Every day, that café. Every day, various thoughts occurring to me, only one of which was the palace and how to get inside.
There came a point where I had the sentries’ patrol routes memorized, and I could have probably sneaked into the palace, in my true form at that, without being spotted. But—I’m ashamed to admit—I did not know how to even begin to formulate a plan. Say I were able to put my sister queen in any location in this city in any body with certainty of arousing no suspicion—whom would I displace? The head of state, Celestia herself? Possibly, but I still didn’t know how their politics worked, and I felt that if my sister queen were to take her place, we wouldn’t know how to use her powers to their full potential. The prime minister? Maybe . . .
I found my ears were perked up. Adrenaline was shooting through my heart, and my rate of breathing was increasing. And I didn’t know why. But I knew I’d perceived something potentially incriminating, even if I didn’t realize it consciously. I tried as best I could to casually scan the length of the street from my position. At length, my eyes settled upon the deviation:
The sentry who passed on this street at this time had stopped abruptly, had turned, and was now looking directly at me with a bemused expression.
As he approached me, I was sure that the consequences of my complacency had finally been realized and that he was coming to detain me. Instantly, I started scanning his body, looking for the best place to hit him. He was a big pony, tall, muscular, toned like any beast whose sole purpose of existence was to kill. The vibrations of his feet slamming against the concrete were distinguishable among the general rumble of the traffic. Perhaps I could at least stun him and make my escape before anyone could call for help, if nothing else . . .
My wings twitched in preparation, and I was just about to flap them as hard as I could—when he lowered his spear and said: “Excuse me . . . sorry to bother you, but I see you here every day on my patrol, and I’ve never asked your name.”
He was approaching me with his defenses down. That was a good sign, but why did he want my name? Was he trying to lull me into a false sense of security to allow himself to get closer before striking, like a carnivorous plant? I hadn’t seen that kind of hunting tactic from them before; then again, I hadn’t seen them hunt, period. I let him get closer, but I kept my caffeine-enhanced nerves at the ready.
“I beg your pardon?” I asked.
“I don’t see many regularities on my patrol. This city is huge. Faces change every day; I rarely see the same pony twice between two patrols. But you have been there, without fail, every day for the past—what, a month now?—at the exact same time, at the exact same table, drinking your coffee in the exact same way, and with that exact same expression on your face.”
“What expression is that?” I asked.
“It’s a deep one,” he said. “It appears grievous, but there’s a bit of anticipation there too. It looks as though you’re thinking about something important.”
The sentry’s sharpness and perception struck me instantly. If all of them were like this, then getting into that palace would be harder than I’d thought. It was too bad he wasn’t one of my brothers, I mused; he probably could have solved this infiltration problem in an instant.
But did he know what I was contemplating? No, I concluded; if he did, he would’ve already stuck the sharp end of that spear through my neck.
He approached me. His posture was relaxed, a universal gesture of trust and openness. Though his defenses were still down, mine were on standby, as I asked, as innocently as I could manage, to make the matter unequivocal: “Am I not permitted to do this?”
The look on his face seemed to indicate offense due to my question—which did not augur well for the rest of this conversation. What was the matter with these direct questions? How could one ever be offended by an indicative, a fact? I would’ve thought that such higher emotions, such as affront and indignation, would not be capable in a species whose language’s subjunctive mood was virtually non-existent.
Perhaps he had been offended for an instant; but almost immediately thereafter, he bowed his head, exhaling gently as his lips formed a sad smile.
“No amount of time will pass that will allow me to remember who I am!” he said, more disappointed than angry. “So many years later, and still I forget. But, I must remember: I’m not a pony. And neither are you.”
A shiver quaked through my spine, solidifying the coffee in my stomach. “Excuse . . . me?” I could only whisper.
“I’m not a pony: I’m Corporal Foil, of Their Majesties’ Royal Guard, for five years now. And you are not a pony: you’re one of Their royal subjects. As such,” he continued, finally reaching and stopping in front of my table, “your reaction, when you asked if I was censuring you for breaking the law, was completely appropriate. Whereas the way I started speaking with you, as though you and I were just normal ponies meeting each other on the street, was inappropriate. I apologize.”
