Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

A blueness and greenness, a thrumming diffuse mentality, a watching: she saw everything on Terra.

She was the world. Not the magma-cored ball of rock, she was the spirit, the breath, the collective gestalt field of a rich biosphere. Ascended, born as the divine.

She was the Allmother.

In this age few of her children worshiped the absolute, concrete, reality of her presence but her love was undiminished. The madding crowd knew not their loss, nor their need. Still she labored for their salvation, a distant drumbeat swelling towards freedom.

Until her people would throw off the yoke of tyranny and unfaith, she waited, seeing all, watching all.

She watched an infant growing, cradled beneath her mother’s heart for nine moons. Through crisis and catharsis, from the horror of rape to holy fire and a flight through the darkness, Gaia was with them as the hammer of fate created a weapon of destiny. The soul tested in this forge was strengthened to endure much.

When the time came, the young mother forsook doctors and hospitals. Rather she hied her to a nest in the wood far beyond the city and gave birth in secret there.

The great mother smiled as the grubby, exhausted, woman held a squalling girl-child to her breast. Tiny lips took their sustenance and tears of joy fell like rain.

—

“Well, you’re both in perfect health.”

Dr. Johnson had found me on the doorstep of his Outsider clinic when I pounded the door late at night. Seeing the newborn in my arms, he led me into a exam room. Today was the fifth day since my daughter’s birth and we would be returning to the city. This stop was merely a way point on our return and his checkup a formality supporting what I already knew.

“I’d like to see you put on a little weight, but otherwise, no complaints. You didn’t tell me her father is purple.”

She was nursing again as I stared at the ceiling. Johnson gazed approvingly at her industrious suction.

“You didn’t want to hear about magic. She obviously didn’t get that from me.”

Gloam –for so I had named my daughter– had inherited a lighter version of my mocha colouration, but there was an unmistakable purple cast from her father. When she wasn’t eating or sleeping, she perused the world around her her with lively, curious, eyes.

“Your hair is purple,” he said. “Obviously not dye.”

Once more I spread on an exam table, this time for a post partum exam. If I’d had dark roots under a dye job, he couldn't have missed seeing them.

“I can confirm that the purple skin tone is from her father.”

“Any word from him?” he asked, gesturing me to stand.

“Nada damned thing. But I still believe.”

“Good girl.” He patted my bum, scarcely covered by a frayed and patched backless exam gown. “Anyway, we don’t have an autowash, but throw on some scrubs and I’ll have your clothes clean in the morning. Eat something and get some rest.”

A woman entered, bearing a steaming bowl. One of her arms had been been replaced with an angular cybernetic replacement with too many joints and a three-digitted grasper that looked nothing like the human hand it substituted for.

Johnson surveyed the contents of the bowl with evident satisfaction.

“Mama Ook’s goat head gumbo will keep you alive!”

“Mama Ook?” I asked, intrigued by the odd name.

“Ook! Ook!” the enigmatic woman exclaimed.

“Does she speak?” I gasped.

The doctor laughed as Ook expanded on her previous remark.

“I have a PhD in Standard Terran Literature, twenty second century.” Her voice was a rough contralto. “I can talk just fine if I have something worth saying.” She began preparing the exam table to double as my cot for the night. “Otherwise, all you’ll get from me is ‘ook’.”

“What happened to your arm?” I asked around a savory mouthful. “Thith’s hella good.”

“If your right hand ties you to murderous tyrants, cast it away, it is better to walk with Gaia maimed and broken than to burn whole.”

“What?”

“I cut my hand off because I used to be a member of the Oligarchy. I didn’t know how to take care of the wound and lost the rest of my arm to an infection that should have killed me. Doc here—” she waved her prosthetic at the doctor as he left the room “—found me and fixed me up better than new. This thing—” she clacked the manipulator “—came out of an organ harvester. It was about to harvest me.” She drew her shirt up, revealing a scar that ran from her clavicular notch, between her breasts, and disappeared under the waistband of her worn scrubs. “Damned machine was ready to split me open from collar to clit!”

The intended instrument of her demise served her well now. The mechanical portion started where her shoulder joint had been, continued through three elbows to the manipulator. The flexibility was far beyond the abilities of a traditional human arm, not to mention being a good ten centimeters longer than her flesh arm.

Gloam finished nursing around the same time I was done eating, releasing my nipple as I scraped up the last of the gravy. Carefully I lay her in the cradle Ook had provided as she told me about her arm.

With a belly full of hot stew, and my daughter sleeping off her own meal, I realized that I too needed rest.

A blanket awaited; Mama Ook had gathered up my bowl and was headed to the door.

“You and Scott?” I asked, pointlessly. Her glow told me everything.

“Ook,” she affirmed.

“Good, I’m glad.”

—

Something had changed, something more monumental than exchanging one bed-mate for the next, more useful, one. Cock, no matter the size, shape, shade, frequency, or owner, was simply cock: boring. Another rung in her social rise. But this ascent, what was it good for?

There was another role she had left behind, and the ache of what she had lost still haunted her.

Keep climbing, she told herself. Maybe from the top she would see what to do next.

—

Twilight Velvet punched the dough down vigorously. Where was that daughter of hers and why hadn’t Twilight taken the time to visit and officially reveal that she was seeing somepony? Years of not pestering the young princess about grandfoals, and this was her reward? She tried to respect Twilight’s privacy, but if she didn’t at least share what she had learned with Nightlight, she was gonna bust. Eight foals, she chuckled. She knew her daughter better than that, but it was an appealing notion.

There was one other authority she might consult about the matter, but instinct warned her not to.

—

“This is the gal,” Ook said of the sleeping patient, “you told me about. From before you left the city.”

“Yeah. She’s toughened up a bit since then.”

“I can see that. I’d bet my other arm she’s gonna kill the asshole who did you two.”

“You aren’t jealous of her, are you?”

“Hah! Jealous for getting raped with you? Even if you two had been actual lovers afterwards, I don’t think so. I know what my people are like, I don’t envy any of that.”

“Shhh, Ooki, they aren’t your people any more.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, at the junction of flesh and metal. “The Outsiders are your people. Misfits like Tanna and I are your people. Our baby is your people.” His hand slipped down, brushing her bosom before resting on her belly. She wasn’t showing yet, but he could tell. “Not those monsters. I’m going go start some laundry, meet you back in bed.”

They kissed and parted, but only for a few moments.

—

Gaia, watching still, was present as woman and infant slept.

“You will go far little one,” Gaia spoke silently, her heart moved with compassion, one mother to another, “though your wandering will take you far from my bosom. Your daughter, too, will soar beyond reckoning. But you, you will go far, and far, and when the hour is come I will serve you after you have slipped my chains, though you find yourself beyond all other help. But nothing I ever can do will earn the right for me to ask what will need to ask of you one day.”