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Venus and Earth were arguing.
What were they arguing about? Honestly, Mercury had no idea. He had long since zoned out, waiting for his turn to come around again. It looked like he’d be waiting for a while still. He shared a bored glance with Luna, who shrugged and turned to his own deck.
He leaned over to Mars, lowering his voice. “Do you think they would notice if we left?”
Mars looked between the two larger planets, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Eh. They’re probably gonna run out of steam in a minute.”
“Oh just shut up!” Venus suddenly threw his arms over his head in frustration. “I would do anything to not be able to understand you!”
Earth started to reply, a retort on his tongue, but then paused. “Oh, really?”
“I get a coreache whenever you say literally anything. I’ve got a coreache right now!”
A look crossed the living planet’s face. A look Mercury could only describe as trouble. This can’t be good.
“Oh no,” Luna looked up sharply from his cards. “Earth, I swear–”
Earth grinned, crossed his arms and cleared his throat. “Si eso es que tu lo deseas.”
Mercury paused. What? A quick glance at the others showed he wasn’t the only one confused, which was good because he had briefly worried that he was somehow going deaf.
Venus and Mars looked at each other. “Uh… what?”
“Dije, ‘si eso es que tú lo deseas’.” Earth spread his arms to gesture at himself. “Mira, ahora no me entiendes.” [I said, ‘if that’s what you wish.’ Look, now you can’t understand me.]
“Well done, Venus,” Mercury snapped. “You broke Earth.”
Earth looked like he was just barely stifling laughter. Luna sighed, seeming like he’d rather be anywhere else than here. “He’s fine. He’s just speaking in one of his Earthling languages.”
“Can he cut it out?” Venus eyed the blue planet with contempt.
Earth grinned, then said something fast that Mercury couldn’t begin to pick apart. Lost, he turned to Luna.
“He says that you didn’t want to understand him, so now you can’t understand him,” The moon translated, not looking up from his deck of cards.
Mars shrugged. “Well, looks like you got what you wanted, Venus.”
“Oh shut up,” Venus growled.
“Oye,” Earth nudged Luna. “Conversa conmigo en español.” [Hey, talk to me in Spanish.]
“Why?”
“Así que podemos molestarlos juntos.” [So we can annoy them together.]
Luna narrowed his eyes at Earth, unimpressed. “Don’t drag me into this.”
“Eres aburrido,” Earth declared, sighing heavily. [You’re boring.]
There was a tiny pause in the conversation. Mercury saw his opportunity and jumped on it. “Can we just finish the game? Preferably before the heat death of the universe?”
Despite Venus’ half hearted grumbles, they returned to their cards. Earth stubbornly refused to change back the entire time, leaving Luna to translate the odd, fast paced language for him. Luna and Mercury won some rounds but eventually Mars was declared the overall winner for the day.
The two largest of the rockies hadn’t won a single round, and while Venus was sulking characteristically, Earth was in a suspiciously good mood.
“Oiga, bien jugado.” He gave Venus a big thumbs up. “Solo necesitamos más suerte para la para la próxima vez.” [Hey, good game. We just need better luck for next time.]
A moment of awkward silence.
“He says good game and better luck next time,” Luna summarised, taking pity on them.
Venus glared at Earth for a very long moment, then seemed to just give up. “Whatever.” He got up and rubbed his eyes. “I’m going back to my orbit before I decide to commit murder.”
Luna grabbed Earth’s sleeve and began to tug them back to their own orbit, the planet following along with no complaint. “Adios, muchachos!” Earth hollered over his shoulder. [Bye guys!]
Mercury watched as the blue planet became smaller and smaller, still distantly hearing him speaking to his moon in that weird language. He sighed, crossing his arms. “Well, that’s gonna get old fast.”
Mars hummed, appearing by his shoulder. “Nah, he’ll probably get bored in the next day or so. This won’t last long.”
“I really hope you’re right.”
A nearby mass caught Jupiter’s attention and he briefly checked his hold on the Asteroid Belt. Still intact. A quick glance around told him all his moons were still milling around in their orbits, so it wasn’t a disturbance from their moon club. Peering over the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter spotted the cause. Mars and Earth were talking, the smaller of the two visibly growing more and more frustrated. Their moons and the other rocky planets were nowhere to be seen. Oh no, please don’t tell me they had a falling out. He’d surely noticed if they had, right?
He should probably check that whatever this was wouldn’t start another system wide drama. They all needed a break from the last one.
