocks of text, written in new alphabets. Each of those had a woodcut at the top left. The first page looked like a striped hornless version of the alien, and the second reminded him of an eagle, although it was no more realistic than a Hanna-Barbera eagle. It nagged at his mind a little, and he wasn’t quite sure why. It reminded him of a commercial he’d heard on the radio, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
The next two pages were filled with yet another two different texts and different woodcuts, and it suddenly hit him. The passages were all the same thing, written in different languages. These creatures had given him a Rosetta stone, of sorts. They were clearly hoping that he would recognize one of these languages. He flipped back, trying to remember what he knew of foreign languages, which unfortunately was nearly nothing. He figured he’d recognize a Cyrillic alphabet if he saw it, or Greek, or possibly Egyptian, but as he went through the book, nothing looked like anything he’d ever seen before. If these aliens had built the pyramids, they hadn’t taken notes. He did notice that several of the pages contained languages which seemed to be written in the same character sets, but none of them were familiar to him at all. When he reached the end, he shook his head and set the book down.
It was strange that of all the things the alien might have brought, a book was the first thing that it put in his hands, and what appeared to be their alphabet was drawn out in the sand. It was not too difficult for him to believe that the stick resting at the end was the tool which had been used to form the letters. Even he could have come up with something better—he was sure that if he had looked hard enough, he could have found a laptop or tablet or something that was hardened against electromagnetic interference. Undoubtedly, the military had them. Even a whiteboard would have been an effective, simple solution.
Suddenly, it hit him. An anthropologist wouldn’t go into a primitive culture with the latest and greatest electronics. What tribal leader would have the slightest idea how to interact with a laptop? At best, they’d think it was powerful magic; at worst, the work of the devil. No doubt these aliens were lowering the bar—so to speak—in order to keep him from freaking out any more than he already had. If they weren’t on a mission of contact, then they probably didn’t have their normal materials at hand, and were making do with what they could find.
The book was a bit of an oddity, since it appeared to have been printed using Reinasssance technology, but perhaps that was just a trend for them. Retro was popular enough in America, anyway. His first fridge had been a stainless steel monstrosity, replaced by an avocado-green eyesore, then a dull beige unit, and now stainless steel was back in. He could have made a fortune if he’d kept his Frigidaire. They probably just typed in some text in their language, had the computer translate it into every different race’s language that they knew, and hit the print button. They’d probably changed the text around the ruling one, in case he actually could read their language. Perhaps it had been a political poster. He snickered, wondering what they’d think if he showed them a picture that said “Nixon’s the One” underneath.
He took a sip from his Camelback—which got him a strange look from the alien—before reaching for his backpack. He was about to take out the first-grade primer, when he thought of making introductions. Surely the alien had a name? Maybe that was a false assumption; maybe they had grown past that. Maybe they were a hivemind, like the Borg. That could be the reason why there weren’t any others this time around.
He tapped his right hand to his chest, and slowly said “Dale,” adding, after a second of reflection, “Paard.” It cocked its head slightly, focusing its ears intently on him. He tried again. “Dale Paard.”
Trixie lay listless on the damp straw. Her coat was matted and her mane tangled. Time had lost all meaning. The only highlight had been when she had taught Twilight Sparkle—the leaden disruptor had come off her horn, and she had been able to make her chamber look nice.
Now it was back on. She spent most of her time sleeping, as there was nothing else to do. The guards stayed at their posts, rarely interacting with her at all. For all intents and purposes, she was alone. Meals arrived and dishes were removed without a word being spoken.
For a while, she had scratched the wall to mark the passage of time, but lately that had lost its appeal. The brazen showmare was gone, now, replaced by a lost soul. Part of her wanted to just lie down and die—she was ashamed of what she had become, of what she had done. After the amulet had been removed, she truly had been repentant, understanding to her horror that she was worse than even her mother. She knew she deserved to be punished.
But a darker part of her mind had been whispering that this wasn’t so. The ponies liked having her in charge. The foals worshipped her, and would do anything for her. Twilight had been jealous of her power, and had cheated to steal the amulet from her. She tried to silence that voice, but it whispered from shadows in her sleep, gnawing at her.
Recently, she had discovered that if she concentrated, she could make small crystals grow from shadowed corners. It frightened her what are you doing Trixie because they grew with a pulsing red aura, but it was the only amusement she had, and might provide the key to her escape. She stared at the rough stone, coaxing forth the minerals trapped within, not noticing as her eyes began softly glowing a sickly green.
When it had finished with the book, the creature put it down and sat for a moment, before taking a tube into its mouth. It appeared to be swallowing something—was this their feeding behavior? Then it reached into its backpack, appeared as if it were going to withdraw something, but it remained empty-hoofed. Taloned, she reminded herself. Lyra was sure Twilight had been right about this creature being a hybrid. It was the only logical explanation for the differing shapes of its talons and hind limbs.
It tapped itself in the breast, and muttered something slowly. She cocked her ears forward instinctively, trying to pick up on it. It repeated it, watching her intently.
It might be some kind of greeting in its language. Even if it didn’t know how to read, it did know how to communicate orally; it had already proven that. If it was a greeting, it was best to repeat it. She tried to mimic the creature’s movements as exactly as possible, touching her right hoof to her breast, and did her best to clearly enunciate the low sounds it made.
