June 5th, 2018
Marco always dreamed in Spanish. In his head, Jacky had an Argentinian accent. It seemed like everyone in his life had a different way of speaking in his dreams, even if they hadn't ever uttered a Spanish word in real life.
His father, for example, spoke with his real life Mexican accent, familiar and warm like oil sizzling in a pan. His mother on the other hand, who had never learned to say much more than "hola," spoke like the upper crust in Barcelona. .
Oscar and Ponyhead spoke like Peruvians, while Tom wielded his Chilean Spanish like a club. Buff Frog was always slipping into Portuguese.
Jacky though, Jacky's accent was definitely Argentinian. It was so cute, it didn't even feel fair. Do you know that feeling when something is so adorable that it kind of burrows a hole in your chest, and it just sits there and aches, but you have nothing you can do about it so it pulses this kind of "ache," but in a good way? That's the kind of feeling her accent gave him.
They were climbing a tree. Marco could smell the Springr. It set his heart beating. Jacky was above him. She turned down, and he could see a soft smile on her face. "Ven aca," she said, and reached down her hand. He grabbed it, and she pulled him up.
The view was foggy and swirling, the dark parts of his mind that he wasn't really thinking about, because everything that mattered was holding her hand. He turned to her, and she smiled, and opened her mouth.
"MARCO"
That was definitely not Argentinian. He took his hand away. She kept smiling.
"MARCO"
What?
"MAR-"
Marco woke up in sudden, sober wakefulness. Cold sweat ran down his back. Was he back in Hekapoo's dimension? Was another pack of wild dragon cycles nipping at his toes?
He saw two blue eyes, so unreasonably big that he could fit hats on them. "Star?" he said, the grogginess riding his words. She was sitting at the edge of his bed. "What time is it?"
"2 in the morning! You have a lot of gumption, trying to practice magic without me, bucko."
"What?"
"I could hear you practicing Magic in here."
"I was asleep Star."
"Sleep spelling is dangerous, Marco. You could wake up with no head. Or worse, two heads that disagree with each other on a fundamental level."
"Star, I can't cast magic. I don't even have a wand."
"Oh ho, boyo, don't think you can fool me. I heard you say 'Venisimo Acadas,' or something like that. What spell is that? Dad told me there was no magic on earth." She was bouncing up and down now.
"Venisimo...oh, Ven aca? Star, I was speaking Spanish. I always dream in Spanish."
She looked puzzled, like a dog who had just found a treat lying underneath a math problem. "S-pan-ish? Is that some kind of 'pan' magic? Teach me your earth cooking magic Marco, I'm ready to learn."
"Star-" and then he paused. "Wait a second. How did you learn English, anyway?"
"Eng-lish? I can make up words too, you know. Mirrwump. Grumbleberr. Dividend. There."
"It's the language we're speaking right now."
Understanding flashed in her eyes. "Oh, that. I never learned it. I'm speaking Mewnian right now. Dimensional rifts automatically translate your native language into the most used language in the area you pop out."
Marco blinked. "So everything I'm saying to you just sounds like it's in Mewnian?"
She nodded. Marco thought for a moment, and then said something in Spanish. She cocked her head to the side. "What now?"
"Hmm," said Marco. "So if you went to Germany, or Japan, you'd speak German and Japanese?"
"Yeah, whatever dimensions those are."
"Fascinating. But that means, you don't really speak English at all. And we've never had a conversation that wasn't translated."
Star scrunched up her face. "I guess so?" She stood up. "It looks like you're not going to teach me any spells. G'night, noisy." And then she skipped off, probably to her own room.
Marco thought for a long time.
June 7th, 2018
Star poured herself a bowl of cereal, and sat it at the table. As she chewed, she noticed Marco, reading a large book. She looked on the cover. "Mewnian for Dummies."
"Why are you reading that?"
He looked up. "I just wanted to learn more about where you came from."
"Then ask me about it."
"But there's a lot that you can't really understand, unless you speak the other person's language."
"I don't see why. Talking is talking." And eating is eating. She finished her cereal, and then went to school.
June 18th, 2018
Star saw Marco reading through his book in class. She rolled her eyes.
August 16th, 2018
Marco felt ready to try a practice conversation in Mewnian. She humored him. His accent was like horseshoes scraping gravel, and she couldn't help but laugh. When she saw the hurt look on his face, she clamped her hand to her mouth.
He took a note in one of his journals, and kept on going.
October 24th, 2018
They were fighting a pair of demonic kittens. She knocked one into a pile of pillows with her "Safety lock Narwhall blast" and Marco gently roundhouse kicked one back into a portal. As he did, he yelled a traditional Mewnie battle cry. She smiled.
May 29, 2019
His accent still sounded like horses and gravel, but not in an unpleasant way. It was kind of cute.
June 8th, 2019
She found him sitting at a table, frustrated. "I don't understand this suffix," he said, and pointed it out to her in his textbook.
She blinked. "-Gya?" she said.
He nodded. "There's nothing like it in English."
She struggled for words. English didn't have a word for "-Gya?" How did people even communicate? "It goes after someone's name."
Marco nodded. "I get that part. But what does it mean?"
She wrung her hands. "It's a kind of...I don't know how to describe it, in words that aren't just me repeating that same word to you. It's this kind of explosive, happiness. You're showing how much the person means to you. You use it for your best friend, or like your spouse. I always use it with yo-you really don't have a word for -gya in your language?"
Marco shook his head, but went back to writing in his notebook happily.
She went back to thinking. She'd never NOT added -gya onto his name, as far as she could remember. Had that not come across to him? What else had been lost in translation?
June 9th, 2019
Quest-buy sold its first every copy of "Spanish for Dummies."
December 15th, 2019
Jacky broke up with Marco. Star found him alone in his room, crying but pretending to be okay. She held him.
"Ssh. No llores. No llores, Marco-gya."
December 25, 2020
Marco and Star wrote each other Christmas cards in each other's languages. They were both riddled with spelling errors.
June 5th, 2021
Marco kissed her, for the first time, in the living room where he thought they were alone. Star could hear Marco's dad almost walk in, but stop himself and tiptoe away. She heard him say, in Spanish, "about time son."
April 22, 2024
Marco gave a speech in Mewnian to the people of Mewni. They cheered vigorously, but mostly because the speech was related to corn.
May 07, 2026
They went to Mexico together, and Star disabled the spell that translated for her. She understood about 90 percent of what was going on. She couldn't stop grinning.
June 5th, 2018
They were studying together. Marco turned to Star. "How do you say this phrase in Mewnian?"
"What phrase?"
He pointed at his book.
¿Te casarías conmigo?