Chapter 1: Mother and Child
Chapter 1: Mother and Child
Rarity was still bleary-eyed from the effort, exhaustion, pain and medications.
The doctors had considered doing a Dactylian -- that operation named after the ancient Pegasus Commander who had three hooves on each foot, and had supposedly been born by cutting open his mother's womb. Such an operation had once been almost always fatal to the mother, but with modern late-15th century medicine, with anesthetics and antiseptics and antibiotics, it was now usually survivable. And fourteen was young for a Unicorn's first delivery: Rarity's birth canal was still small and fillyish.
On the other hoof, any mistake in a Dactylian could sterilize the mother. And, because she was young, Rarity might someday bear other foals, hopefully to somepony more scrupulous than the father she had resolutely refused to name. It would be cruel to deny her that hope.
Her hips decided the issue. Rarity had wide, generous hips, a pelvis perfectly-proportioned for dropping foals. Though still a bit small, she was not in as much danger as most fillies her age would have been. Her father, Magnum Bell, had taken out a loan on his house to pay for the best obstetricians available in Ponyville -- one of the doctors had come in from the capital of Canterlot to attend, and the midwife from South Dunnich, a hamlet near the small town of Nickerlite. That midwife -- an eccentric but highly-experienced old mare with a doctorate in biology, came down firmly on the side of a vaginal birth.
"'Ain't no reason to go cutting this fine young mare up," the midwife stated. "I've drawn plenty'o live foals out of live mothers smaller'n her, by the normal route, and seen both dam 'n foal live happy and healthy after. No point messin' up this girl's womb." And the doctors could not but yield to the force of her reasoning, and the knowledge that she had been a practicing midwife before they had been born.
The birthing proceded without the need for any scalpels. There seemed to be a dicey moment at one point, when the foal's head seemed to get stuck at the pelvic outlet: presentation was good but the mother's muscles seemed to be clamping down rather than pushing properly. The obstetricians muttered and eyed their surgical tools; the midwife simply made a tsk-tsk noise, applied just a touch of dilation -- and the baby slid smoothly out. "Easy-peasy," she commented, chuckling, and none could find fault with her medical technique, though the Canterlot expert harumphed in complaint about her "rustic ways."
So it was that, at 3:05 am on November 11th, YOH 1496, at Ponyville General Hospital, Rarity Belle of Ponyville, aged 14, was delivered of a healthy male foal. Soon after, her get was presented to her; and Rarity gazed for the first time on what she had earned for her eleven months of fear and pain and shame, and for what she had traded her scholarship and her old bright dreams.
She beheld a perfect little colt, still damp from birth, with a scraggly pure-white coat and wispy dark blue mane and blue eyes, just opening to look upon his new world. She saw him, drank in his reality, explored his pattern with the most superb aesthetic sense born to her generation. And she realized something.
He was flawless. He was wonderful. She shuddered in awe at the amazing little creature she had made.
"What is his name?" the strange midwife asked, her bunned-back gray-gold mane framing her kindly, intelligent face.
The obstetricians looked at the midwife askance, but the old mare persisted.
"Names are important, child," she continued. "Do you know his?"
"Yes," said Rarity, her voice muzzy with morphine and exhaustion. "He is a perfect gem I got with great difficulty from worthless Rocks. He is a diamond. Diamond Bell. That is his name."
As Rarity spoke, she saw that the name fit the foal as could no other. She felt the patterns lock perfectly into place. Diamond Bell. That was who he was.
Golden Pie nodded in approval.
Rarity clasped her newborn colt, her little Diamond, to her barrel, smiling into his dear small face. Diamond's just-opened eyes struggled to focus on his mother, and then he smiled back.
Pony foals were somewhat precocial. On the Primal Plains, countless millennia ago, Diamond would have been expected to stand within an hour; run with his mother within a day; the lash of predation spurring him on to develop quickly, or die.
Equestria was a civilized culture. There were no predators in Ponyville General Hospital. Diamond Bell would be allowed to develop at his own rate.
But Diamond still had needs, not fundamentally different from those of the primal Ponies. He felt a need. Far too young for speech, he expressed his need by crying.
Rarity smiled. She had watched her mother, Sweetie Pearl, take care of Rarity's own younger sister, when Sweetie Belle was just a foal. She knew what the little colt wanted, and it was something of which she had plenty. She shifted his position on her, brought his small foalish muzzle down to her udder, so that his mouth could reach her swollen teats.
The foal's instincts and reflexes were good. Mouth found nipple. Little Diamond Bell made contented noises as he suckled.
Rarity felt a warm, happy sensation at the physical contact. Her own maternal instincts, ones far older than current civilization or ancient Uplifting, told her that this was right, was good, was the way things should be.
Borne on a wash of pure mother-love, Rarity stopped thinking, lost herself in a bliss as ancient as eutherial mammal, and drifted off to her well-earned sleep, utterly content with her world. The intellectual, the intriguer, the designer -- all were in suspension for now. At this moment Rarity Belle was, pure and simple, a Mother.
Author's Note
The POD is that Rarity does not miscarry in Fillydelphia, but instead is sufficiently frightened by her near-miscarriage that she swallows her pride and contacts her parents for help. They bring her back to Ponyville and make sure she gets adequate food and rest during her pregnancy. Hence, her foal lives.
Dactylian: This is a Ponification of a Caesarian. Gaius Julius Caesar's horse, which he rode into the Gallic Wars, was named Dactyl ("Toes"), because the horse had the atavism of being born with more than one toe on each foot, unlike normal horses which have only one toe per foot (the hoof is the toenail).
Rarity's wide pelvis is also why she sashays sometimes even when she doesn't intend it. Of course, being Rarity, she usually intends it.
Wider hips in mares, in general, is actually an adaptation engineered into Ponykind by the Great G'marr to enable them to bear sapient offspring. As with Human babies, the head is the main hazard in giving birth. Pony mares bear their foals a bit more easily than Human women their babies, because they are mostly quadrupedal beings, but not as easily as do our world's horses.
South-Dunnich is my invention; Nickerlite Sketcha-holic's. In the SWSV, the family of Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz Pie live near South-Dunnich, but the train station is located in Nickerlite, a few miles to the north.
Rarity is actually using both her Talent of pattern-seeking and the innate precognitive ability most Pony parents have to choose wholly appropriate names for their children. Being Rarity, even a drugged and sleep-deprived Rarity, she is also being dramatic about it.
... got from worthless Rocks ... Rush Rocks is Diamond's sire, though Rarity refuses to name him. There is no worldline in which Rarity had sex with Rush Rocks in which she did not wind up despising him.
Magnum Bell, Sweetie Pearl ... I prefer these names as both less silly and more relevant to the names of their children than "Hondo Flanks" or "Cookie Crumbles." Hondo Flanks is very obviously a nickname, probably originally given Magnum by Sweetie Pearl in love-play, which became known to his children. Cookie Crumbles works better as a Pony name, but has no connection to either Rarity or Sweetie Belle as a name, and hence is more likely a nickname or possibly milk-name.
Golden Pie: The midwife, of course, is Pinkie Pie's maternal grandmother. She's the one who started saying "Easy-peasy," which is one of Pinkie's signature expressions.