He drifted closer to the Asteroid Belt. “Hey guys. What are we talking about?” Both of the planets startled, somehow not having sensed his gravity as he approached. Jupiter mentally put tell everyone to be more aware of their surroundings onto his to-do list. “Is something wrong?”
“Sorry, big guy,” Mars apologised. “I’m just trying to get Earth to–”
“Nihil feci,” Earth stated with his arms crossed. “Innocens sum.” [I’ve done nothing. I’m innocent.]
Huh. That’s… different.
“That.” Mars pointed at Earth. “He’s been doing that for a few days and–”
“Cur hac lingua loqueris?” Jupiter asked slowly, trying to piece together the pieces of Latin he remembered. It had been a while since he’d read anything by the Romans, and even longer since he’d tried his hand at speaking the language outloud. [Why are you speaking in this language?]
A brief surprise crossed Earth’s face, followed by a delighted grin. “Nesciebam te latinum scivisse!” [I didn’t know you knew Latin!]
“Wait, wait, wait a second.” Mars interrupted. “You know… that?”
“Latin,” Jupiter supplied. “I picked it up from reading. It’s an interesting language, although I’m probably fairly rusty.”
“Accentus tuus melius esse potuit,” Earth agreed. “Sed bene es.” [Your accent could be better, but you’re good.]
“Gratias tibi ago,” Jupiter thanked him, before switching back to something he was more familiar with. “So… why are we speaking in different languages?”
Earth shrugged. “Per iocum incepit. Adhuc ridiculum est.” [Started as a joke. It’s still funny.]
“He started this to spite Venus a while ago but he hasn’t stopped,” Mars explained, pinching the bridge of his nose with barely veiled frustration. “And it's getting really annoying."
“Crimen non est alias linguas cognoscere,” [It’s not a crime to know other langauges.]
“Dude, I don’t know what you’re saying.” Mars breathed out heavily. “Please speak normally.”
Earth did not speak normally. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back, puffed out his chest, and began to sing.
“Amoris sumus periti…” He drawled in a low, lilting voice.
Mars seemed as confused as Jupiter felt. “What- why are you singing?”
Earth was not deterred by their confusion. In fact, it encouraged him to sing louder. “Communicare volo tibi quod sentio… intelligendum tibi est!” Now that Jupiter had gotten over his brief surprise, the words started to make sense in his head. [I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling, gotta make you understand!]
He didn’t recognise the tune, although it was relatively catchy. Mars seemed to know it, though, as something that could only be described as horror filled his eyes. “Dude, don’t–”
“Tete numquam relinquam,” Earth belted, progressively getting louder and louder. “Tete numquam deseraaaam, tibi ero desultor non numquaaam!” He began walking forward, forcing Mars to slowly back away. [Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you!]
Mars turned on his heel and ran. Earth chased after him, still singing loudly.
Well… at least it seemed relatively harmless. Yeah. They can probably sort this out by themselves.
A human stared out the window of his ship.
“Computer, did I just get rickrolled by the Earth?”
“It appears so, Astrodude.”
“Venus, just apologise!”
“Fine!” Venus stood up sharply and marched over to the goldilocks zone, grumbling under his breath. “I’ll apologise to that stupid planet.”
Mercury and Mars watched from a distance as the two had an inaudible conversation. It seemed cordial enough, anyway. Finally, Venus turned to head back to them, although the look on his face wasn’t exactly encouraging.
“So?” Mars probed. “How’d it go?”
Venus grimaced slightly.
Mercury groaned. “You didn’t make it worse, did you?”
“Shut it, pipsqueak!” Venus swung his head around to glare at the smaller. “And no. It went… fine, I guess.”
Mercury and Mars shared a glance. “That’s good, right?”
“He’s not stopping, though.”
Ah. Less good.
“Well, what happened exactly?” Mars twisted to look at Earth, who didn’t seem to be in a particularly bad mood, chatting lightly to Luna and waving his hands in the air as he talked.
“I went up to him. He was speaking russian and I actually know Russian–”
“How come you know–”
“Some Earthlings sent robots to my surface a while ago and suddenly I could speak Russian.”
Mercury blinked. “Is that how it works?”
“Who knows.” Venus shrugged and picked at his nails. “We’re talking planets. I try not to think about it. Anyway, I actually know Russian so I apologised to him in Russian. He accepted my apology.”
“But he’s not stopping?”
“Apparently not. What more do you want from me? I said I was sorry!”
“Okay,” Mercury rubbed his eyes. “Honestly, this isn’t the worst phase he’s had, and it could be a lot worse. Maybe we just need to wait it out?”
