Full Story: The Twilight Between Black and White
Twilight was still trying to get used to walking on two legs. Every time she stepped through the portal into the human world, she always found herself in a new part of the city, and always the same city strangely enough. Houston, was it? Twilight was ecstatic that she had the good fortune to end up in the one place in the country which was mission control for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She couldn’t believe that humans had already gone to the moon, and without magic no less!
Twilight couldn’t help but marvel at how different this world was from the previous dimension she had explored. Her mentor, Princess Celestia, had access to a mirror which led to an alternate universe full of people who looked like they were the ponies she knew from her own hometown. Everything from their skin to eye color matched her friends back home. It became incredibly easy to predict how they would act, based on who they looked like.
But not this place. The first thing Twilight noticed when she entered Equestria 3, as she called it, was her sense of sight. The vibrant color palette was gone. Everything was more…subdued. It was as though a painter had gone through all of the world and removed every bit of bright color. She didn’t feel as happy here. She made it a point not to stay very long. Besides, Celestia didn’t know she was making these trips.
Twilight met so many wonderful people during her last three excursions through the dimension door. Today, she was hoping for something even better.
“Sweet baby Luna…is that a library?” Twilight’s eyes locked on a large building with vast, oversized transparent windows full of rows upon rows upon rows of small worlds nestled snugly between the covers of thousands of books. Twilight found her face pressed up against the window, staring at the patrons who were staring back at her and slowly walking away and out of sight. “This is the most beautiful thing I have seen yet! I have to try it! I’m gonna take sooooooo many books home!”
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“What do you mean I can’t check out more than thirty books?”
“Thirty is the limit, ma’am,” the librarian said. “Besides, you can only have them for two weeks! Do you really think you can finish half of these books in that time?”
“I can finish ALL of these books in ONE week!” Twilight said with a hint of passionate pride. Then Twilight thought about the logistics. She didn’t have magic here. And she had no vehicle. She would have to lug all of the thirty tomes to the mirror portal entry point two miles back, then get them to her home, copy all the tomes magically, and then return them after entering through a completely different portal in Houston. “I need some sort of method of conveyance for myself and these tomes of knowledge, ma’am. Where can I get such a thing?”
“You want a what?” the librarian asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Twilight turned around and spotted a human mother walking into the building with her infant. “That!” Twilight said as she pointed to the mother, who stopped dead in her tracks and stared. “I need a small, wheeled device that transports goods like that baby! I could fit at least thirty books in that.”
“But that’s for babies,” the librarian said.
“Yes, but I will put it to an even better use! Where can I get one?”
Twilight stood outside the Goodwill store and sighed. After going in and locating the necessary wheeled baby-loading device which she would convert into a book cart, Twilight realized she didn’t have the twelve dollars necessary to get it. She had Equestrian bits, but the currency did not match up with Equestria 3’s paper notes. She had only given herself until sundown to go back to the portal and didn’t want to get caught out in the darkness. She had five hours to find a way to get the money, buy the stroller, go back to the library, get the books on-hold for her, and then wheel them all back the portal before night fell. She couldn’t come back tomorrow. She had important Princess business to attend to and lots of meetings for several days straight. Knowing she could come home to a good book (or even better: THIRTY of them) made her feel better. She had to get this done.
Wish my friends were here, she thought. Still, she didn’t want to involve them if she could avoid it. It was bad enough she wasn’t telling Princess Celestia what she was doing. She didn’t want to get her friends in trouble too. But she had to know about this new world. Reading was her method, had always been her method, would always be her method.
At the gas station next door, she saw a woman in disheveled clothing holding out her hands and approaching people exiting their vehicles. The people usually waved her off or ignored her, but a few handed her small pieces of paper. Twilight looked closer and saw that they were handing her money. She thought about her options. Maybe I could just ask for it, too. This is an important mission. If I just explain to people my love of books, then they’d understand. Who doesn't support education?
She knew the human stallions tended to be more aggressive, so she waited until she saw a human mare about her age step out of her car and start heading towards the gas station. Okay, Twilight you can do this. Just ask for a little. Whatever she wants to give. If she says no, just accept it, and move on. Okay here we go… “Good evening, ma’am…”
“No,” the woman said and walked into the gas station.
Twilight stood there for a few seconds, stunned. “That was quick.”
She tried a few more times, and managed to get almost three dollars in an almost an hour. It was insane how hard it was. She looked over at the panhandling woman and felt a wave of pity. How often had she done this and how long had she been here? For the entire hour, Twilight watched in-between her attempts as the elderly lady kept going back person-after-person regardless of how many rejections she got. She wanted to talk to her, but by the time she got the idea to do so, the lady left and started walking down the street. Maybe if I brought her some water, I could start up a conversation, Twilight thought. It was 3PM and extremely hot outside. Houston was not at all like Equestrian cities. It felt like a desert disguised with buildings.
