BridgeWorld

[994AB Day 262]
Half an hour after closing, Jackie Valentine looked over the completed work on her fifth night as the night janitor, and after checking the clock, she smiled.

In reality, it had only taken her thirty seconds to finish, wiping down the tables and booths, setting out clean silverware and plates, cleaning off the dishwasher and cooking surfaces in the kitchen, sweeping and mopping the floors of the multi-level establishment, and finally the restrooms. But when closing time came, she had to make a show of gathering the cleaning supplies while the rest of the staff did their final work, and the manager completed his accounting work and prepared the store's money bag for the night deposit to be dropped off at the bank. Then after the unicorn Big Joe, Fireplate's uncle, escorted everyone out, she waited another minute after being locked inside, before earnestly getting to work at speed.

"Hard to tell if I'm actually getting faster or if I'm just more familiar with the layout of this place," she muttered as she guided the cleaning cart back into its storage closet. The first night, it was clearly due to her unfamiliarity of the restaurant, as it had taken her a full five minutes to completely clean up everything as Big Joe explained to her what her duties would entail. The next night, she was done in two minutes, then a minute and a quarter, last night just forty-five seconds, and now just thirty seconds.

She then went to her employee locker and pulled out the packet of pages she had been working on for the rest of the time she had for the night and used one of the customer tables to work on them. This project took considerably more time, not that she wasn't making use of her speed, but accuracy in recall and her musical ear was more important now.

Prior to Fireplate's introduction to his uncle, he and Grandon the griffon introduced her to the musical band that had been playing that day. The band had two griffon lead singers, male Gus and female Griz, each of which would be the voice for their particular songs as needed, although everyone in their band could sing. Gus also worked a magical electric guitar, while Griz liked to use a violin. There was a piano-playing griffon female Gia, and an organ-playing griffon male, Gitaly. Percussions were performed by an earth pony stallion named Hammer, a unicorn mare named Victoria played a variety of brass instruments, and a pegasus mare named Flitter who apparently was very versatile in that she did most anything else the band needed such as harp, flutes or other woodwinds, xylophones, etc.

Jackie explained her situation to them, as much as she felt it was safe to reveal, about her getting separated from her friends as they were traveling to their next venue, and that she was her band's drummer, but also had stood in to play other instruments when someone wasn't able to perform that night. When she asked to see the music sheets they used, she realized she could not read their language, however, she could tell they used musical notation that greatly resembled that used by humanity. She immediately came up with a plan.

"I'm not familiar with any of your Griffon ballads," she had told them. "The songs you sang today are the first I've ever heard. But there are songs from my home that might be a close approximation, if you wouldn't mind playing them? Do you think you could allow me to provide you a couple and see how well the crowd likes them?" she asked.

"It can't hurt," Gus had replied. "Except you say you can't read our language, and it's not likely we can read yours, either. How can we play your music?"

"It looks like we have the same musical note structure," Jackie had said, "and we speak the same language. Once I have the songs written out, we'll go over them together. I'll read out the lyrics and you'll write them down in your script."

Jackie looked over the pages one more time, satisfied that she had all five compositions completed. Now, to pick out which might be the most appealing to—

The noise of keys unlocking the door caught her ear and she looked up in surprise.

It can't be morning already! she thought in a panic. I couldn't possibly have taken all night to look over these songs— But sure enough, she could see Big Joe through the glass of the front door. She hadn't even gotten any sleep for the night!

"Sorry to surprise you," he said, spotting her as he came in. "I had forgotten—" Then he stopped and stared about the restaurant.

"You—you—can't have gotten done already!?" he angrily exclaimed. "You—you just—you just sit there!" he said as he marched over to the stairs going to the upper level.

Jackie sat there, with a sinking feeling in her gut as Big Joe took his time. It felt like an eternity, and it didn't need her speed kicking in to make it seem so. She looked at the clock and saw he had left the store only a quarter hour ago.

The unicorn eventually did come back downstairs, but when he did, his expression was considerably less angry and substantially more stunned and confused. He continued his inspection of her work through the rest of the restaurant, making sure to check under every table and confirm every booth actually was cleaned. Then he left her to go into the kitchen and was gone for quite a while longer. When he finally came out of the kitchen, all anger was gone from his face. He took a few steps toward her, sat down, and stared vacantly ahead and didn't move.

