I’ve wondered what it felt like to kiss a mare on the lips.
Scientifically, kissing is peculiar. It serves no direct biological function and is thus vestigial in today’s genetic process. Nevertheless, historically it provided ponies a slight evolutionary advantage in mating rituals. In contrast to primitive mating behaviours seen in non-sapient animals, though lacking in biological function, kissing is sociologically harmless. Equestrian biologists thus have no compelling reason to excise the instinct from the genome, the neigh universal craving for the sensation persisting among the populace.
I am not immune to the quirk of biology that had my thoughts in school lingering towards the filly next to me.
Culturally, using a literary analysis of Equish language fiction with particular emphasis on romantic tales, I have inferred that kissing is central to the Equestrian concept of romantic love. Indeed, my inquiries reveal that kissing is one of the few undisputed hallmarks of romantic love, a fiction in itself lacking in scientific basis. Despite my intuitions inherited from the surrounding culture, my extensive sociological research and indeed analysis of the themes present in the very works of art creating the fiction, romance is constructed against a pony’s best interests. To the contrary, the social function of romance is to systematize the differentiation between platonic physical contact and sex, enforcing monogamy on the populace by construction. Given the changing social tides around these themes, as discussed by Heartquill and Starfriend, it is evident that romance is as vestigial as its foundation in kissing.
Yet I found myself wasting away valuable time in my youth dreaming about love. I will never recover that time, time I could have spent well on refining my knowledge of physics or economics. Even focusing on ceramics would no doubt have profited more than focusing on her.
Statistically, a typical pony falls in love with a miniscule fraction of the ponies in their life. The data is admittedly confounded by gender identities and incompatible sexual orientation, but even assuming a priori mutually compatible orientations, the conditional probability that any two ponies who happen to spend with each other do develop feelings is minimal. How could it not be, if it is rare for one pony to fall for another. While I concede the reverse direction is not an independent event, my research reveals that attempts to “woo” another pony are rarely successful, and even if successful, the temporal difference can destroy the possibility of a relationship. Indeed, we may conclude that the probability that two ponies simultaneously fall in love with each other is small, and even if we additionally condition on one pony falling for the other, it is still small.
Thus expecting feelings for a pony I only thought I knew to be anything but unrequited was irrational and naive. It takes the distracted mind of a filly to believe that throwing a party is enough to win a pony’s heart. It takes a delusion to believe that the mistletoe in the air means my first party would end with a kiss on the lips from my guest of the hour.
It is tempting to seek post hoc justifications for my foolish behaviour, to attempt to wield the sword of science to explain my baseless pursuit for somepony who could never love a pony like me. To seek a justification for the ills of my fillyhood would be a grave error, for I understand now and only now what I was wishing for. I did research, and I should have known how my story would end.
Alone.
I should have known the self-absorbed filly who stole my heart and probably never realized would not even be bothered to show up. I laboured for hours trying to work up the courage to invite her. She did tell me yes, never once taking her eyes up from the book, something I found cute and blushed at, and found I preferred to avoid eye contact regardless. Even now remembering my tummy flutters, there is an irrational vortex inside me longing to return to those fantasies, to retreat in my mind to a world where my story had a happy ending and hers had me in it.
But I didn’t know. I threw the party and she didn’t even show up. Sure, Minuette was there; her presence is unforgettable given my introversion-induced headache by the end of the wasted afternoon. I’m sure Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine made an appearance if Minuette was there. I’m fine with that.
It has been years since the “party”, and I use the word as liberally as necessary to include a delusional heartbroken filly and three ponies who claimed to be her friends standing around outside in Canterlot. Years until now, when the pony I fell in love with, the pony who never bothered to know and could not even say goodbye when she abandoned me at my weakest, this pony shows up my door.
Knock knock knock. I clamp my hooves over my ears, groaning. The mail ponies know by now to leave packages at the door silently and not disturb me if I am studying. Knocking means salesponies and other wastes of my attention, ponies who disappear once they realize they are being ignored.
This particular waste of my attention is far more persistent.
Another knock.
I force myself to the door, and in the void she created in my door and in my heart, I see her.
“Moondancer?”
That voice rings in my ears.
Twilight Sparkle.
“It’s us! Your old friends!”
I don’t know what I expected from the pony who stole my heart, left it on a shelf to be forgotten about in Ponyville’s library, and let it burn in her battle with Tirek.
I do know I did not expect a happy-go-lucky montage of three ponies I forgot and one I never could no matter how hard tried.
“Ugh!”
I swing the door and walk away, yearning to forget the one face etched into my tear-stained pillow every night before.