The creature’s reaction surprised her—it began laughing. It repeated the motion, touching itself and saying the same two words, then pointed to her. She suddenly realized it was introducing itself. That was its name, or what kind of creature it was, possibly both. It was very short—pony names tended to be two or more syllables long—but that could be attributed to cultural differences. Diamond Dog names were rarely more than a syllable, if they even had a name: since they relied so heavily on scent, parents rarely felt the need to name their offspring.
In that case, it was best to reciprocate. She repeated its motions, this time carefully saying her name, while pointing to the creature and slowly pronouncing its name.
It brightened, and tried to say her name back. The low tones of its voice, as well as the unfamiliar—to it—syllables in Equestrian came out like mush, grating to her ears. She imagined that she had garbled its name just as badly.
The creature fell silent, and she did, too. It seemed like an opportune time to reflect on the success of the communications. Lyra was sure that the day’s progress would be measured in small leaps like this.
Its baritone voice made her think she had been correct in her initial assumption that it was a stallion, which was too bad. It was unlikely to have very high standing among its mates—if it even had any. Since it had been there alone, and was still alone, it was probably unallied. Once they had gotten past the initial communication phase, he might not be able to offer her much. He probably would have a very difficult time gaining her an audience with any alphas.
They might do things differently here, she reminded herself. What held true in Equestria might not here. Who was to say that there even were two sexes among these creatures? They might divide like parasprites, or be magically formed from parts that lay around the island, like timberwolves or rock doves. It was a question she wanted to ask, but how to bring it up? They had a lot more work to do before they reached that point in their conversation.
Dale’s throat hurt from trying to emulate the alien’s name, although it came out of the creature’s mouth in a smooth, lyrical flow. The range was the first problem—he wasn’t sure he could have spoken in such a treble range even before he hit puberty. He could have brought a tank of helium, which might have given him a chance. But he was mentally kicking himself; he had heard them speak before, and all of them had a higher range than he did, apparently.
Still, it seemed to be satisfied with the progress they had made. He looked at it again, thoughtfully. When he had first seen it up close, he had come to the conclusion that it was female, and its voice seemed to support that theory. Of course, they all spoke like that, and it was unlikely they were all female. Maybe they didn’t even have genders, or maybe it was something weird, like an earthworm or a tree, or something he couldn’t even fathom. It could even be a robot.
A robot. Why hadn’t that occurred to him before? He thought of the astronomy book that rested in his bag, with all its pictures of planets and moons taken by robots. What safer way to explore a foreign land? The group before might have been repairing the robot, and now that it was back in service, they were going to use it. Its odd coloring might really stand out to them; it could be their equivalent of blaze orange. If it was a robot, it acted very smoothly, much more naturally than human androids.
With a robot, they would have no fear of him harming it, nor would they have to worry about any possible contamination of the creature. The field the big one put around it might have been a way of cleaning it, or the barrier might prove impervious to any foreign bodies. If they were really worried, they could just upload the data from the unit, and destroy it here on the beach when the meeting was over, then send down another identical one for the next meeting.
It was a good theory, but something about it didn’t quite jibe. He looked back at the book she had brought over. He had seen the dampness on the cover. If they were trying to make a robot blend in, they would have been hard-pressed to come up with a worse disguise, and there was no other point he could think of to make a robot salivate. The unicorn-style horn it was sporting might be an antenna, but any self-respecting robot had manipulator arms, not hooves. Furthermore, the tail was a completely unnecessary detail, and she would have no reason to blink, either.
This was certainly a creature. No doubt she was having the same thoughts, considering his form. Well, the only way to find out was to truly establish communications. She’d been putting in all the effort so far; now it was his turn to see what he could come up with.
Dale walked down the beach, towards where the unicorn had written its alphabet in the sand. It was probably the best place to start, he thought, picking up the stick.
Lyra trotted behind the creature, unnoticed, as he walked purposefully down to the water’s edge. He picked up the same stick she’d used with his talon, and began to trace shapes in the sand, next to hers. Before he was halfway done, she understood that it was an alphabet, and her hopes soared. They had been so worried that it did not use written communication, yet it obviously had understood the purpose of her alphabet, and was demonstrating its own.
She looked back to where they had been sitting, where it had left its backpack. It might be full of books! While the idea didn’t thrill her as much as it would have excited Twilight, it still meant that the two cultures had at least a few things in common.
He finished tracing, and stood back from his work. There were twenty-six characters in the first row, with another twenty-six below that. She smiled inwardly—a fifty-two character alphabet implied that it had quite sophisticated linguistics. They were very neatly organized, too: a top row of big letters for bold sounds, and a second row of smaller letters for softer sounds. Clearly, a lot of thought had gone into its language, which was good. It would make it much easier to learn. For all its precision when it came to sound, the Equestrian language had borrowed words from Equuis and Pegos, as well as from the other intelligent races, and was littered with irregular verbs and unexpected plurals. Undoubtedly, this creature’s language would be much simpler, despite all the different letters she’d have to memorize.
He looked at the writing in the sand, then back at his backpack. She was suddenly reminded that her writing supplies were still tucked into her saddlebags—she hadn’t expected to be this far away from them. She hadn’t planned to take them off, but the girth strap was damaged, and it pinched her belly. She’d been meaning to get that fixed, but with all the planning that had been done, she just hadn’t had time. Lyra wasn’t sure how to communicate that she wanted to get parchment—would he be insulted or worried if she ran back to her bags?