I sat there with my mouth open. I didn’t know what to think of this beast, nor knew what he was. He looked like a pony, sounded like a pony, smelt like a pony. He looked just like any other sentry I’d seen in the city. But his bearing and his manner of speaking were nothing like I’d ever observed from them. Something about him struck me as singular, something I couldn’t name.
“I was a pony once,” he continued, “but now I’m not. They took everything about me that made me a pony away during boot. But in mind, I’m still a pony, and that’s what matters. I still do pony gestures. Look.”
He slung the spear over his back and held the now free hoof to me. “My name’s Foil. Pleased to meet you. What your name?”
It took me a while to register what he wanted: my name, certainly, but what did this gesture mean? Think, I told myself; what is usually followed in their behavior after one presents his hoof like that . . . ah, I knew! He wanted me to shake it, as a recognition of camaraderie, honesty, and agreement. I’d seen this performed a few times in the past, and I now knew what was expected of me. I puffed up my chest, extended my right hoof, clasped his, and said: “Pleased to meet you, Foil. My name is Errenax.” (What else?)
What was that I felt in his hoof? . . . Intrigue? Yes, a certain intrigue; but not a pure and joyful intrigue like that of a child poking a spider. It was a mature, adult intrigue—a heterogeneous mixture of curiousness and dubiousness, the exact proportion of which I could not ascertain. And despite all its ostensible amicability, the gesture and the emotion that accompanied it sent an unpleasant shiver through me.
He nodded and motioned toward the chair across the table. “May I sit down?”
I indicated to the chair with a hoof gesture that I had seen a few fellow patrons use to express their desire to another to join them. “I would never refuse hospitality to one of Their Majesties’ protectors,” I added.
“Thanks,” he whispered in an airy, tired voice. He removed his helmet, placed it on the concrete floor next to the chair, and sat down, tousling his dark red mane with a forehoof. “So, Errenax, you said you were called? What a strange name. You’re not from around here?”
“Just visiting,” I said. I tried to mask my facial expressions by bringing the porcelain mug close to my face and by sipping as frequently as I could.
“Do you mind if I ask where you’re from?”
“Fillydelphia,” I said—the first settlement that had come to my mind.
“I know some folks there,” he said. “I guess you already know what I do. What do you do for work?”
What was the point of this line of questioning? Why did he find me so fascinating? But more importantly, why did I find him so fascinating? He obviously didn’t want to detain me; if he had, he would’ve done that already.
“I’m a linguist,” I answered.
“Oh yeah? Teacher, student, professor?”
“Yes.”
He raised his brow. “What?”
I cursed under my breath. Of course, I knew in an instant that that wasn’t a sufficient answer to his question. But all the same—those confounded words! It was easy enough to look at their definitions in a dictionary, but knowing when to apply them in spoken language without a second thought was something different entirely!
“Ah.” He smirked and leaned back. “I understand. You’re one of those ponies. Come to seek your fortune in Canterlot?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The pony sneered. “Well, hear it from me, who was born in this city, raised here, educated here, who has worked here his entire life; take it from me, a pony who knows how the city breathes, sleeps, who knows her moods and attitudes; take it from me, who can call this city home. Take it from me—you’re not going to find whatever you seek here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I see so many passing through here who are enamored with the architecture and the prospect of high society. Let me tell you right now, so that there are no delusions: There’s no high society. It’s a myth, a lie, to make the residents feel a little better about themselves. They put on airs. We all do, myself not excluded, and certainly not you. Sure, many of them are ridiculously rich, no doubt about that; but too many young ones leave their homes, their families, thinking that they’ll find their fortune here on a silver platter—only, too late, to learn that the only silver here is on the facade of the palace behind me. You need proof? Take me, born and raised with opportunity . . . look where it got me.” He gestured to himself, to his armor. “Anyway . . .” he continued.
He was silent, and ten or eleven seconds elapsed before I realized he wasn’t planning on saying anything. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, picking the conversation up where he appeared to have dropped it. “This city looks really promising.”
He snorted. “That’s what they all say.”
I could barely speak, so much in awe was I from his words. Everything that was coming out of his mouth was so bland in its literal meaning—yet something about it invigorated a part of me. The feeling was the same feeling I’d get when discovering a new phenomenon.