Phobos and Deimos had taken it upon themselves to try and get Earth to stop it by annoying him into snapping out of it.
Unfortunately, Earth’s stubbornness seemed to be an equal match for the little terrors. All of their attempts seemed to end in a stalemate.
The two martian moons had resorted to screeching very loudly in Earth’s ears. Luna was unfortunately caught in the crossfire and pulled his hood up in an attempt to save his hearing.
“Hör auf zu kreischen!” Earth glared at the small satellites, ears ringing after five straight minutes of the torment. [Stop screaming!]
Phobos paused briefly in the audible assault to look at the blue planet almost innocently. “We will if you start speaking normally!”
“Yeah!” Deimos echoed.
“Zero one zero zero one one one zero zero one one zero one one one one.” Earth declared. [No.]
Luna looked at him with an expression of mild disgust. “Since when can you speak in binary code?”
Earth opened his mouth. Luna realised his mistake too late. “Wait–”
“Zero one one one one zero zero one zero one one zero zero one zero one zero one one one zero zero one one…”
They all looked on in horror as Earth kept going.
A while later, Mars was heading inward towards Earth’s orbit. He gave a little wave when he saw the blue planet and the grey moon. “Hey guys.”
“Hi, Mars,” Said Luna
“Shwmae, Mawrth,” Said Earth.
“Still doing this, huh.” It wasn’t really a question, but Earth replied anyway.
“Wrth gwrs fy yn.” [Of course I am.]
Luna sighed, shoulders slumped. “It’s been non-stop. I don’t know that many languages!”
Earth pursed his lips and gently nudged the moon. “Rydych chi’n gwneud yn anhygoel peidiwch â gwerth’ch hun yn fyr.” [You’re doing amazing. Don’t underestimate yourself.]
Luna stared at him for a second, before turning to Mars. “Is it too late to switch planets? Mine is malfunctioning.”
“Nah, ty’n caru fi.” Earth grinned and laughed as his moon swatted him. [Nah, you love me.]
“Uh…” Mars glanced between them, utterly lost. “What are you two talking about?” As much as Mars was used to bickering in this system, it was a lot more of a headache when he could only understand half the conversation.
“Doesn’t matter, not important,” Luna dismissed, ignoring the scoff from the blue planet.
“Does neb yn deall fy’n disgleirbed.” [No one appreciates my brilliance.]
Luna waved his hands vaguely at Earth before fully turning to the red planet. “So, what brings you here?”
“Oh, yeah.” Mars snapped his fingers. “Europa told Phobos and Deimos to tell me to tell you that the Moon Club is on now.”
“Oh! Right, uh…” The grey moon glanced at Earth, then the Asteroid Belt. “Mars, can you keep Earth on his axis while I go?”
“What? I mean sure but–”
“Great! Won’t be too long.”
“Luna, wait! I don’t know… uh…” He gestured vaguely at Earth. “Any of that.”
“Cymraeg,” Earth unhelpfully supplied.
“He’s just speaking in Welsh. Look,” Luna held out his hands and materialised a book, shoving it into Mars’ hands. “Here’s a dictionary. You’ll be fine.” He turned to Earth. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Luna–” Mars tried to protest, but the moon was already darting towards the Asteroid Belt.
An awkward silence.
“So…” Mars clicked his tongue. “Wanna play Uno?”
“How about you, Luna?” Titan turned to the grey moon. “Anything on your end?”
Luna shrugged, rubbing the fabric of his sleeves between his fingers. “Well, I’m joining in on the Rocky Planet card games now, that’s nice and all, but… well, Venus and Earth had an argument last time, so now Earth is refusing to talk to anyone properly.”
Titan furrowed his brow. “Well, he shouldn’t be giving you the silent treatment over something Venus said—“
“He’s definitely not silent.”
“Huh?” Europa floated forward. “I thought you said he wasn’t talking?”
“He’s talking. Just in every language other than the one everyone understands,” Luna clarified with a sigh. “It’s been a few weeks and he’s not giving up so I’m kind of having to act as a translator half the time. The rockies have asked him to stop, Venus even apologised. He’s still going.”
“We couldn’t even annoy him into stopping!” Deimos piped up. “He just started speaking in maths!”
“And we were being very irritating,” Phobos nodded.
“He might j-just get b-b-bored,” Io offered, ever the optimist. “Or just r-run out. H-how many languages could the- the Earthlings even h-have?”