Dale glanced at the unicorn, seeing what could only be recognition in its eyes. He had already decided that reciprocating in kind was the easiest way to handle things—if the book was any indication, these creatures had vastly more experience interacting with aliens, especially since humanity’s score thus far was—at best—one, and he was probably giving himself too much credit. Maybe one-half, since they hadn’t declared war on Earth yet, as far as he knew. He’d upgrade it to one when his leaders and their leaders met peacefully.
He mentally kicked himself at his unpreparedness. First, he wasn’t sure what came next. Should he try to pronounce each letter? That could lead to trouble, since their pronunciation was heavily tied to what came before or after. They had learned the alphabet song when he was in kindergarten, but that hardly seemed appropriate for this situation; he’d have to pronounce the letters. First came the alphabet, then spelling, then phonics, or something like that. If only he was trying to teach something simple, like programming a CNC lathe. He could have done that in his sleep. Why hadn’t he brought his notebook? At some point they were going to want to move back up on the beach, and they could hardly take sketches in the sand with them. He looked over at her again, noticing that she was glancing at her bags. What if she also forgot to bring writing tools? He chuckled, and sheepishly walked towards his bag, unsurprised to see her do the same with hers.
Shortly thereafter, the two had finished writing down their respective alphabets. Dale had been quite surprised to see her pull out a quill and inkpot, but again attributed it to the aliens lowering their technology so not to alarm him. He was amused watching her trace out the letters with her mouth—she was reasonably adept, but it was obvious that she normally did not use this technique, further reinforcing his notion. He wondered—given their lack of manual dexterity—how they had managed to build spacecraft, and all that went with it. Still, he knew of enough amputees that managed to gracefully navigate a world which was not built for them, thus proving the old adage that when there was a will, there was a way. A worrying thought was nagging at the back of his mind: maybe they didn’t build spaceships. Maybe they enslaved creatures who did. Creatures with useful hands, perhaps. What if they wanted to know if he was intelligent enough to train in the fine art of re-entry shield bonding, or control panel wiring? Should he play dumb, to avoid the possibility of being press-ganged into unwanted space servitude? No. Even if that was what she wanted, it would be worth it for the experience. He glanced up at the sky briefly, before picking up the stick.
Using it to identify which letter he was naming, he pronounced them each three times, slowly and carefully. She got the idea, repeating them after him. Each time, she would take notes. A glance told him that she was not using the same alphabet as the one she had written on the beach, which was curious. Maybe it was their version of a phonetic system, and she was writing a pronunciation guide. If so, they were rapidly going to run into complications when they arrived at actual words, but that was a bridge to cross when they got there. He could have brought “Hooked on Phonics.” One call to 1-800-ABCDEFG, and they would rush a system to his door which could teach a preschooler, or even an adult. They never did say in the commercials if it would work on aliens, though.
He had reached lowercase d when he heard her give off a snort. She was glancing upwards at her earlier notes. It was a lot to learn, but they were going to have to get it out of the way.
Lyra was rapidly scribbling notes as he sounded out his alphabet. She struggled with the first few letters, before pausing at the sixth. She had been taking very incomprehensible notes in unicorn, when it suddenly hit her to think of the noises as music. While it was true that she normally played, she had taken a few choral classes at the conservatory, and she’d sang in more languages than she cared to think about, even performing a piece in Draconic once. With that mindset, she began to add musical notation to all the letters as he spoke them, remembering that she had to pitch up two octaves to hit the center of her normal vocal range. It was the kind of thing that no doubt would make a linguist cringe, but she was here and they weren’t.
He had reached the fourth letter of the second line, when it hit her that he was repeating what the first line had said, with a different character set. She checked her notes, and—accounting for differences in her notation, they were exactly the same. He seemed to understand that she had just figured that out, because he tapped the fifth letter, but rather than speak it, he looked at her expectantly. Taking her cue, she checked her notes, and carefully pronounced it. He appeared to be satisfied, because he touched the next letter. In fairly short order she had worked her way to the end of the alphabet—although it was more a testament to her careful note-taking than anything else—and she knew that she could repeat it again and again. After all, her special talent was musical in nature, and so was this.
It did beg the question why there needed to be two copies of each letter. None of the languages she was familiar with did that—it seemed such a waste of effort, and unnecessarily complicated. She hoped that when he revealed his books that her question would be answered.
He looked over at her alphabet, and she imagined he wished to repeat the exercise. She needed a drink, first; fortunately, they were rather close to the water. Lyra carefully stepped around their work area and walked in until she was fetlock-deep. It smelled all right, but she cast a disinfectant spell in her mouth, just in case. This was an alien land, after all, and it was best to be careful.
She drank slowly, relishing the coolness of the water. It certainly tasted pleasant, even though the wavelets were stirring up a little bit of sand. The wells in Ponyville had a lot more minerals in them than this water. She absently wondered if the creature had to take some kind of mineral supplements, like the ponies who lived in Appleoosa. More likely, if its kind had lived here for a long time, it didn’t require them.
She walked back to the beach, and began to recite her alphabet, going down columns instead of across, since it made much more sense to her mind to teach the base letter followed by its alternate forms. She indicated the diacritics on each form, hoping that it would begin to understand the pattern. She had to settle with pointing with her hoof, since it would be impossible to carefully enunciate the letters with a stick in her mouth.
It was disappointing how much trouble he was having pronouncing the words. Clearly, his strengths were neither language nor music. He was making a valiant effort, but it just wouldn’t come to him.