Twilight used her 3 dollars to buy a twelve-pack of bottled water, but by the time she walked outside, the woman was nowhere to be found. Twilight stopped at the corner of the intersection with a water bottle in one hand and the case in her other. She held them up in frustration, knowing she was now back to square one with no money and four hours left till sundown.
Several cars drove up to the intersection where Twilight was standing. They waited for the red light and one rolled down its window. “Hey,” the man said. He held out a dollar. “Gimme one of those,” Twilight looked at her hands, and in a bit of quick-thinking, handed the man the bottle for the dollar. “Thanks,” he said. “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be homeless.”
Twilight opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. Why does he think I’m homeless? She wondered. So instead she said “You’re welcome!”
From 3PM-4:30PM, Twilight sold bottled water at the street corner to cars, went back inside, bought some more water and sold them for a dollar a piece making a profit of 9 dollars for every 3 dollar case she sold. The sales were addicting! Instead of stopping at 12 dollars, Twilight kept going until she had amassed almost 30 bucks over the course of almost two hours. Anyone who wanted the water rolled their window down, asked for the price, and offered the dollar with almost no hesitation. Wish I could’ve told that lady how well this works, Twilight thought.
At around 4:45pm, a car pulled up to Twilight just like any other. When the window slid open, it didn’t go down all the way. They were tinted, and she could only see the upper half of the man’s face. He looked very pale and angry. But Twilight thought it was due to the heat. She had already drank two bottles worth of water herself.
“Howdy, sir!” Twilight started her pitch, remembering how her friend Applejack would speak to her customers. “Would you like to cool down with some refreshing…”
“What’s the angle?” the man asked.
“Huh?” Twilight asked. She recovered and summarized her sale. “Water. One dollar. Simple angle, really.”
“Couldn’t pay your rent? Got kids? Wait, let me guess: kicked out of the house for getting pregnant,” the man said.
Twilight was stunned. “Um…no…”
“So you can sell bottles of water on the street, but you can’t get a real job?” the man asked.
“I don’t have a job,” Twilight started. “I’m actually…”
“Let me guess,” the man said again. The light still hadn’t changed and was taking an awfully long time to move. “They won’t give you a job, right? Why don’t you try harder, instead of leeching off other people?”
“L…Leeching?” Twilight asked. “I’m selling something!”
The light changed and the man drove off. His tires left burnt rubber marks on the road as Twilight stood, confused. “I guess…that’s enough selling for today.”
Twilight bought the stroller and a cheap backpack for less than 20 bucks at the Thrift store. She used the remaining 10 dollars she had left to buy some food as she walked with the stroller to the library. She signed up for a free library card, got her books, and left. It was 6PM when it started to rain halfway to her destination. Twilight put as many books as she could into her backpack and used a trash bag she found to cover the top of the stroller. She still got wet from the rain, but as long as the books were safe, she didn’t care. She pulled under the awning for a bus stop and stood next to four men all staring at her. She was getting really tired and it was hard for her to make small talk, so she stood in silence.
The rain came down in sheets and the streets were starting to fill with rivers of water. Twilight was nervous for her books, but she’d managed to keep them dry thus far. She leaned against the glass of the bus stop and stole a few glances back at the four men. They had been quiet this whole time, saying nothing even to one another. And for the past five minutes, they’d been staring at her almost nonstop. She wanted to say something to cut the tension. She was one person against four. How could they possibly be nervous about her?
Finally, one spoke up. “That ain’t right.” He shook his head. “I mean, it ain’t my baby, but that ain’t right.”
Twilight looked down at the stroller and was hit with a realization. “Ohhhh! It’s not a kid. It’s a bunch of books! Look,” she said as she lifted the bag to show the pile of library tomes stacked to the brim. “You guys thought I was carrying a baby? Hah!”
Twilight’s laugh was good-natured and in jest. Anyone who was in their right mind could see that. But one of the young men, the one who had made the comment, narrowed his eyes. “This ain’t a joke.”
Twilight stopped laughing. She put the plastic cover back over the books. “It’s a total misunderstanding. Easy to make. You couldn’t see through the black bag.”
“She thinks you’re a fucking joke, Rudy,” one of the man’s buddies said behind him.
A what? Twilight thought. Why are they so angry? “I’m not laughing at him,” Twilight said. Her heart was racing. What is happening?
“Yes, you fucking were!” Rudy said. “You fucking laughed at me!”
