Speaker
He is in the garden, the first time he hears the new voices. They are louder than his other companions, true voices instead of mere whispers. He knows that he is not mad. He thinks that it would be nice to have someone to talk to. It’s been so long since he has last spoken, and even then it was only a few words. No one in his prison wants to hear his voice, after all.
Horse, who despite her somewhat unattractive appearance has still managed to have a streak of narcissism, has filled the garden with petunias. J decides that he hates petunias, if only because Horse seems so obsessed with them. He doesn’t like any of her flowers, really. They seem fake to him. Too bright, too big. They are too perfect to be natural. They don’t have any scent, either. Reminds him of Horse, really.
And really, their flimsy trumpet-shaped flowers mock him, like little eyes staring out of the gaping maw of their too-colorful petals. He glares back at them defiantly. It almost physically pains him to have to tend them and ensure their continued existence. He would really like nothing better than to rend them root from leaf and leave their little plant-corpses strewn across the lawn like the defeated army of some sort of plant Lord. But J is used to things that physically pain him, so he ignores the urge. He knows he probably wouldn’t be able to survive the punishment he would receive for such an act, in any event. A pity, that. He curses his body for being so small and weak and pathetically young.
It’s then, with dark thoughts of floricide occupying his mind that he hears the voices. They come from underneath the leaves of those hated plants. Creeping closer, he parts the leaves, and comes face to face with a pair of snakes. They were both pale gray, with black diamond patterns running down their backs. They appeared to be arguing.
“...and I told you, I did, I did, I told you thisss would happen..” The snake on the left was saying, while the one on the right was looking somewhere between annoyed and chastised. Which confused J because he wasn’t aware that it was possible to have an expression like that, especially snakes who most certainly lacked the proper facial muscles to make any sort of expression at all.
“Yessss, yesss you always know besssst don’t you? And what about that disssgusssting nessst of the nassssty fourlegged creaturesss? Who wasss the one who led us there, again? ‘twasss not I for certain.”
That last bit was said quite...snootily, for a snake. That being said, this was his first encounter with actual snakes, so he did not have very much information on what constituted ‘normal’ snake-like behavior, outside of the educational programming that he occasionally snuck out his cupboard to watch in the middle of the night. He was also quite certain that understanding what snakes said wasn’t something very common. He couldn’t imagine it being a well received skill, in any event, considering the unpopular reputation snakes had in general.
“....ssstop jusssst ssstop. We are never going to find it if you keep nattering on..”
“Me?! I’m the one who’sss nattering? You sssstupid excusssse for a…..”
J was rather surprised that the creatures had not yet noticed him. His knowledge of reptiles was far from vast, but he had been under the impression that wild animals were generally more aware of their surroundings. Of course, he had also been under the impression that snakes did not have conversations, or argue, or insult one another. There were always new things to be learned.
The snakes continued with their mutual insults and J contemplated his ability to understand their conversations. He was quite certain that snakes did not suddenly gain the ability to speak human language. Seeing as he was listening in on a conversation between two snakes, (which was probably rather rude of him, now that he thought about it ) he could comfortably assume that it was some quality within himself that allowed him to understand their speech. After all, he did have a track record of having strange and unusual things happening to him, so it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch of the imagination to believe that he had done something strange again.
His strangeness was rather sporadic, which might be normal for his particular brand of strangeness, considering that it regularly defied the laws of physics. Despite never having left the grounds of the ‘house’ that he was imprisoned in, J had what he considered to be a passable knowledge of what was and was not considered ‘normal’. He was quite well read, for a child of his age and circumstance, in any event, and he had picked up on some of the common biases and cultural values in the books that he had read. This wasn’t all that much, and was mostly skewed considering that his sample set consisted entirely of the books that the Dursleys (for this was their surname, and he considered it repugnant enough to continue to refer to them with said name) owned and that J was able to ‘liberate’ during his nighttime forays throughout the house. The most easily accessible books were stored in Swine’s second bedroom, and were unread by Swine himself, utterly unsurprising considering that Swine could not read. The majority of them were picture books, which were useful when he had first begun to teach himself to read, but whose main subjects were insultingly pathetic drivel. There was also bookshelf in Walrus’s room, which he suspected was mostly for show considering that none of the books showed any sign of having been read. A large number of them appeared to be gifts, judging by the sticky notes in their front covers.
J was drawn from his introspection by increasingly violent hissing. The two snakes appeared to be engaged in some sort of wrestling, with the slightly larger snake, who had been on J’s left biting the tail of the smaller, second snake. The smaller snake was protesting the larger snake’s “barbaric and uncouth behavior” while appearing to attempt to strangle the life out of it. J decided that he might as well intervene, considering that he wouldn’t be able to receive any answers from dead snakes. (well, he could perform an autopsy and finally find out what the inside of a snake smelled like, but that wasn’t really important right at the moment) He was also genuinely curious about these creatures, and about whether or not his ability to understand their speech meant that he also had the ability to be understood by them. It was worth a try.
“Excuse me?” He asked, tentatively. This did, finally get the two snakes’ attention.
“Oh NOW look what you’ve done. Gone and gotten the attention of one of the sssstupid monkey creaturessss.”
They did not appear to have understood him.
“What I’ve done? I am not the one who insisted on having a juvenile wrestling match…”
J decided he might as well try again. He concentrated very carefully on the sibilant sound of the snakes speech before speaking again
“It’sss very rude, you know, to call me a monkey, when I am quite certain that I am nothing of the sssort.”
“Ah! The mud monkey! It speaks!”
The larger snake began to slither in a rather distressed circle. J had the impression that the smaller snake’s eye would be twitching, if it had the necessary facial muscles.
“Obviously. The question is how.” Here the smaller snake looked at J, who was somehow able to interpret the motionless reptilian expression as being vaguely suspicious.
“That is exactly what I would like to know.” He replied, cooly.
“Maybe the mud-monkey is really a ssssnake! Trapped in a mud-monkey body! We must ssssave him! He issss one of our brethren, who sssspeaksss our noble tongue---” It was cut off by the smaller snake who had wrapped itself around around its throat once more.
“Ceasssse your mindless drivel, you cretin. He isss not a sssnake. It doesss not work that way.”
“What doesssn’t work that---” The snake tightened its hold, and J cleared his throat as politely as possible. He hoped that the strange translation phenomenon managed to get the meaning of the gesture across.
The smaller snake turned its attention back to J.
“What are you two-legger?” It demanded, with an almost confused tilt of its head.
“Well,” He replied, “I have been operating under the assssumption that I am human.”
“No, I know of thessse humans, asss well asss the onesss with the ssstrange power. They have their Speakersss. You are not one of them. You are something elssse entirely.”