Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

“That smile!” Twilight said, enrapt. “What is it that she knew? Did the painter say?”

I could have slept all day after such a sexual night, but I was glad I had made the effort to stay awake and take Twilight to the museum. We would return to Equestria in only a few more days – this would be her only chance to see the best art humanity had to offer. It would take weeks just to glance at everything in the holographic exhibition; in half a day we had made a lightning tour of highlights. At a pace of ten-ish minutes per century we skimmed three thousand years of human art from the close of the iron age to the present. Current location in history as Twilight stared at a timeless portrait: renaissance Italy.

“Nobody knows. For over a thousand years that has been the question that nobody can answer. Of all the art produced on Terra, this is one of the most widely known images we ever created.”

“It’s… it was worth visiting your world just to see this. Is the original on display somewhere?”

“Nah, it was destroyed by terrorists in the twenty first century.”

“That other painting I was staring at,” Twilight said as we left a projection corridor behind, “can we also get a poster of it? To put up in the castle.”

I laughed and led her to the holomuseum gift shop.

—

A shop kiosk supplied posters on demand of the works we chose for the castle. Mona Lisa would preside over one of the reading nooks in the general access library; a tasteful seduction scene of the Neo-Atavist movement would grace our bedchamber.

“She looks a little like you, I think.”

Twilight was still musing upon the greatest erotic masterpiece of the twenty fourth century.

“I’m far too gracile to fill her luxurious bodice.” I pantomimed the act of supporting breasts significantly larger than my own.

“And she’s too light coloured,” Twilight said of the Inca maid in the painting, “it’s that look of innocent hunger I’m talking about. I’ve seen that look in your eyes.”

“He’s almost as big as you.” I bumped my hip against hers. “She’s got a lot to hunger for.”

Speaking of what a wife might hunger for, my panties were plastered uncomfortably to my crotch after indulging in my hunger for Twilight, bent over a toilet in a museum restroom. The sooner I could get home, cleaned up, and changed, the better.

My attention was on Twilight as I hurried, so I nearly ran into the woman who had come around the corner in front of me.

“Tangent?”

I recoiled a second time.

She was no less surprised than I – for a moment we simply stared.

Her eyes flickered to Twilight, taking in the subtilties of our body language, the nuanced energy between my husband and me. A woman in her line of work had to be able to read a relationship in the blink of an eye.

“Is she your…?” Twilight left the question hanging. I’d told her some of the woes of growing up as me.

“Yes. We’re going now.” I grabbed Twilight’s arm and pulled her the other direction.

And so our paths separated forev—

“Wait!” my mother cried out, “please.”

I stopped, but did not turn to face her.

“I’m on medication. I don’t hate males and obsess about order any more. And I got a nano-wired implant installed in my brain. I’m a different person—” she paused “—most of the time.”

For another moment I stood, frozen, deciding how to react. Deciding how I felt.

“Are you still…?”

“An expensive whore for the rich and the oligarchim filth?” she asked with sardonic amusement. “Yes. I don’t have to be insane to hate them.”

“Sleeping your way to the top.”

“I’m fucking my way to the top. I only sleep with men I can trust. That hasn’t happened in decades.”

My mother walked around to face us – her eyes widened when she saw wings folded on Twilight’s back.

“Are you an angel‽”

“Uh, n-no,” Twilight was startled by the question “I’m not from this world, but I’m no angel.”

“Please, sir,” she said to Twilight, “be good to my little boy. His mother was a monster.” Turning back to me she continued, “it’s okay if you’re like that, Tangent, as long as its what makes you happy and not just a reaction to how I mistreated you. That wouldn’t be right for you or him.”

Concerned about our well-being? Maybe she had changed – but clearly she could not see how I had.

I was wearing pants instead of a skirt and a baggy old-grey windbreaker against the chill weather – it hid the changes to my figure.

I relented enough to explain, “You got your wish finally, I’m a real girl now, just like you always wanted. You can call me Tanna.”

“You, a girl? You mock me,” she grated skeptically.

“Not I. It was magic. I have a period. I gave birth to my husband’s child.” I leaned closer to Twilight. “I bit through the cord with my teeth.”

“And the stump?” she demanded.

“Three of my own hairs, plaited, tied in a Lady’s Knot to stop the bleeding.”

