When I met the Pony of Ashfall, she had been dead for millions of years.
Her bones were pulled from the earth, Zebrican earth, by a team of pegasi in 972, led by the already famous Daring Do. They named her after the events surrounding her death: drowned in the ashes of an erupting volcano, slowly and agonizingly. At least she didn't die alone. She was surrounded by rhinos and camels and giraffes. But no other ponies. The pegasi flew her to Canterlot for testing, before leaving her to rest in a Zebrican storehouse, labeled as ZL-389-4, or Zebraltohippecus afarensis — the southern horse from afar. Her own people call her Wewenimzuri — “Thou art beautiful” — and for thirty years, she stayed locked away except by special permission. The Pony of Ashfall was, at the time of her discovery, the oldest hipponid yet found, and high hopes were held that she would prove to be the long-sought "missing link" in the evolutionary chain. She had forward-facing eyes, but a small braincase, explosively contradicting the popular and self-aggrandizing theory that increased intelligence had preceded ponies' shift out from the bottom of the food chain in our glorious march out of the primordial soup.
To see her, one had to fly to Zebrica with a scientific permit, where one was given access under heavy security and supervision. When the zebra nation threw open its gates and began to cast her forth as bait for foreign currency and tourists, the story changed course.
Her eventual return to Equestria was negotiated by one Dirk van Turnabout of the Hoofston Museum of Natural Science. I first encountered him as a museum volunteer early in secondary school, as he lead a group of adult docents on a tour of the fabulous display of indigenous Equestrian culture that he had vastly expanded and reworked since his hiring. Before a map of Equestria from the time of the War of Sun and Moon, in the dimly lit third floor of the cavernous building, he explained new and fantastic theories about the crossings from Neighpon, and I swooned, as a teenage filly is wont to do. I was never interested in movie stars. A native of the Neightherlands, he commanded the atmosphere of a room, as well as five languages with fluency. He wasn’t particularly distinct in appearance, other than being a fairly tall blue earth pony, with a brown moustache that just slightly wiggled under his fine-rimmed glasses as he spoke, and as far as I could tell his cutie mark was for public speaking. I was spellbound.
Several years later, the Pony of Ashfall was a mere month from arrival, and I gave up my lunch period to listen to Dirk speak at a book club. I was a paid coordinator for the summer youth program and had aspired periodically for several years to venture some day into paleohippology as a career. In the room were a few dozen older docents, some of whom I knew personally, of various experience and skill. Everypony was buzzing to know: what happens when she gets here?
He talked us through the exhibit as it stood in his mind — the basic layout, what he wanted to do thematically, how he intended to keep people from jumping in to look at the Pony of Ashfall and leaving without seeing anything else in the extensive display. He kept emphasizing that this was a story to tell — the story of Zebrica, of paleohippology, of the pony race.
A hoof went up from the side of the room, and one of the master docents in geology mentioned the “E-word.” Evolution. Sometimes, groups of Celestists came through the dinosaur exhibit with a privately hired tour guide who would tell them that the bones are 1,000 years old. She argued bitterly against “disenfranchising patrons with loaded language,” but this was one point upon with Dirk remained adamant.
“We are a science museum,” he said slowly, clearly. “We will tell our visitors what we think we know, and why we think we know it. They are welcome to disagree.” From my improvised seat on the blue plastic cooler to the right, I fell in love all over again. I hadn’t done anything but agree with him, and already I felt, in my green uniform polo shirt, like a warrior in some grand battle for Scientific Integrity. It was intoxicating.
The arrival was controversial in another field, a different sort of politics. After the announcement was made that Hoofston would be the first to receive the coming star, prestigious institutions around the country, led by the Smithdotterian, began bad-mouthing the proceedings. Dirk rolled his eyes and proclaimed that they had all been in favor of the tour until it became clear that they would not have the first chance to display her. “Funny how that works,” my supervisor sighed, as she turned back to her computer in our basement office.
Firstly, they claimed, she was too delicate to travel. “She’s made of stone. We house two thousand-year-old paper documents, but stone is too delicate?” Realistic curators assured the world that the Pony of Ashfall was comparatively “robust,” though few news outlets picked up the quote. Fewer recalled that she had made nearly the same journey once before, to Canterlot.
Then there was the 998 EQESCO agreement signed by various institutions around the world, proclaiming that fossils should not be displayed outside of their country of origin, to prevent exploitation like the host of priceless Marecenaean and Sesmetian artifacts forever interred in grand Griffin museums. “The Zebrican government approached us.” Simple. Dirk shook his head in an National Pony Radio interview. “Zebrica wants the attention that the Pony of Ashfall can bring from abroad.”
Then the more subtle ethics, though more deeply accusatory: how can you put her on display? Offer her to such prostitution? Can her scientific value be pushed aside in such a capitalistic venture?
Dirk was exasperated. “Why do we have museums?” To make the public aware, to capture the interest of the old and the young, to preserve old science and breed new scientists. To tell stories. What better way than with such a cultural icon, with such a spark to the imagination, as the mother of the pony race? Can she do more good locked in a cabinet than brought before the eyes of the world? The cost of keeping her secure was expected to more than eat any profit from the display. Showing her was about something else entirely.
In his fight for her, they developed an intimate relationship. Sometimes he was her agent, handling her PR and travel arrangements; other times he was father, lover, protective and tender. He spoke of her always as a celebrity, as a mother, a queen.