Suddenly, inspiration struck. Before they sung the piece in Draconic, they had learned a spell to lower their voices, and—since everypony wasn’t a unicorn—the voices of others. It required minimal effort to cast, and would remain in effect until deliberately dispelled. Twilight and she had been discussing the possibility of such a spell, but she’d been concentrating so hard on scholarly spells, this one had never occurred to her. If she used it, she could drop her voice two octaves into his vocal range, and he might have better luck understanding. It was by no means a permanent solution—if he ever went to Equestria, it was unreasonable to expect that everypony would alter their voice just to speak with him—but as long as he could correctly pronounce words, he would be understood. Like most creatures, ponies’ aural range was much broader than their vocal.
It took but a moment, and she started from the beginning again.
Dale was struggling mightily to imitate the unicorn. It was challenging enough for him to pronounce foreign words—he had suffered through a few semesters of Spanish before throwing in the towel—but one that was almost entirely out of his vocal range was an insurmountable challenge. The combination of trying to repeat foreign sounds while pitching them down was simply too much, and it was depressing how easily she had done the reverse.
She stopped, and her pose seemed to him as if she was thinking. He hadn’t managed to make any of the sounds correctly, despite his best efforts, and he could see on her face that she was rapidly giving it up as a lost cause. She closed her eyes for a moment, and faint golden glow pulsed in her neck. Much to his surprise, she pointed her hoof at the first letter again, but this time her voice was much lower.
This time, he was more easily able to imitate the sound. He took notes, as best he could, on how each letter sounded. This time around, it became clear that the columns indicated predictable variations on each letter. As complicated as her alphabet seemed at first glance, it apparently covered phonics much better than the one he was stuck with.
She finally reached the end, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He wished he’d thought of bringing something along to record the sounds the letters made. He had a feeling he’d be mispronouncing them a lot.
His stomach grumbled, and he glanced down at his watch. It was almost noon—they’d been on the beach together for over five hours. It hardly seemed that any time had passed. He took another sip of water, wondering how he might indicate that he was hungry, especially in a non-threatening manner.
Jennifer whistled to herself as she shoved the Piper out of its hanger. The weather over Traverse City was beautiful, and the weather map showed every indication that it was just as nice over Lake Michigan, too. The twin-engined plane was in perfect condition—it was just a month out of annual inspection, with no major flaws noted. As always, there were a dozen or so piddling things to correct. Checklists and inspections or no, they cropped up every year.
She popped open the nacelles on the engines. A quick check verified oil levels, and she also took the opportunity to make certain everything was in place and secure. It was her firm belief that a well-maintained machine would always perform flawlessly, and this plane certainly had, despite being older than she was.
After checking the fuel tanks for water contamination, she backed her Explorer up to the plane and popped the liftgate. She’d managed to land a contract with the owner of most of South Fox Island, who was apparently planning a party, judging by the cases of champagne and local wine she was loading. Normally, she knew he’d have had it brought over by boat, but this was probably a last-minute gig.
She’d mentally calculated weight and balance as she loaded her truck, and carefully stowed all the boxes according to her plan. There was no reason to believe she was going to run into any sort of turbulence, but it was foolhardy to assume she wouldn’t.
Loading finished, Jennifer parked her Explorer, nosing it against the hanger, centered between the lines with surgical precision. She was reaching for her shades on the dash when her cellphone chirped.
Five minutes later, the frustrated pilot pushed her plane back into the hanger. Of course the caterer would have forgotten a box of food. Of course it would have been the filet mignon, which had naturally been stored in the cold room, and which the helpful cartboy had forgotten, because he was too busy staring at her ass. She should have double-checked the list herself.
Now she was going to be delayed by hours by the time she made the round trip, pre-flighted the plane again, and filed a flight plan with ATC—who never seemed to grasp that there was an airstrip on South Fox, despite her frequent flights there. And, if that wasn’t enough, she was going to be flying into the sun. Well, at least it isn’t raining.
Yet, she corrected herself. At least it isn’t raining yet.
Lyra looked at the sun. As strange as things were on this world, it at least made a predictable arc. Since it was nearly overhead, it was about noontime, and she was quite hungry.
She had completely forgotten to eat in her excitement of learning more of the creature’s language, and he hadn’t disappointed her. Had it only been a few hours since she was worried that this creature had no language at all? While he might not have been learning with as much speed as she hoped, he was certainly stubborn enough to keep trying, despite his obvious difficulties.
Her next question was how to indicate that she was hungry? It might be rude to just start eating in front of him, especially if he wanted to share. There was no telling what kind of etiquette these creatures had.
He seemed to be looking at her, as if expecting some sort of clue how to proceed. It dawned on her that he was probably far out of his depth. What if—as crazy as it seemed—there were no other intelligent species with which he spoke? He had been following her in all aspects, as if he expected her to set the tone. Perhaps he expected it, being a stallion.
Well, since she was hungry, then the next order of business should be lunch. It might be an opportunity to get an insight into the creature’s biology, too—what did it eat, if it did? It appeared to swallow something that came from a tube which was attached to its back, occasionally. Perhaps that was how it fulfilled its nutritional needs.
She rolled up her parchment with a hoof, ink bottle centered in the tube to provide strength. The quill was stuck in the cork, to prevent stains. Normally, she would have levitated it, but she instead grabbed it in her mouth, gripping around the ink bottle. He seemed quite interested in the process, although she could not fathom any reason why he would be. Certainly if she had possessed talons like his, she would be taking full advantage of them.