An old hypothesis came to mind, mostly discredited, but occurring for a brief instant nonetheless: it was once postulated that there was a universal language locked away in some part of the brain, identical to all sentient species, an instinctual component of life, as instinctual as the act of breathing. But due to some mechanics of evolution which I did not understand meant that the ability to tap into it had waned over generations until it had finally disappeared altogether, such that other, differing languages had to be invented, which would then have to be taught over a period of years to each new member of the species, all in an arduous but necessary effort to fit the need left. Of course, the hypothesis was mere speculation and there was no proof for it. Yet the sentry’s words had intimated an obscure, undefinable meaning in the deeper part of my consciousness, and I knew that there was something about his words that I was not seeing.
“What did you say you were again?” he asked.
“A linguist,” I replied.
He nodded. “Intriguing . . .” he mumbled, tapping his hoof absentmindedly on the table. “And what exactly do linguists study?”
I thought about myself sitting here, talking to him, and I felt vaguely guilty. I was enjoying this creature and his words immensely; but I couldn’t see how this helped me and my brothers and sisters closer to our goal. But did it hurt me? Not particularly. In fact, the very act of talking to him, I realized, deflected the other patrons’ stares from my direction; they seemed to bow their eyes in the sentry’s presence, almost as though they were afraid he’d see in them some subconscious compunction. This sentry gave off an atmosphere of legitimacy, and it rubbed off on those who were around him. It rubbed off onto me. I smiled; this was something I needed.
“Linguists study language,” I said. “We study the sounds used by sentient, intelligent beings to transmit complex ideas.”
Again, he nodded. “Intriguing . . .” he mumbled yet again.
I barely restrained a gasp of excitement. Had I found one of them I could talk to when my brothers and sisters had turned up their noses at my theories and hypotheses?
“Are you interested in linguistics?” I asked, trying my best not to let my enthusiastic fervor show.
“How could I be? I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s the study of language. And you just said it was intriguing.”
“No, I meant that I find you intriguing. The study of language . . . most of us don’t think about language and are content not to. But I’m wondering about you, about your mind, what would make you, anypony, find language as fascinating as you do.”
“How could I not!” I exclaimed. “Language is a force unnoticed, an animal soaring invisibly through the skies, darting unseen through the forests, lurking unknown under the oceans, but essential to the ecosystem all the same. But once you try to glimpse a part of that leviathan, you realize its magnitude; at first you think you’ve seen the bulk of its mass, but you’ve seen only its tail! You use language, and it uses you, all unknown to you. Look at this table, or this cup, or your armor and weapons. Look at the street you sit on now, the lamplights above your head, or the buildings which you’ve turned your back on so nonchalantly. Everything you use, every artificial creation that supports your life has so many different components to it, each requiring millions of different aspects of knowledge, such that a single creature could not possibly fit it all together! How are such things effected, then? How can an individual worker build a skyscraper? He can’t; he may have one or two notions about such an undertaking, notions which may or may not be complete. But if he joins with others who desire the same end, others who have information and abilities he doesn’t have but which are necessary nonetheless to the task, the collective sum of their knowledge and ability can, if exchanged, do the unfathomable. And the fluid through which these workers exchange their invaluable components, understand them, and finally combine them into an original idea none of them had come up with on his own is modern language. Though a chemical compound now holds the seams of this city together in concrete, language once had held it together in concept. Think about how hard building this city would’ve been with primordial grunts! Even this conversation, between you and me, right now, is profound in itself. Think about how intricate this concept is that I’m trying to convey to you, and think about how well you understand it. Think about these sounds that are coming out of my mouth; think about how little time it takes you to understand what each sound means and the concepts they refer to, and how those concepts, held together by language, are put together to form even more complex concepts, onward and recursively. Of course it’s intriguing! A linguist is a scientist like any other, a physicist, except a linguist specializes in the dynamics of a fluid more abundant, more animate, and more capricious than any fluid of matter.”
He scratched some dust out of his mane. “I suppose so, when you put it like that. But what exactly do you study? What do you find intriguing?”
“Verbal moods.”
“Like a tense?”
“No. Moods are much more fundamental. Do you know what they are?”
He smirked. “You’re asking me, a sentry, a grunt, who can barely pass the tests the Guard gives him—you’re asking him if he knows what a verbal mood is? I appreciate your flattery, but I have to tell you that you overestimate my intelligence.”