I was the only one to watch her arrive. A hoofful of my coworkers and volunteers sat around a table in a closed side room, laughing and cutting out paper butterflies for a class. I sat alone in the long antechamber connecting their door to several offices, working on a stool at a low counter. A plaster model of Rose's Stone had fallen and shattered — I sat with the painstakingly glued remnants painting over the plaster-filled cracks before carefully, lovingly, scrawling tiny Marecenaean and Sesmetian letters back onto the smoothed surface. With the magnifying glass on my flank showing my talent in attention to detail, I was the usual go-to for such repair work, and had jumped at daunting task. At that time, I found more comfort in the sense of history surrounding the museum’s artifacts than I did among my peers, all of them younger than I. I liked the feel of working with my hooves and my wings, of creating something to be used — so I painted, and I scrawled hieroglyphics in pencil.
In from the outermost door strode a single line of mares and stallions clad in business attire. Several carried suitcases. The curator from Zebrica, a zebra mare who had long ago made the Pony of Ashfall her life’s work and would follow her through every installation and removal in the Equestrian tour, walked among them. One was the consulate, wearing the cultural rings from her homeland. Her son, a blank flank in a wrinkled primary school uniform, walked just behind and to the right. The museum’s president and several lower officials composed the remainder of the procession.
They walked in silence, in from the outside hall, down the length of the counter and into the back room through doors that swung gracefully shut. I peered out into the museum proper and saw security guards in the hallway, standing at the start of the cordons that now surrounded the room we had all been sitting in, unaware. After a few moments, once word came by radio that the Pony of Ashfall was in the vault, they picked up the barriers and left. First she was absent; now she was here. It was a simple change of state. The suitcases, specially compartmentalized to hold each bone in place, had passed through the city and through the doors before anyone knew what they were looking at. I stood up and crossed the hall to whispered to my coworkers. “She’s here,” I said breathlessly, in my mind. “I think they just brought the Pony of Ashfall in” were the words I actually spoke. Everypony sat up, aware of the momentous nature of the occasion. “Really?” Kibbles asked in awe. Of any there, he was the closest to understanding what it meant. "Is Daring here?!" One of the younger fillies asked. I couldn't even remember her name, but I shook my head. She should know better; Daring hasn't left her old ponies' home in years. Even the novelizations of Daring's exploits have slowed to a trickle as her son runs out of her stories to tell.
The exhibit wasn’t ready for another month. By that time, the volunteer program had shut down for the summer, and I had begun finishing school. I remember running back from an intramural sports practice one evening, showering, throwing on my nicest dress, rummaging for an umbrella, and flying the mile and a half to the museum doing my best to avoid getting drenched by the rain, dress slippers in hoof. My supervisor had invited me to the early press opening, where I was introduced to the Zebrican ambassador, the Hoofston consulate, and the museum’s president, who, after months of stress in preparation for this night, accidentally knocked over his third glass of wine near my hooves and laughed for a very long time after it shattered.
I walked carefully through the exhibit. Here was a stone hoof-axe, older than I could conceive of. Here was a model of the church at Lambelo, the stone temple carved deep into the Zebrican rock. Here was the debris of Bitalian invasion, unsuccessful again and again. Coffee paraphernalia. Musical instruments like none I’d ever seen, save the two drums I’d helped a curator move over the summer. The strange basket that had sat for months under plastic in our office. I moved slowly, taking in everything, and was nearly the last one in the hall by the time I reached the final chambers.
These rooms were darker, with white writing on the walls and dramatically lit cases of skulls. A romantic-sounding pop song from my parent's generation played softly in the corners, and the space seemed softer, infinite. Further in, a brief documentary rolled on a screen. Then silence, and a short winding passage.
When I finally saw her, she was on her back under glass, staring into the lights. She was stretched out, set like a gemstone on black velour in this simple chamber, enclosed by a vibrant mural of pony ancestry stretching from prohippian to tribesmare. (The artist was a no-name colt who was once kicked out of the Equestrian Museum of Natural History for sketching exhibits without permission, though he remembers having asked before he began. He is now booked for years in advance by magazines and museums looking to draw upon his talent.)
I looked at her. She was surprisingly unbroken, as her lungs had filled with ash before she died, preventing her skeleton from being crushed like most fossils. A model hung in a display case to her right, assembled in three dimensions. She lay on a flat table to assuage all fears that she might be damaged by a fall. To her left, a fleshed-out artist’s rendition of the creature she might have been. I circled her case, and was asked not to touch by the security guard.
I sank down and knelt at her hooves, as before Celestia, crowned with sunlight. Other visitors standing nearby eyed me, but did not question my reverence. I did not pray, as I could not have prayed these days to Celestian statuary, but there was a holiness around her, an air of dignity, part history, part myth, that struck my core. Dirk van Turnabout had said that he intended to tell the story of ponykind with her bones. Room after room contained artifacts showcasing Zebrica in its uncolonized glory, but this, this was a grander symbol than even gilded quilt-books and Bitalian swords and Marharic scrawling. She was a tome in a single image.
I left when the lights were being turned out, her sightless voice, pleading for my comprehension, still ringing in my ears:
I am hated by some for what I tell them. I am feared. Others name me Beautiful One.
Perhaps I am your mother, but certainly a mother of your story; key to a puzzle, writer of new mysteries.
This is what you came from, she whispers. This is what you will some day be. Bones.
Author's Note
The subject of this piece is a mixture of Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), and the Ashfall Fossil Beds in Idaho.
The idea for the story is based on a piece of fiction I wrote for a creative writing class in college, which in turn was inspired by Lucy coming to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