As soon as she returned to her earlier location, she tucked her notes into her saddlebags, and pulled out a lunchbag. Bon Bon had packed her favorite daisy sandwiches, along with a dessert of home-made candies, and a stack of carrots.
She watched him absently from the corner of her eye as she carefully dumped the contents of the sack out, keeping them on her saddlebags to avoid getting sand in her food. It had been a long time since she’d been forced to eat without her magic, but she grimly gave it a go, all the while keeping a watch on him.
He seemed to require solid food, as well. He reached into his pack, and removed a sack similar to her own, although it looked to be made of some sort of brown parchment. As he emptied it, she was surprised to see that his food was further wrapped in some sort of glassy cloth, which he crumpled up and placed in his pants pockets.
She couldn’t help but get a scent of his lunch, which caused her stomach to briefly churn. Although the grains and vegetables on his sandwich seemed very similar to her own, there was an overpowering smell of dead flesh.
Is it a carrion-eater? Many of them were quite smart, and they also had a very good immunity to disease. It was a little distasteful, but such creatures certainly had their place in nature, and who was she to judge, anyway? Pegasi often ate fish, and sushi was a Neighponese delicacy. Dragons consumed gems and minerals, often aging them for years. They couldn’t help their nutritional needs.
Dale watched in fascination as the alien rolled up her paper around the ink bottle and quill, then gently picked them up with her mouth. It was clear that she had done this before, and he once again admired her dexterity, although she seemed to pause momentarily before she moved anything, as if she were considering the best way to approach the challenge.
She stuck the notes back in her saddlebags and pulled out a cloth sack. Dale watched intently, wondering what the next lesson would be. So far, she had shown a much greater aptitude for dealing with a complete stranger. He was briefly taken aback as she dumped her lunch out on her bag. Assuming that their food was roughly analogous to his own, she appeared to have two sandwiches, carrots, and some small candies, which looked very much like the buckeyes his mother used to make every now and then.
What was of particular interest was that none of the food was wrapped—not even the sandwich—yet it seemed to be holding together. The only two things that came to his mind which would effectively glue a sandwich together were peanut butter and frosting, and one certainly wouldn’t put those on a sandwich . . . which seemed to contain flowers. Actual flowers.
Dale really wanted a closer look at her food. So far, she had drunk directly from Lake Michigan, which seemed like a far more animalistic behavior than he would have expected—hadn’t the aliens invented bottled water yet? On the other hand, given the species difference, it was possible that she knew—by way of scanning, or something—that there was nothing in the water which could hurt her. If that was the case, why bother carrying water at all? There were millions of gallons of it within very easy reach.
When he was a kid—before the fiasco of the Vietnam War—there was a time where he had been an avid reader of war comics and war stories. In those days, in what was an unfortunate tradition leading back to when man first took to the seas, fresh fruits and vegetables were scarce or impossible to come by. Was it possible that these aliens had no better skills and her food was earthly in origin? Or did they have hydroponic gardens aboard their vessel? They could even have food replicators, a device which—like so many other sci-fi staples from his childhood—actually existed. He really wanted to get a closer look, but was worried that it would be misinterpreted. What might she think if he came over and started to nose at her food?
Curiosity won out. After a single bite out of his roast beef sandwich, he walked closer to her. She looked up at him, but did not move away, and quickly returned to her food. For a moment, he considered offering to trade, but put the thought out of his mind almost as soon as it came. He knew full well that there were a surprisingly large number of plants on earth that were toxic to humans, and there was no telling what effect alien food might have on his digestive system.
Lyra was startled when he came over. His moves did not seem aggressive, simply curious. Thus far, he had demonstrated considerable restraint, and she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt: while he might be considering asking her for some food, he was unlikely to steal it from her.
Nevertheless, she thought it might be interesting to see what he would do if she offered him something, so she nosed a carrot off her saddlebags and nodded at him. He seemed to understand the gesture, because he picked it up and examined it critically. It wasn’t that impressive, in her opinion: when they were in season, Golden Harvest dragged carrots twice as big to market by the bushel. This was a early spring carrot, and while it didn’t look as good as the ones that she produced later in the year, in Lyra’s opinion these were much more flavorful. As strange as it seemed, the cooler ground somehow seemed to concentrate the flavor.
Oddly, instead of trying to eat it, or even smell it properly, the creature pulled one of the transparent cloth bags from his pocket, and carefully wrapped the carrot inside. He then put it in his backpack, saving it for later.
At first, she thought that a particularly odd behavior. Upon reflection, it made a lot of sense. He might or might not have had claws on his hind paws—they were still concealed in the odd fetlock corsets he wore—but he certainly didn’t have them on his forelimbs, and his teeth didn’t look particularly useful for catching a creature, either. She had no idea what his metabolism was, although it was a reasonable assumption that he needed to eat a lot of nutritionally dense food, given his size. Since he seemed to not be well-built for hunting, it made sense that he would have to rely on waiting to find a fresh carcass, so it was logical that when he found a source of food which would keep that he would save it for later. At least he was civilized enough to do something artful with his food, rather than pull out a dead animal and start chewing on it.
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2193355
Yeah, you're right about in the moon, but fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/112/b/2/luna_on_the_moon_animation_by_kadjule-d3ekmg7.gif
that's kind of my headcanon.