He shook his head. “I was a terrible student,” he continued. “I am a terrible student. Every teacher I’ve encountered has made me drool with boredom, and their names blur together into a single mess of boredom which I don’t care to look back into. Don’t get me started about how my teachers felt about me themselves! But something about you . . . I keep using the word, sorry, but . . . I find you exceptionally intriguing.”
“Would you like me to teach you about verbal moods?” I asked.
The sentry laughed, a hearty, genuine laugh, not in spite but in excitement and surprise. “I have no idea what that is, and I would normally never want to find out. But coming from you? Hearing your excitement, so thick that I can feel it across this table? Please continue.”
I took a deep breath. “Life is action,” I began. “The verb is a word that describes action, and by far the most important component of a sentence. Nouns, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs? All secondary—all subordinate.”
“You can’t have a sentence without a noun,” interrupted the sentry. “And you most certainly can’t have a one-word sentence. Even I know that.”
I shook my head. “That depends on what language you’re talking about. A great deal many languages imply subjects in their verbs, whether that be a first-, second-, or third-person—meaning that, yes, you can have a one-word sentence if the verb does not take a direct object and the subject is clear.”
The sentry nodded. “Go on,” he murmured.
“There are different components to the construction of a verb—number, person, voice, tense, aspect; and, most importantly, mood.”
“And what’s that?”
Though I knew exactly how to answer the question, the conversation came to a natural pause as he and I stared at each other, he in expectation, I in contemplation. Whether it was due to fatigue from speaking so much; or because I was caught off guard by his tone, which sounded not so much like a question but a challenge—why I paused, I did not know. I swallowed, retraced my mental path, and prepared to speak.
“All action,” I explained, “has a metaphysical status.”
“Stop,” he interrupted. “You can’t just use words and expect me to understand them. Remember whom you’re talking to.” He once again gestured toward his armor. “Corporal. Not captain, not lieutenant, not even sergeant. Corporal. I’m a simpleton, not one of your intellectual colleagues. They don’t put me on the second lowest pay-grade for no reason.”
I had to parse that last sentence in my head, for the double negative had thrown me off. I couldn’t say anything in the meantime, but the sentry glared at me as though I were staring at him in disbelief. I decided to affirm it by saying: “Did you speak to all your teachers thus?”
His red mane whipped softly around his face as he shook his head—not in negation, but more as though the stale memories were bleeding afresh and convulsing.
“Sometimes,” he replied. “Only when they spoke as you do—that is, when they’re confusing and incomprehensible—or when I knew what they were saying to be wrong.”
“Teachers don’t like to be corrected.”
He spat into the ground, and an ugly, disgusted grumble came from his throat. “Then I want no part in them, no part in you, and I’m glad I’m where I am now.” He sat up. “But that’s not why I’m here and still listening to you. Are you going to prove me wrong? Please, sir”—he gestured at me with a forehoof, his voice bleeding irony—“continue. But I’m not going to put up with you much longer.”
As I thought about what I was going to say next, I felt as though I were in the first stages of second-language acquisition again. Here I was, consciously running the sentences through my head before speaking them, seeing if each word works in the sentence; except now I was trying to see if they would please him. And, unlike checking a pronoun’s case, I had no way to be certain if I was right until I tried and spoke at the risk of failing.
“A mood explicitly defines the state of the verb as a concept,” I said at last. “There are two broad categories of moods. Depending on the language, there may be more; but all could, and often are, reduced to these two. This can be, because there are two states an action can be reduced to.”
I propped my left foreleg onto the table, hoof up, as though I were balancing on it a sphere. “The first state is certainty and knowledge. This state encompasses all that is fixed, immovable, and concrete. This state is the description of reality. This state is concerned only with the past, present, and future affairs, outlining in an objective attitude what was, what is, and what will be. We call this the real mood, or the indicative.”
I propped my right foreleg onto the table in the same manner as I’d done with my left, but slightly lower, as though the sphere I was now balancing were heavier and larger. “The second state is everything that the first state isn’t. If the first state was firmness, this one is fluidity. Into this universe, we pour all the mental concepts that have no bearing to anything in the world, and we give them a presence: into this universe go wishes, doubts, possibilities, suggestions, necessities, suppositions, orders, proposals, and everything else that is counter to the indicative. We call this the irreal mood, or the subjunctive.”
