Dangly Bits

“So… was Pinkie’s party as bad as you were afraid it was going to be?” Starlight asked.

It was the day after the party and Spike felt calm in ways that would have been unimaginable before.

“It went… better than expected,” said Spike.

“Care to elaborate?”

“Well… first of all. She didn’t invite 50 creatures. More like 10. And it wasn’t a normal Pinkie Pie party, it was tailor made for me. There was food and gems of all kinds but the real surprise was Pinkie working with Discord to do this elaborate Ogres and Oubliettes game.

“It was a grand one-shot about— uhh… you probably don’t care.”

“How dare you stop yourself. I was gearing up to hear a good tale.”

Spike smiled. “Okay, yeah! Okay umm… alright so.” Spike’s voice changed a little to give the tale a bit more drama.

“In the land of Oubliettes, there exists an underground tower where all malformed legendary artifacts go. For every legendary sword of Excalibur, there are dozens of attempts at making the sword that didn’t work out. For every philosopher’s stone, there’s thousands of tries where the stone only transmutes gold into less gold.

“Most of those legendary weapons and objects are nigh unbreakable, and thus the trash that was made along the way to get to that point, is also impossible to break. All those dangerous items need to go somewhere. And so the Princess of the land of Oubliettes constructed a great pit to throw all these crazy things away into.

“That first pit led to a massive magical explosion within the first few weeks. And so she dug a more organized pit, ensuring the magical objects wouldn’t come into contact with each other, and can be used for forever storage. The pit came to be known as the Reverse Tower of Renshu.

“Many brave warriors have tried to break into the tower, but the Princess’s guards keep the entire area on lockdown. A small army of unicorn archivists keep the place organized so no artifact impacts another. Who the archivists are is a closely guarded secret, as they use a series of teleportations to enter the tower.”

“Let me guess,” Starlight interrupted. “You had to steal something from there.”

“A heist one-shot,” Spike nodded with enthusiasm. “It was a really good hook, but well… everypony died.”

“What?” asked Starlight.

“So, Rainbow’s character got cursed to walk through walls, but accidentally got an item attached to her that triples gravity at a 30 degree angle, which happened to hit this one other object just right so it collided with another one, causing a chain reaction that blew up the entire tower and everyone in it. Gabby almost survived the explosion. But uhh… yeah, the whole thing went out with a bang.”

“So every creature died, and you still had fun?”

“Yeah! It was a blast! And Pinkie was nice enough to run the one-shot again because the first round ended so quickly and anticlimactically. And I did get the final object, the broken genie’s lamp, on the second time around, so that was good.”

“Leave it to Pinkie to make dying that much fun,” said Starlight.

Spike smiled, he felt so incredibly calm.

The room was silent for a few moments.

“You haven’t even brought up your genitals once this session. I guess that means things are going good?”

There had been quite a few good friends at that party and it wasn’t a big deal. There were some questions, some explanations by Spike and for the most part, it was fine. He was probably going to have some occasion where things weren’t fine in the future. But, did he really need to think about that? Everyone around him either didn’t care, or was happy for him because he was happy. Why did these extra dangly bits make him feel so happy?

“I guess the weirdest part about all this—and I know I’m overthinking this—but why does this make me feel happy? Is it a sense of belonging? A feeling of calm at not being different in at least some way? In feeling like my body finally matches what I wanted it to be? I don’t know where this calm, happy feeling is coming from.”

“Who says happiness has to come from anywhere,” asked Starlight. “Or that it can’t be a combination of all those things and something beyond that you can’t even describe. It’s okay to just be happy—or even just to ‘be.’ I find when I try to dissect happiness it can seem to flutter away like a butterfly. Just let yourself be aware of the feeling and let it rest on you. No need to overthink it, Spike.”

“That’s… a good way to put it.” He felt so relaxed in that moment until a small, wriggling thought crossed his mind and Spike began to alleviate it by talking aloud.

He glanced down between his legs. “I guess… the biggest mystery of all this is what I’m going to end up becoming one day: either male or female. But for now, I like being male and identifying as male and none of that biological stuff is gonna matter for a long time anyway.

“But even beyond just now, beyond the next couple of decades, I like being male and whatever my body does, it doesn’t matter. I’m male and that’s okay. It’s okay being me.”

Spike paused, letting what he had just said give time to reverberate around his entire body.

“And I… I accept myself. I’m Spike, I’m a boy and I’ll always be a boy regardless of what my body does.”

Starlight smiled, “I’m glad you accept yourself.”

“I am too,” said Spike.

Spike closed the doors to Starlight’s office. He had quite a few errands to run. And it was okay.

He was okay.