I'm probably going to avoid specifically stating whether they move the earth, or the sun and moon, because
eventuallyalmost instantly someone with a vast knowledge of solar mechanics will prove, with math, than I am an idiot for trying. I'm sure Admiral Tigerclaw will explain it nicely in Arrow 18 eventually, and I'llstealborrow his explanation.The Piper's going to be forced down in a storm, isn't it?
Yay, more unplanned contact!
2215742
We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?
I really liked this chapter! There was something about the interaction between Lyra and Dale that (while very entertaining) seemed a little slow paced and I didn't like the whole part where Trixie is slowly becoming another Sombra. I feel a sub plot like that would deviate the focus of the story of how this is a Human in Equestria story, not Equestria vs Dark Queen Trixie. Especially when she's clearly reformed. I hope that Twilight nips this in the bud.
Other than that, this was a good chapter. Thank you!
2215770
I tihnk it's funny how they're making so many incorrect conclusions based on assumptions. Then again, what really could be expected being that they've never seen one another or anything like one another before? Still, aside from what I suspect will be the woman's plane somehow passing through the 'wormhole' while Lyra's heading back and pulling the plane along with her which will then scare the living CRAP out of everypony when she appears on the other side of it (not to mention the pilot) and create a whole new set of problems!
2215690
Borrow it, sure. If the next chapter is ever added.
Not that I have any room to talk.
Oh hey there Trixie subplot.
Really great chapter. Yet again, you flawlessly execute a realistic version of what alien-to-human diplomatic relations would be like. Flawlessly. It's very interesting the way all of this is presented, but it still makes sense in its own way. You use a great amount of Math and Science to prove your points, all the while making sure that everything stays consistent. Meanwhile, between Dale and Lyra, there's the perfect little twist of curious-but peaceful- behavior.
Gotta hand it to you, this thing is pretty good.
Eagerly awaiting next chapter.
2216284
Originally, I had Dale copy the book and Photoshop out Elmo, but it seemed like something he wouldn't think of, and it does leave things open to hilarious misinterpretation.
2216704
The biggest challenge (for me) is the running POV shifts, because I can't have them happen too quickly or they're jarring, and I have to keep consistency between the sections. It would have been super boring if I had written one chapter from Lyra's POV and a second from Dale's that pretty much covered the exact same thing, and each time they're reacting in the moment.
I'm glad you think I'm handling it well!
2215690
You don't even need vast knowledge. You just need to know the one simple fact that it takes over eight minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth and suddenly it becomes a great deal harder to explain Equestria's sun.
Also, I like how Lyra sees humans as carrion eaters. The funny thing is, she's completely right. That's how we started getting food and transferring over to omnivorous diet rather than a herbivorous one, after all. It's just that we were smart enough to figure out ways to kill prey despite lack of claws and enormous canines/fangs(such as teaching every other animal on the planet exactly how much they suck at not dying of exhaustion compared to us humans, for example. That was the main one, even after we invented the spear.).
2217109
I could assume quantum entanglement as an explanation for the speed of magic through space (after all, if they were limited to light speed, it would have taken them years to get to earth). 8 minutes delay isn't unreasonable, either. I think some of the largest container ships and supertankers have a similar helm response, and their captains don't have the benefit of centuries of practice.
The biggest problem is the mass of the sun vs. the mass of the earth. Even if Celestia had perfect footing, it would be like trying to pull a freight train while standing on a skateboard: your movement would be far greater than the train's (for all practical purposes, it wouldn't move at all).
If we figure their sun is smaller, like a red dwarf, and closer, and maybe the moon is larger, farther away, and in direct orbital opposition to the sun, than maybe it's within the bounds of possibility. Or maybe they use their magic to turn the earth.
If Equestria is stationary, do they tilt its axis manually for the seasons, or is that why they need to change them by hoof? Would there be winds? What kind of tidal forces would be acting on the planet?
What should the effects have been when NMM prevented the sun from rising? Did she do it by stopping the sun or moon? Or did she suddenly change the rotation of the earth?
I don't know nearly enough about celestial mechanics or even physics to come up with vaguely plausible answers, so it's probably best for me to leave that discussion to the experts. For my purposes, Celestia can control the sun, somehow, and their magic tunnel-portal-thing can get them from Equestria to Earth in the blink of an eye.
2217279
The problem isn't that magic is limited to light speed. Physics rape like that is possible in fiction. No, the problem is that light is limited to light speed(no shit), and whenever Celestia raises the sun, we see the effects instantly, rather than eight minutes after she raises the sun. It's instant proof that she cannot be doing it by moving a celestial body like our sun.
My personal theory, ever since the Sonic Rainboom, is that the Equestrian sun is more equivalent to Helios's chariot moving across the sky out of Greek mythology than anything resembling a real celestial body. You get evidence for this when Rarity's wings burn up by going to close too the sun in that episode. This was meant to be a reference to the Greek myth of Icarus, but like Greek myths, this means that the sun is something you could theoretically reach simply by flying high enough with wings.
Don't know how their moon works, though. It might actually be bigger and further away than the sun in Equestria.
2217305
Ok, I see what you're saying. Yeah, the time it took for the light to get there would be an issue, but I bet after over a thousand years of practice, even if Celestia is dumb as a stump, she'd have figured out it took exactly x number of minutes (based on their solar distance) before what she did had a visual effect, and she could certainly allow for that during the Summer Sun Celebration.
