head up out of Sylvi’s hands and Sylvi didn’t need any help translating her open-mouthed snort as “ow.”
Hey, bird-face, you don’t rear at humans. They’re all smaller even than you are! Don’t you have any manners?
Sylvi thought, How very odd. I can hear him, and he’s not talking to me.
Of course I have manners, you big ugly thug! I’m very small and I know what it feels like when everyone tiptoes around you just because you’re small!
It was like—what was it like? It wasn’t like anything. It was like flying when you have no wings; it was like galloping on four legs when you have only two; it was like hearing the colour red; it was like being someone else. And, being someone else, you no longer know how to be you. Sylvi wobbled on her suddenly-too-few-for-balance legs, and—fell down.
Ebon was on his knees beside her almost before she finished falling. Syl?
She heard me! said the young pegasus. I know she did! I heard her hearing me!
Slowly Sylvi said, I don’t know your name.
The young pegasus spoke both aloud and silently, Niahi!
Sylvi said—still sitting down, but one hand gripping Ebon’s mane—Ebon, your name isn’t precisely Ebon either, is it? It’s—
Ebon is close enough, said Ebon, sounding worried. Are you all right?
There were murmurs all round her, in her ears, in her head—in her eyes, she thought, I am seeing murmurs. Tell me your real name!
“Eeehboohhn,” said Ebon, and it was one of those ripply, pegasus noises in her ears, and a seen murmur, as well as the familiar nonsound in her mind. Who cares? Ebon for short. Like Syl.
I care, said Syl. Everything’s different.
Nothing’s different, said Ebon, rather desperately. I’m still me. You’re still you. And we’re still bound to each other. The only difference is that we’re here rather than there.
Sylvi was still listening to the difference. It’s only the difference between being alone with someone and being in a crowd, she told herself. It’s only . . . but it’s not. It’s not only. There’s nothing only about it. It’s . . . maybe it’s a little like the difference between hearing one person singing and a choir. Maybe, if you were used to listening to someone singing by themselves, a choir—a sudden choir—all those different voices singing slightly different things, would make you dizzy. It might make you so dizzy, perhaps, that you’d fall down. She’d said to her father, “I’m human. I’m a human among pegasi. I’ve only got two legs and I can’t fly. None of that’s going to change. ” It was easier if she could only talk to Ebon. It was easier to have only two legs and no wings, to be carried around like a parcel or someone’s washing—it was easier to be different, if she could only talk to Ebon. She wanted to cry. She did not want to cry. She bit down on her lip. She should try to stand up. She didn’t think she could.
And then someone else knelt beside her: Lrrianay. Oh, no! Sylvi said, and struggled to sit up, climbing Ebon’s mane like ladder rungs.
Syl— began Ebon.
Don’t struggle. Rest a little. Let yourself find yourself again. This is a tremendous change—a tremendous thing that has happened. Please, said Lrrianay. And then Sylvi cowered back against Ebon, and put her hands over her face, because she heard Lrrianay too. We are born knowing we can’t talk to the pegasi, she said to herself; it’s as much a certainty as anything written on the treaty—as not having wings.
How can I bear to talk to them when I cannot fly?
Did you bring me here hoping this would happen? Is this what this is about? Is this why I could say spirit and heart and l-love in my speech at the banquet—say them out loud? Why don’t humans ever come here? It’s one of the first things we ever talked about. You come to us. We don’t come here. Ebon, she said, stumbling over using his name because for the first time she needed to specify who she was talking to—I just wanted to see where you lived. It was too strange that I didn’t know what your home looked like, even if it didn’t have four walls, and—and bedrooms. It was even stranger that I didn’t know where you lived than that we could talk to each other—
Lrrianay interrupted. Child, believe me, you would not have been a disappointment to us if this had not happened!