Brother Librarian

Thought for the Day:

The foolish man puts his trust in luck, the wise man puts his trust in the Emperor.

It was incredibly embarrassing, the situation he found himself in. He knew that farm workers usually awoke with the rising of the sun, and sometimes before hand. But he had figured that they would at least have the decency to wake him, not wait for him to awoken by the sounds of a bell ringing and someone calling for lunch!

If lunch was held at noon, which it traditionally is, then that means he slept in for about 15 hours!

Space Marines require very little sleep to function. In fact, they have an organ that allows them to stay awake for hours and hours on end without needing any form of rest. The average amount of sleep he got on The Litany of Fury was 4 hours, and that was plenty!

He chalked it up to a combination of stress and mental fatigue. Learning that you have been transported to a planet full of colorful human constructs is severely grating on the mind. But learning that you had become one of the locals could give a guy an aneurysm! If his Brothers-Librarian could see him now, oh, the tales they would tell!

The Librarians, and to a lesser extent, the brothers, of the Blood Ravens tended to be incurable gossips. Jonah seemed to be, thankfully, immune to the need to gossip. However, the forge workers of the chapter tended to be incurable fan boys, as well, though you wouldn't say that to their face unless you want a power claw crammed in yours. The Techmarines have an irritating tendency to create a weapon or a suit of armor but with the livery and names inspired by heroes of other chapters. They were also so very saddened when their creations were inevitably rejected by the Marines they made them for.

Jonah noticed that many of the brothers of the Blood Ravens had some sort of extraordinarily prevalent characteristic or psychosis that they are completely oblivious to. Like the Commander and his hair, or Cyrus and his morose attitude. Like Techmarines and their fan boy status or like Librarians and their constant need for gossip. There was not a single entity in the Blood Ravens that did not have some sort of stereotype attached to it.

But they were far from him now, hopefully still fighting the enemies of the Imperium. Though it was also possible that they are long dead, or even yet to be born. The Warp was tricky that way, for all he knew he was thousands of years in the future and Chaos was dead, the ponies the evolutionary descendants of humans. That was, however, unlikely. The Warp sending a vessel or person very far in either direction in the time stream is extraordinarily rare. Though Jonah did remember a rumor that a ship full of Guardsmen was being sent to a war-zone when they had been thrown into the future by a considerable margin, the story wasn't very specific, but the ship had eventually reached its destination. With the large amount of accumulated back pay, the ecstatic Guardsmen pooled their money together and bought a small moon.

He threw off the relatively comfortable blanket that had been supplied, and stood up from the floor. Everfree Forest lumber or not, there was no way he was going to lie down on that bed. While the wood might remain sturdy, the nails would break, the springs would flatten, and he knew for a fact that the splints would shatter under his weight.

The floor was just as good. He had slept in worse conditions, in a very relaxing manner.

He slept in his armor. While he did not think the docile pony population would kill him in his sleep, he was still operating in hostile territory... One that made his size seem extraordinary but not immediately obvious, for instance, no one had yet yelled: 'Space Marine! Kill him!'. There are practical reasons why Space Marines didn't do infiltration very well, if at all it was done by the Scouts who would just be invisible or close to it in their Chameleon Cloaks.  He actually has not heard of many successful infiltration missions by any outside the Officio Assassinorum, Imperial strategy revolves around massive explosions and death over small explosions and death.

He opened his door and walked out, closing it behind him. He had not been in or near many farm homes, but he thought that this one was on the larger side. It held nothing to the great halls of the Imperium, but this was not a great hall of anything, so he could let them pass without comment.

Despite hearing the bell and being just upstairs, Jonah was the last one to the table. Rather confusing as the orchards were vast. Seriously, he walked down the stairs, ever leery because he wasn't 100% sure of himself walking down stairs, and found 5 ponies already seated at the table and an extra seat for him, with all of the food already on plates and in bowls. The ponies were even eating at a rapid pace.

Macintosh Sr. and Applejack greeted him with a wave while Macintosh Jr. nodded his head in greeting, the youngest was in a high chair and waving all four limbs wildly, likely just for the sheer novelty of waving one's limbs wildly, and it looked like Granny Smith was sleeping.

Macintosh started the conversation as Jonah sat down, "So you're back among the living, Brother." an observation, clearly, but one that invited an explanation.

"My apologies," Jonah began, "I am unaccustomed to waking so late. I usually wake much earlier."

How much earlier was completely relative, of course, ships use Terra's 24-hour clock and each planet keeps the year and date according to Terra as accurately as Warp travel will allow, but each planet had their own day length.

Macintosh grinned as Jonah was served some apple flavored luncheon, "Maybe farmwork was just a bit more work than you thought it would be, hmm?"