I read somewhere that a bunch of engineering students or something re-examined the Icarus myth, and came to the conclusion that his wings failed because the cold of the altitude caused the wax to become brittle and fail, causing the crash. Since Rarity's wings were partially made of dew, if I'm remembering correctly, perhaps the altitude caused it to freeze, causing wing failure. A more interesting question from the episode is how did RD accelerate so fast without pumping her wings?
I personally prefer the "sun is a mass of incandescent gas that Celestia controls by magic" theory, but given the vast number of Greek myths that the writers (and even myself) have included, the Helios chariot could certainly be acceptable headcanon. It does make one wonder about the chariot Twilight arrived in Ponyville in, thought--is that a spare sun chariot?
2217362
Oh, sure, maybe she could prepare to raise the sun, calculate things so that it works for the celebration? Sure. You'd have to take in a ludicrous amount of variables into account, and make sure that absolutely no interruptions or delays happen in the intervening eight minutes and twenty seconds every year for over a thousand years to get it to work, but it's technically doable. Extremely improbable, but possible.
However, the sun rising instantly the moment that Nightmare Moon is defeated and no longer able to prevent it from doing so? Sorry, doesn't work that way. There would have to be an eight minute delay there, and there wasn't.
And I don't mean it has to be chariot, though with all the Greek myth references, it's certainly possible. The point of referencing Helios is to give an example of a fictional/mythological sun that doesn't resemble our giant ball of burning gas in any way, shape or form. Equestria's sun could be anything from the chariot example, to a floating heat and light producing crystal, to a magic ball of fire(that is smaller than the MLPlanet, rather than absurdly bigger), etc. But what it isn't is a giant nuclear fusion reactor.
As for Rainbow Dash achieving transonic speeds without even flapping her wings.... yeah, gonna have to go with "magic" on that one. I do have a blog post explaining the rainboom part of the sonic rainboom, though.
2218002
I'll have to check out the blog post, it sounds interesting!
2218002, 2218144
For all the reasons Karna has laid out quite well my own explanation is that Equestria solar system is not a natural one and was 'made to order' by those who created it. I have Celestia tell Starswirl this in Renaissance Pony, without going too far into the actual celestial mechanics of it. The control of the orbs by the Duarchs is real, and is just a case of Clarke's aphorism (any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic).
As to the actual shape of the planet Equestria, it could be a normal earth sized planet, but, it could also be a Dyson sphere, which would mean that the stars would not change position noticeably at night, a feature I've read in several stories.
Dafaddah
2218950
I'm probably going to go with the "Celestia doesnt' know," just to keep it simple. It's not an important plot point in my story, anyway.
2218002
Have you read The Art of Rainbow Engineering?
2219364
Not yet, but I'm going too now.
2176630
The Finger Trap was excellently thought out, and pretty well-written (I think I noticed some technical errors, but nothing detracting). I enjoyed it,and wish that the author would continue. I especially liked how the main character was pretty much a jerk who didn't want any part of ponies or Equestria.
Rarity On Earth was 2nd person, which I personally hate, and I just couldn't read on after the first chapter, but I did try
This is going sooooooooooo slow........ When are they going to be able to talk to each other!
2220252
Oh, sooner than you think. After all, this is only the first few hours of their first 'learning' meeting. While I could go through a page-by-page description of each of the books that each of them brought, and a word-by-word learning process, I'm going to speed it along, now that there's a chapter that describes the difficulties they're facing. I think Arrow 18 went about 6 chapters in before there was much communication (and Twilight had the advantage of using the 'learning program' on the ship's computer.
As it stands right now, Lyra's got an advantage, 'cause she's got a whole team to puzzle over books and stuff. Her big disadvantage, of course, is that the Roman alphabet isn't exactly a good measure of how words are pronounced, but I'd figure after a week of extensive work, using the visual dictionary that Dale brought, it's reasonable to assume that a team of Canterlot professors could come up with an Equestrian-to-English dictionary that covered most nouns. Verbs are going to be a challenge, but that's why Lyra brought marbles.
All the other parts of speech can be figured out later. At first, their conversations are going to be very ugly (I work with developmentally disabled adults--many of whom have very little grasp of the finer points of speech--so I know what it'll sound like), like "Me you go there," but that's a starting point.
I'd figure to become fluent, it would take a skilled pony about six months with the visual dictionary, the verbs and such that they've already learned, and a normal dictionary and primer on English grammar. After the first few have figured it out, they can then make a real course in Equestrian to English, and speed the process along.
2219427
The relevant bit from "Rarity on Earth" was when Rarity and the first human she met get captured by the government.
The first person she met was a poacher and a drug dealer and addict. He keeps her hidden because he warned her about what the evil government would do if they found her.
Then a SWAT team DOES storm his place and capture the two of them. Then this happens:
Then they treat her as a honored representative of a foreign nation and do their best to try to get her home.
As for the celestial mechanics thing... yeah, pretty much what everyone else was saying. Plus, if we were dealing with a full-sized star as we know it, a smaller star, or even a normal moon, the energy requirements would be... absurd. As I noted in the comments of the previous chapter, virtually every unicorn would be a WMD, if not an outright walking doomsday device. Again, Hearth's Warming tells us that a relatively small number of unicorns working together can move the sun and moon. I'll have to find my energy calculations again, but based on them... yeah, Twilight losing control during her exam would've been downright apocalyptic instead of just disastrous. Even if they just appeared to move the sun and moon by moving the planet instead, that would mean each unicorn would be a walking nuke. Twilight should've wiped out Canterlot, at the very least.