Several minutes passed, and Jackie stepped out from the booth and approached him. Big Joe didn't react to her movements.

"Big Joe? Are you okay?" she asked, gently touching him.

He was in a state of shock.

"H-h-how!?" he whispered. "This place is cleaner than it was when I first opened it and got my license from the Health Department!"

"I'm—fast?" she slowly ventured.

After Big Joe got over the worst of his shock, she explained that she had no idea of how she ended up in Equestria, but she discovered that she could move so fast that time seemed to come to a stop for her. She even gave a demonstration by rushing from where they sat to the other side of the dining area and back. And how ponies all seemed to be freaked out by her.

"That's likely because it looks like you're teleporting, Jackie," Big Joe told her. "Only unicorns can teleport, but you're not a unicorn. To somepony not understanding, it looks like you're using magic that only somepony like me can use."

"Oh," she responded. "I thought it was because I was a predator. But then I saw all the griffons lining up to come eat here, and how ponies weren't weirded out by them. Hell, they even got in line with the griffons, too! And were talking with them like ordinary people. I thought it was just something about this place, where a predator like me could go and not be scaring everything in sight!"

"You didn't run up to come here?" he asked.

"No, I walked."

"That's why. You walked. You didn't just appear," he explained, laughing. "But this does cause me some problems. I'm supposed to be paying you by the hour, and you got done in like, thirty seconds!? So, what have you been working on?" he asked, glancing at the stack of music sheets.

"I was hoping to join that griffon band," Jackie said, handing over one of the compositions for him to look at. He picked it up in his telekinesis and flipped through a few pages of it.

"I'm not able to read this," Big Joe muttered, "but then, I'm not musically inclined. But the lyrics aren't in Equestrian or Griffon scripts. I don't think Gus and his guys can read this, either."

"We all speak the same language, just apparently don't write it the same way," Jackie said, shrugging her shoulders. "I was going to meet with them to transcribe the lyrics to your writing and then find out how the audience will like them."

"And all this time—you didn't have a place to stay?" Big Joe asked.

"No," she admitted. "I—I've been sleeping here after I finished the cleaning and working on these songs."

"Hmf!" he snorted. "Screw it! You're off the clock. If you can clean as good as this from now on, you're on salary! Gus and them pretty much live on the tips. You've impressed the hay out of me, and I'm rather interested in seeing how your songs will do."

Gus, Griz, and the band showed up early in the morning before the restaurant opened as they usually did so they could go over the daily song list and rehearse before the crowds entered. Jackie and Big Joe were there to meet them. Once the band members began reading the music, their reactions closely mirrored Big Joe's earlier that evening. Their eyes were all huge and the griffons all fluffed out their feathers.

"Do you think these are any good, Gus?" Big Joe asked.

"Any good!? This music is freaking awesome!" the griffon exclaimed with tears welling up in his eyes. "I'm just worried if we're good enough to play any of this! And these are the lyrics to go with this!? Jackie, please, please say they're in the same language as we speak!"

Big Joe just grinned at Jackie.

"Folks," a nervous Gus bellowed out at the start of the brunch meal. "Most, if not all, of you have heard numerous ballads from Equestria, the Griffon Empire, the Dragonlands, Yakyakistan, the Satyrs, and many other cultures, some from so far away they're almost mythical." He looked around to Jackie, who had joined them to wield a bass guitar.

"And while we have all heard of—humans," he continued, and with that word, he suddenly had the rapt attention of every single being in the restaurant, "creatures who've not been seen in our world for thousands of years—we have never heard any of their music—never have heard any of their stories—never have heard of what gods they worshipped, what monsters they fought, or of what nations they had built—and all this time, we have never known why—until now—"

"A few days ago, one has come to us,"Griz spoke up at that moment, "bringing tales of some of their struggles. Today, you'll hear one such story, in the words of one such human."

Everyone in there waited with bated breath as the band tensed up.

"No one would have believed," Gus began, "in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us—"

When the band was finished with their performance, it was a near riot….