“You’ve learned more art than you ever would have at my knee. It seems impossible.”

“Such things happen.”

“Did you do this?”

My mother turned to Twilight.

“Er, yes, it was a forbidden spell, but I did it and I’m pretty happy with the results.”

Aw, Twilight…

“I always avoided magic, when I was younger. I fucked a magician for a while. He was the kindest of my clients, but he was always showing up just when I was going to murder little Tangent. He scared me enough times that I stopped trying.”

She paused, realizing that she should be embarrassed to have admitted attempting to kill a little boy. But it was the simple truth. Cruel as she had been, mother had always been honest to a fault.

“I’m glad now, of course, that I failed. Are you pleased with the change, ‘Tanna’?”

“I am, Mother.”

“I’m sorry I did not accept you as you were born, but it’s not so bad being a woman.” Unguessable depths of experience dwelt in the almost-smile that lifted one corner of her mouth. “When may I meet my only grandchild?”

The unexpectedly casual mood was shattered - my blood ran cold at any risk of exposing Gloam to the abuse I had endured.

“I forbid it,” I snapped. “As difficult as it is, I will forgive you for my childhood. But if you ever try to contact my daughter behind my back I swear by the Lady Hel that I will kill you. Please know I am blooded.”

For a moment she was silent.

All of the pride and rage I remembered from childhood showed on her face; I would no longer cower before her.

I could see her fight against the darkness of our shared past.

She struggled.

And won.

“I understand.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “I will abide by your will, it’s all I can do to show my repentance. Can you truly forgive me?”

“I forgave the man who raped me, I can forgive you.”

She didn’t need to know that I struck him dead before reaching that clarity – I still expected her to cringe at the comparison.

She didn’t flinch.

“I’m surprised you don’t hate me even more than him.”

I was staring like a fish out of water as I realized I didn’t hate her.

There was pain in my memories, anger, lingering bitterness even, but, “I’ve got Twilight, and Gloam, and Isha,” I said, “and so many friends in my new home. I don’t have room in my heart for hate, Mommy.”

The childish pronoun slipped out of my mouth unexpectedly, startling us both. I had never dared to call her that before.

“I would dearly love to know your child. Maybe you will give me a chance to prove that I have changed, and then consent to a meeting.”

“We’re leaving soon, forever. Else, I would give you that chance. It would probably be better for you if you can pretend we did not meet today. I may gain some notoriety before I go.”

“A token?” she pled, “something to remind me that I have one daughter who rose above the evil of her childhood.”

Without thought or hesitation my hand rose to my throat. The locket I wore was a cheap trinket of mass produced platinum, but the pictures inside would be priceless to the tormented woman facing me. I snapped the mag-chain from my neck and dangled the locket before her; she snatched it up like a lifeline, like salvation.

Her hands shook as she fumbled it open. The pictures inside, Gloam on one side, me on the other, were almost a year out of date but that didn’t matter, she was drinking in the tiny images.

“She’s got a tint of her father’s colour.”

“Yep. And she’s super smart like her dad, too. Even more trouble than I was,” I couldn’t help bragging.

Mother placed her hand low on her belly. “I swear,” she said, “by the womb that carried you, child, this is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for—”

“Away, then. You don’t want to be interrogated about what I’m up to. You won’t be able to tell them what you don’t know, and it won’t go well for you.”

“Alright.” She stood there awkwardly. I realized what she wanted and released Twilight’s hand. Mother hugged me, clumsily, for the first and last time in my life. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry. I was broken, I am broken. If you’re even somewhat okay its more than I could dare to hope for.”

For a moment longer she held the embrace and then released me, putting her hands on my shoulders.

“Your father!” she said with a new urgency, “I found out whose sperm they used to impregnate me, girl—”

“I’ve met him,” I said, interrupting before she might speak a name it was unhealthy to be heard saying. Her eyes were wide at my revelation, but I didn’t let her draw the topic out. “He commanded me to face you. But now we must part.”

She hurried away, afraid to look back. Watching her leave I knew that a burden I had not even realized I bore, was now gone.

Twilight stood looking back and forth between us, resting her gaze on me when my mother was gone from sight.

“That smile…” Twilight said.

And then she wept.