Also, the whole speed-of-light thing... As has already been pointed out, the first two episodes with Nightmare Moon show that the Equestrian "Sun" is much, much closer than our own (and thus must be much, much smaller). The same is likely true with their moon.
Again, basically just what everyone else was saying.
As for this chapter itself: I still haven't found the time to read the chapter completely, though I should have significantly more free time after tomorrow.
2217279
Nightmare stopped the sun by tying a rope on it.
Q.E.D.
2223444
seems legit.
2233861
Will Dale be the main human character? In all honestly, the oldness puts me off a bit.
2233882
Why, if I may ask?
2234788
I fear that later on he may not be able to keep up with the events of the story or that he'll be out for the count after the right in or after '1st boss battle' scenario simply because of his age.
2237574
Well, I can say my parents (who are about 10 years older than Dale [and who were my interview subjects on the moon landing]) could probably keep up with events. He's reasonably fit and outdoors-y, has an open mind, etc., etc. I'm not planning on having him take up arms to defend Equestria, or complain that his hip hurts throughout the whole story.
From a realism point of view, any first-contact with aliens (ponies, Homer Simpson, ET, Alf, or whomever) is going to have the human far out of his depth. Maybe Asimov could wrap his mind around it, I don't know. In all honesty, I'd probably run away.
I also feel that an older protagonist brings a lot to the table that the typical 'late teens/early twenties character' doesn't. He's got a lifetime of experiences to draw from. I remember when I was 18 and knew everything; a decade and half later, I realize how much I don't know.
2237652
I understand, but it doesn't put me off that much. I've already decided to follow this
I would not drink unboiled water out of a lake, and I would not drink water from the great lakes period.
2222079 I am pretty damn sure The equestrian sun is 'special'
It's too unreal to think she's all powerfull just cause she controlls the sun
If it took an alicorn and a powerfull unicorn to take down the sun 'goddess'
Then I'm sure she's not all that powerfull and a nice amount of direct hits from Abraham tanks can heavily injure her
His last name is funny.
2661547
Funny because it's Dutch, or funny because you translated it?
2662290
It's funny because I know what it means and it's so silly.
Now that I think about it. His first name Dale is also appropriate. He's teaching Lyra a lot of words. He's like a dictionary. Van Dale?
Though I'm probably looking too far into things with this one. Is it just coincidence?
2662436
I can say for certainty the last name was intentional: it's appropriate, since the area of Michigan that he hails from was originally settled by the Dutch, and one of my pre-readers speaks Dutch, so I put it in to see if she (and anyone else) would catch it.
I don't remember if I did any research on his first name. The story was originally meant as a one-shot, which means I probably did very little initial research--it was initially about 3500 words long, and ended when Dale saw everyone on the beach. When I re-read it for proofing, though, I started to wonder, "What happens next?" I'd have to imagine I'd already decided on his first name at that point, although I might have looked it up later and gotten a chuckle (or I might not have).
Oh, my spleen!
3254055
She does have a point, though. Even among terrestrial species, we haven't got the claws of a lion, the speed of a cheetah, or the horns of a rhino. All we've got is brains enough to build weapons and plan strategies that overcome our known weaknesses.
>Clearly, a lot of thought had gone into its language, which was good. It would make it much easier to learn.
Oe, thee eyeroenie
3263800 Humans are actually among the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom
Another great chapter, full of world building, foreshadowing, and conclusion jumping from both human and pony. Yet I can't help but think to myself, "Gods I hope Trixie doesn't become an antagonist. Please, author, cut her some slack."
Lyra is so impatient. I don't know how she expects Dale to learn so quickly.
3263800
As I understand it ancient humans would use their superior endurance to run animals to death. We would literally chase animals until they died of exhaustion.
3978132
Having a planet-full of sapient species which can speak, and who all have similar life experiences and symbolism could be a disadvantage to the ponies, who would (wrongly) assume that all sapient species must have roughly the same background. Dale, here, has a bit of advantage, because he knows he can assume nothing.
I don't know if the ponies would be aware of that particular hunting technique, nor if it would be a particularly effective one in Equestria.
The thing I find most amusing about this story so far is the really OUT THERE assumptions both Dale and Lyra are making here. I mean he is REALLY committed to a science fiction point of view rather than something else. XD It's kinda hilarious really. I can oddly enough understand Lyra and Twilight's reasoning better though considering their world they live in.
>Clearly, a lot of thought had gone into its language, which was good. It would make it much easier to learn. For all its precision when it came to sound, the Equestrian language had borrowed words from Equuis and Pegos, as well as from the other intelligent races, and was littered with irregular verbs and unexpected plurals. Undoubtedly, this creature’s language would be much simpler, despite all the different letters she’d have to memorize.
5008989
I know, right? That particular bit of text is a very deliberate poke in the eye to anyone who says English is logical.
3978138 Yeah. We'd track them down. see, most animals are built for sprinting. BUT what we would do is tire them out till they couldn't even fight back. It's why we usually avoided other predators. Because they would go after us, instead of run. Not anymore *pantomimes a gun* mind you.
Omagash. This is a treat.
My fingers were shaking as I read this chapter.
.... I am beginning to shiver. Need to read more...