“About… uh…” Luna wracked his brain. “I think there’s like six to seven thousand languages right now.” A couple eyebrows went up at that. “But that’s just the active ones, there are way more if you count all the dead languages, which Earth definitely is.” Luna rubbed the back of his neck.
“Why would they need so many?” Europa asked incredulously. “That seems overkill.”
“There are eight billion of them.” Titan tapped his fingers to his lips. “And they’re spread over a lot of land, right?”
“Right,” Luna confirmed, glad that Titan had started coming to the inner solar system to talk to him and his planet about life. It was nice to have someone who knew a little about it that could back him up on this stuff, since most moons didn’t pay much attention to these types of things. “There’s a lot of things with cultures and regions as well. Earth could probably tell you more about it… but, uhm, that’s if you manage to become fluent in Swahili in the next few days.”
Titan didn’t look particularly enthused by the idea. Luna couldn’t blame him.
“Have you even tried talking to him?” Callisto’s bored voice joined in.
“The rockies have all asked him to stop, like, multiple times–”
“No,” She interrupted calmly. “Have you tried talking to him?”
“Well… no…” Luna admitted. “It didn’t really bother me until recently.”
Titan smiled slightly at him. “Maybe try having a conversation with him first. Tell him how you feel. He’s become better at listening to you, right?”
“Yeah,” Luna sighed, shaking out his hands. “Yeah, he has. Alright. I’ll talk to him.” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “In case it doesn’t go well though, are any of you interested in becoming bilingual?”
No one was interested in becoming bilingual. Traitors, all of them.
Luna wrung his hands as he approached his orbit, feeling his gravity click into place. Earth looked up when he felt his approach and immediately launched into a monologue in– oh stars he couldn’t even recognise the phonics. Either he’d never heard the language before or Earth was speaking in an extremely bad accent.
Luna let out a breath. “Earth!” The planet fell silent. “Okay, Earth. I can’t keep up with all these languages, and I can’t keep being a glorified translator for you! Seriously, it’s been long enough and I’m getting coreaches from this! It’s stressful!”
Earth looked down, seeming a little. He began to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he brought his hand up to his chest and drew a circle with a closed fist. Sorry.
Oh, a sign language. Luna could do that, actually.
Now that he was thinking about it… as annoying as this entire thing was, whenever just the two of them were alone in orbit, Earth usually made sure he was using languages he knew Luna was comfortable with.
Still wasn’t speaking normally, but he was confident enough in his grasp of sign language to not be that annoyed. “Okay, it’s just… It’s getting a little old, right? I mean it was vaguely funny at first, but Venus said he was sorry a while ago, so–” Luna gestured vaguely with his arms outstretched. “What gives?”
Earth made the same motion again, looking a little guilty. Sorry. After a moment, he continued, hand movements smaller than they would usually be. Didn’t mean to cause you stress. Should’ve thought about you more. He lightly tapped his knuckles against the side of his head. Stupid of me.
“Why keep this up?” Luna asked, unconsciously making the sign for why as he did so. Okay, apparently the multiple languages had started to seep into his brain too.
I don’t know. Got carried away I guess. A lot of languages are dying out, or dead, or I hadn’t been able to try them out until now… and it’s not really like I can practise anywhere else, and then I had committed to the bit for so long I didn’t know how to stop. And you seemed to be doing fine… His hand movements got less sure as he reached the end of the sentence.
“Stars, Earth. I can’t keep track of forty plus languages!” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think you overestimated my abilities a bit.”
You’ve actually been very good at this. I didn’t know you paid so much attention to my ramblings. Earth beamed at him. He curled both of his hands into thumbs up and moved in alternating movements towards his chest. Proud. His smile dropped. Sorry I didn’t think to ask you about it.
Luna sighed and let his shoulders drop. “It wasn’t actually that bad. It was the translating that annoyed me.” He let his hands rest on his hips and smiled up at the planet. Look at them communicating. “I don’t mind you practising on me every now and then, but… just don’t do it for two weeks straight next time?”
Earth looked a little sheepish, but smiled. Okay. I’ll try to reel myself back.
“Great!” He clapped his hands together. “You can switch back now. Titan might be coming around in a day or so and you can yap his ear off about ants or–” He paused as he saw Earth make a face out of the corner of his eye. “What?”
The living planet fidgeted awkwardly in place before bringing his hands back up to sign. One problem. I’ve been doing this for too long. I can’t remember how to speak normally.
“Haha. Very funny, Earth.”
They both blinked at each other for a few seconds.
”Oh shit, you’re not joking.”