“Whoa, calm down,” Twilight said. She’d never dealt with anyone like this before. The man wasn’t listening to reason. And even worse, his friend had antagonized him! Twilight didn’t know the meaning of half of the words he was using, but the tone was unmistakable. This human wanted to start a fight. And his buddies were moving in behind him, edging closer towards the side of the covered bus stop where torrential sheets of water cascaded off the side in a curtain separating Twilight and the four men from the rest of the world. As far as she knew, this was the whole world right now and her mind was screaming, telling her to get out of there. But her precious research would be soaked and the entire trip would have been worthless. Twilight couldn’t bear the idea of returning to the library with thirty books completely soaked and caked with mildew and mold. Maybe she could repair them with magic and maybe she couldn’t. After a certain amount of damage, they’d be irreparable. And it wasn’t like Twilight hadn’t dealt with worse challenges than this. She’d fought monsters and tyrants and overcome each and every one of them. Surely she could handle four angry human stallions in a bus stop over a misunderstanding?
Rudy sneered. “I ain’t gonna let some black bitch tell me to calm down!”
“What did you call me?” Twilight asked, genuinely confused. She didn’t understand most of the words, but the word ‘black’ made sense to her. It was the only thing in that sentence that did. She looked at her clothing. Was she wearing gang colors she didn’t know about? No, her attire was very conservative with a lavender skirt like her former coat color. Her shirt was white. Her skin had changed during the transition between worlds and was very dark brown. She wasn’t wearing anything black. So that didn’t make sense either.
She held up her hands in a placating gesture. Before she could speak, in the light of the bus stop, she saw the difference. Four men, with extremely light skin, stood angrily in front of the girl whose skin was far darker than theirs. She was wearing something they didn’t like after all.
Rudy stepped in a little closer, picked up the plastic bag and grasped a random book out of the stroller. “What is this shit, anyway?” he said.
“That’s mine!” Twilight said. Her heart was pounding and she didn’t know what to do. “You can…you can read it after I’m done with it. Just go to the library. Get your own copy.”
The other three men reached down into the stroller and pulled out books for each of them, each taking something that didn’t belong to them. “HEY!” Twilight yelled. No matter how many times she yelled for them to stop, the four men just kept reaching down into the stroller and pulling out books. They tossed them into the rain and Twilight pulled the stroller away to the farthest corner of the bus stop. She put herself between the men and the remaining books. “That’s enough! What is wrong with you?” Tears streamed down her face as she looked at the books sitting out in the rain, irreversibly damaged by the cruelty of the men. She was torn. She could run into the rain and try to save the books, but she knew if she did, they’d grab the stroller and toss the rest. “Why did you do that?” Twilight asked as tears streamed down her face. “I didn’t do anything to you!”
The bus rolled up to the scene. The door opened and the bus driver saw the scene of Twilight, a young black human woman, crying in front of a baby stroller with a plastic bag over it. He turned to the four men, laughing with one another, as two of them still had the books in their hands as they boarded the bus. They paid for their fare and moved out of sight.
“Those are my books!” Twilight yelled. “They stole from me!”
The bus driver looked at her, reached for the door handle and shut out the crying woman before driving off in the rain.
Twilight knelt down in front of her stroller and remaining books and cried. As the bus took off, she saw several of the books still out in the rain. Without a second thought, she crawled into the rain and picked up the water-logged tomes before dragging her rain-soaked body back under the awning. Through tear-stained eyes, she put the dry books from her backpack into the baby stroller and the soaked ones in their place. She stood up, huddled into the corner of the bus stop and curled up into herself until the rain stopped.
At 9PM, Twilight dragged herself, her soaking-wet backpack, her waterlogged clothes, and her plastic-covered baby stroller all the way to the mirror portal she had left at the local park bathroom. The door was locked, but Twilight didn’t care. In a fit of anger, she aimed a kick at the handle of the door and it flew open with a slam, punctuated by a rumble of thunder in the distance. Twilight pulled her stroller with her into the mirror and left the human world behind. Her mind however, couldn’t.
Author's Note
This story is meant to show one instance which can significantly change the life of the person who experienced it. Though this story is complete and does end on a sad note, I have considered continuing the story later to show what Twilight might do when given the chance to get back at the people who've hurt her, though that's a slippery moral slope.
Extra Story Details
Writing Time: 2.5 hours
Draft Number: 1 Draft
Story Location: Houston, Texas in the year 2016
Story Themes: Bigotry, Racism, Innocence Lost
Something to look for in a second reading:
- The double-meaning of the four men taking books from Twilight's stroller without her permission
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Story Background: This story is partly inspired by instances in my life such as the following:
I once went to a pony convention where I saw a brony walking around with a beautiful piece of human Twilight artwork. I noticed the Twilight in the image had dark skin color. I complimented the brony on the artwork he purchased and he said "Yeah. She's darker than I would like, but..." Stunned, I didn't know what to say. The brony walked off before I could think of a response.