"Nay, I was fatigued only mentally, but not physically. The mind also rests, and heals, during sleep. So long as one of you is kind enough to place the baskets, I shall work without complaint."

The Apple family sans Macintosh Jr. politely chuckled, even Applebloom who laughed in response to laughter. Mac Jr. allowed himself a grin in his stoic and silent demeanor. Evidently, rumors had spread through the family about his utter incompetence at accurately placing the baskets.

"Don't worry about that, partner," Macintosh assured him, "It's something the Apple family is born with, it's in our blood. You'll learn the skill, natural born or no, eventually."

The entirety of the meal was consumed in such light conversation. It was a high-quality meal, regardless of the food prepared. Whoever is cooking the food, probably Granny Smith, certainly knows how to cook good, filling food. Jonah... didn't know where the food came from on The Litany of Fury. He had never thought of it, it slipped his mind, he was never once curious about where the food that was placed before him each day and night came from. Now that he had a chance to think about it, the food was probably prepared by Chapter Serfs: people who have, in some way, become attached to the Chapter and help to maintain their fighting strength. In a nut shell, they do the things that one wouldn't ask the Servitors or the Marines themselves to do. Like the food, someone might be upset that a conglomeration of flesh and machine was cooking your food, so they have an actual person do it instead.

Now that Jonah thought about it, he really hoped that it was a real person cooking his meal. Not that he had anything against servitors, he just didn't want them near his food. Much like he had nothing against the Black Templars, but he wouldn't let them anywhere near him because he was a psyker, and they might try to kill him.

It was actually kind of surprising that the Apple family was as accepting of Jonah as they were, he did have his armor attached to his body. It wasn't obvious anywhere outside of his Psychic Hood, but he was still surprised. Perhaps they were really that desperate for workers, or maybe they just didn't see it as strange. From the memories stolen from the medicae, he knew there were other sapient species on this planet. Like the Griffons, which reminded him of multiple chapters that used them as a symbol. Also; it was a mythical beast from ancient Terra. If he remembered correctly, the child of a male Griffon and a female pony/horse would be a Hippogriff, something that he searched for, and found, among the memories. He found that they were fairly rare, with only a population of a few thousand at the most primarily due to the slight bigotry between Griffons and Ponies, and the fact that the children of Hippogriffs weren't always guaranteed a Hippogriff, sometimes they were ponies and sometimes they were Griffons, and sometimes they were another Hippogriff.

Were they too the work of some human, long since dead? Perhaps... in fact probably likely. There was no reason for a griffon to exist here besides being created by something. They were a historic, mythical creature: the fact that they exist outside of a story book proves the intervention of some form of intelligence, and none of the other powers would have cared or even known about ancient historical beasts from humanity's past.

The work of a human, nothing else.

After his pondering and the meal, the afternoon work began. He and the other 3 working ponies were sent out once more to the same part of the orchard as the last time, undoubtedly to finish what was started the day previous and the morning, which he had missed out on.

He theorized during the afternoon work about why he had slept in so long. His hypothesis was thus: his mind was acclimating to his body.

The evidence was substantial, if circumstantial. During his work, he noticed that it was extraordinarily easy for him to move, work, and coordinate his actions, much more easy than it was before his sleep. Very likely he had interrupted whatever process his mind was undergoing when he woke in the hospital and escaped, which explains how he was able to move so easily at the time. Any human suddenly becoming a quadruped would be disoriented, but he had taken to it like an Ork to fighting.

Despite how easily he had moved even though he should have barely been able to, now he just felt much better. His mind had probably prevented him from waking to get the job done in one go, instead of doing it piecemeal. He was rather happy with the results, if still extraordinarily angry that he was a pony at all.

While he still had difficulty in placing the baskets in the correct location, his basic coordination and ability had improved. Before his night sleep, his movements would be akin to a jerky, primitive robot, if not quite so drastic, now however, he was moving like a well oiled creation of the highest Arch Magos.

This life on the farm was simple. Being a Space Marine was simple, in an entirely different way.

But the scholar in Jonah demanded a more complex duty, one that could be fulfilled now that he was sadly bereft of chapter. Not that he was a Traitor or harbored any form of disloyalty at all or in the slightest, Jonah just realized that even if he made it back to his chapter, an impossibility due to the local populations lack of spacecraft, his brothers would probably just cleanse him as a Xeno.

Oh well. Despair is the realm of that fat fool Nurgle, so Jonah did not despair. He still had the Emperor. He would always have the Emperor.

The farmwork was fine for now, but his urge for complexity would manifest some time later.

Little did Jonah know, but he would stay on with the Apple family for years, and they never did quite leave him.