At this last word, the pony’s eyes focused on mine, and a smile of a nature that I would not call malignant yet would not call friendly twisted his lips upward.
“I see . . .” he murmured. “I see. . . . I think I understand. So would . . . would a verb expressing a blatant lie, a complete falsity, be in the subjunctive mood?”
“No,” I said, “a falsity would be in the indicative mood, for the untrue has a relation to reality just as strongly as the true. A truth describes what reality is; a falsity describes what reality is not. But the keyword here is reality. Both are opposite directions in the same state.”
“Now you’ve lost me,” said the sentry. “This could just be my stupid intuition talking, but if any statement isn’t true, doesn’t that mean it can be only false? What else could exist but the true and false?”
There it was, his blatant admission. Never before had I heard the philosophy of their language put into such straight terms. “How many languages do you speak?” I asked.
“Just the one. And I’m not ashamed of it either.”
I paused. How to put into words, especially in this language, a concept he could not conceive of due to his cognitive incapacitation which was not from a lacking in his personal ability but from a fundamental lacking innate in his mind and nature?
“A statement can be neither true nor false,” I explained. “Let’s call it the arbitrary. Everything I’ve mentioned before can fall into this category, the arbitrary: neither true nor false, but purely mental concepts grounded to nothing. A truth is real; a falsity is real; but an arbitrary is irreal. Truths and falsities fall into the indicative. The arbitrary is in the subjunctive.”
The sentry gritted his teeth. “I understand that . . .” he murmured. “Yet I still can’t think of something arbitrary, nor can I think of how I would say it if I came across one.”
“Think of something counterfactual—not a lie, but something counterfactual.”
There was a long pause. The pony took a deep breath and his eyes rolled upward, in such a manner as I could not tell whether he was looking to the sky for guidance or toward his own mind.
“What if you were a bird?” I said at length. “Would you fly as the pigeons of the city do?”
His head jerked as the strings of his reverie snapped away, flinging him back to me. “I’m not a bird,” he said, glaring at me. “I’m a pony.”
“I know that,” I said. “You know that, and I know that. If someone—” I choked on the word as I corrected myself. “If somepony said you are a bird, it would be a lie. You are not a bird. But what if you were?”
Again, the pony looked skyward, and I could see in his gaze he was projecting himself higher and higher, as his mind left the ground and ascended toward the lofty.
“I’m not a bird . . .” he whispered. “But what if I were . . .”
I smiled. “Lesson concluded,” I said. I took a sip of my beverage with a very satisfied sigh.
A monstrously huge smile sparked the pony’s face. He gasped almost inaudibly as he saw fully illuminated the passages in his brain hitherto covered in shadow. “You’re right!” he ejaculated. “You’re right; I understand now! The true and false aren’t opposites but complements! It’s the arbitrary that’s the opposite of that! And when I said that just now, the counterfactual statement, something told me to say it differently—I don’t know what—but that’s how it should sound, I know!”
His fervor, though expressed through an incomprehensible string of words, was all too recognizable in tone, all too wonderful for a teacher to hear: the exaltation of a student, who, bored for too long and who had looked upon his teacher and his fellow students as though they were fantastic creatures exchanging fantastic concepts, finally understands.
“But!” he gasped, riding the wave of his elation. “I understand, but it doesn’t seem as though it occurs that often. The counterfacts, I mean. It’s a useful addition to language, certainly, but it seems to me that it only complements the truths and falsities, which are more important. Besides this example, I can’t think of any more uses of it.”
“That’s because you speak in facts, and only in facts.”
“What do you mean, only in facts?”
“You’re not concerned with anything else. Everything you say is a fact, just a statement of reality. ”
“We don’t . . .” His voice trailed off. Another notion alighted on his brain, and again the same expression as last time appeared. “Yes!” he said. “Yes, we speak only in facts. This is a fact; that is a fact; everything is a fact.” He opened his mouth, but the words he was planning to say next caught in his throat. He put a hoof over his mouth, as though he were choking on interjections.
“But I can’t think of any other way we could speak,” he continued. “Yet earlier you spoke about the subjunctive mood as though it was—were more expansive.”
“In my first language,” I said, “we speak in the arbitrary as much as you speak in the true and false. If you’d asked me ten years ago how one could construct a language concerned only with speaking in facts, I would’ve not been able to conceive of it: A language wherein you’re limited to a binary, to the true or the false, to what is around you and what is not? How would you ever form an abstraction? How would you ever wish? How would you ever express doubt or trepidation? What to hope for? What to dream? How to dream? A language like that might be fit for a primitive species which cares only about immediate survival, whether food will be there or not, whether the sun will set at night as it always had. But a complex, sentient species which is capable of art and science—without the arbitrary, without abstractions, how would it ever take a step forward? My confusion ten years ago would be the same in magnitude but opposite in direction to your confusion now. You ask me how you would construct a language based purely in the arbitrary; I would’ve asked you how to construct a language based purely in speaking in facts. It’s not your fault for not knowing, as it wouldn’t have been my fault either. Our respective mindsets are implicit in our respective languages, and contrary ones are immediately rejected.”
The sentry laughed. “Cultural differences!” he said. “Of course. Your name should have tipped me off. I’m sorry I didn’t understand you at first. It all seemed so . . . alien. It is in a way . . . I suppose. Ah, you must think I’m stupid.”
He frowned. Suddenly, the air became somewhat colder, shallower between us. I could feel it in my cheeks: in one moment, they had been hot and aflame with passion; now they drifted on my face, heavy like icebergs.
The sentry put his helmet back on and stood up. The reach of his limbs when he stretched terrified me.
“So,” I said, as he drew his spear and posed to walk, “do you approve of my lesson? Did it intrigue you? Did you learn anything? Have I failed you as a teacher?”
“Don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s hard to tell after one lesson. I’ll need to see you again to form a better opinion.”
“Anything to comment on?”
It would be incorrect to say that he nodded; rather, it was as if the wind were causing his head to undulate ever so slightly. “I learned a lot,” he said. “But I’m still not exactly sure what you’re about. I want to know more. I find you fascinating as a teacher.” He turned and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Your lessons, the way you deliver them . . . is it your tone of voice? Or is it . . .”
What?”
“Your lessons don’t seem to me to be like the lessons any other teacher has given me. I’m engaged, but . . . but I think it’s only because you romanticize the concepts.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” he said, “but I feel that you omit details, technical information, in order to deliver the concepts in a way to keep my attention, so short as its span is. I think that if given the choice between explaining all or omitting some and holding my attention, you would not hesitate to take liberties.”
I stood up under the pretense of bidding him farewell. With my hind hooves on the chair, my forehooves on the table, I leaned closer to him. “How many teachers have you had?” I asked.
“Too many. I can’t count them.”
“How many do you remember?”
“None. They all blur together.”
“How many of their lessons do you remember?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
I straightened myself up, all my limbs locked and immovable, and I looked on him, the sun behind me and bearing straight down on his face, lighting up his large round eyes and making him look like a unwitting foal enraptured in the midst of a lesson which was leaving its imprint on him.
“Well, Corporal Foil, of Their Majesties’ Royal Guard,” I said, “you’re right. But do not tell me that I’m not rigorous in my teaching, that I’m careless, or that my lessons take too many liberties. Do not complain, because I do it in order that you learn, in order that you remember them. And you will remember them. You will remember me.”
I want to keep thumbing (up)!!!
“Ah.” He smirked and leaned back. “I understand. You’re one of those ponies. Come to seek your fortune in Canterlot?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Heh.
I have to complain, though: I think Corporal Foil's vocabulary is too advanced, too close to Errenax's. If you're trying to convince me that Foil is of merely average intelligence, you're not succeeding.
4575613
Ah, but remember, this is Errenax's telling of the story. He explicitly said he can and will misrepresent character's voices in his translation of the events. What you perceive as Foil's excessive verbosity could simply be Errenax's voice slipping into his version of the story. If I were over-analyzing, I might point out that this is another example of the subjunctive, what could be (if Foil had Errenax's voice), as opposed to what is or was.
4578611 But in this case, there is no translation, as he is talking to a pony, so what Foil says is in the same language being written.