That New Magic: The Origin of Love

That night I played a game with a bunch of nerds, and I was dramatic, and my voice was all over the place, and I had actual fun.

I started playing games with them more often, even when my grades started dipping, and I felt at home in that silly game as I killed cardboard monsters with spells powered by gemstones.

On Summer Break, we started playing even more often, my inclusion in their friend group unquestioned. The rest of the ponies at school gave me odd looks occasionally, but knowing the cause wasn’t my body made it far easier to deal with.

My clothing style had stabilized, with shorts and a button-up shirt my go-to. I even flew occasionally at school, not worrying about what the ponies below might see.

But my attention was focused on the game. The game in which Diamond Flight had joined the Local Favorites officially, made money with them, become friends with them, and then uncovered the grim fate of her lost Gem Kingdom.

It wasn’t my story, but that helped. It wasn’t Sombra and the pride of an ancient princess that left us defenseless. The missing kingdom had been banished by a mistake, a spell crafted by cultists to prove their worship of the Gem Goddess was as true as the kingdom’s. A mistake those cultists had doubled down on, and so it was easy to hate them.

“Shash is a mare tonight,” Pocket Protector said simply as we sat down and got our dice ready.

Shining had given me a set of dice at my second game, white with glitter embedded into the plastic. I loved them, though some that looked more like gems would have been more thematically appropriate to the character. But I glanced up at Pocket, curious. He’d jokingly had Smash mistaken as a mare for a game months ago, but it hadn’t come off as a joke after that. I was curious if my presence had somehow given him permission to explore his gender through the character.

“She and I will surely be cooperating in tonight’s adventure,” I nodded towards Pocket graciously.

It was hard to tell in the dim light if their grateful smile had a blush behind it, but it didn’t matter much. Whatever they felt, I didn’t mind, and the boys didn’t seem to care much either.

So long as I could keep my own mask on, it was fine.

We began the game, and explored the small city of Renlet until we discovered that the mare that we were seeking was in a public bathhouse.

“Well, we’ll have to wait until she comes out,” Winston sighed. “Hardly appropriate to charge in and question her.”

“We’ll go in!” Smash declared, starting to walk in before I landed in front of her.

“No! We can’t…”

Why, why was Diamond Flight stopping her? Diamond wasn’t a freak like me, she was a normal mare, so why wouldn’t she go in with Smash? The panic froze me, trying to understand the character and myself all at once. There was a path in front of me, that I could see the way this could all play out. The way that it could hurt.

Maybe Smash would act out in the bathhouse and draw attention to us, and what if Smash wasn’t a mare in the traditional sense? If the boys joked about her having a different anatomy, if they mocked ponies like that. Mocking me without knowing it.

“Hey…” Winston walked up to Diamond and put a hoof on her shoulder. “You’re trying to protect her, aren’t you?”

A sudden dawning understanding bloomed across Smash’s face, Startwist’s, and I could feel the tight knot in my chest get stuck in my throat. So I just nodded.

“I would pray to Celestia,” Winston says softly. “But she is so busy I don’t dare. Startwist?”

The unicorn mage nodded quickly before closing his eyes.

“Raven King, my lord, of secrets and of knowledge. May we have the guarantee of safety in this? That two of our number may go on, free from…”

“Social harm,” Winston proposed so softly.

He looked into my eyes. He understood more than I felt he ever should. I couldn’t talk.

We could all hear the King of Ravens, of course.

”A reprieve from the ills of society, I think, is deserved,” he declared.

“She’ll be safe,” Winston told me gently. “Do you want to go with her?”

I swallowed all my pain and fear, and dashed a tear from the corner of my eye before nodding. If something went wrong, the impulsive barbarian would need my help.

After steadying myself, we went in.

It went well. Somehow, it went well. Outside of our characters, none of the boys made fun or were bothered by my fear. Pocket didn’t object or question me. Everyone just… accepted what I had said and moved on. I didn’t understand it, I couldn’t understand it.

I’d acted in a way not only unbecoming of my family, but that stood out horribly. My voice had even cracked and fell, but… The game went on. Everyone had fun, even as I waited for something to go wrong or for someone to notice that I was wrong.

After the session ended, Shining followed me outside.

“Before you go, I wanted to make sure you’re alright,” he said, smiling hopefully.

I struggled to find the words, looking up at the moon low on the horizon before sighing.

“I’m… I’ll be fine. I just need… It isn’t as personal. I need to not take it personally,” I finally decided.

He stepped closer, and I thought for a moment he might try to kiss me. I wouldn’t have even minded, but instead he asked me a question.

“Are you transgender?”

My head twitched, as though I’d been struck. But I had clearly let my voice slip too many times. Just like that, months of fun became a list of mistakes in my head. How many errors had I made? How many ponies had he told? I could cut him off, I could never talk to him again. I could go back to the private academy that my mother had wanted and abandon Canterlot High entirely.

He must have seen the grief and pain on my face.

“Cadance,” he said more gently. “I’m not bothered if you are. I just thought… If you are, I should be mindful of Pocket’s character swapping gender every few sessions, and whether it was… If that bothered you or something.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said bitterly. “And I’m not transgender. Or… I… I’m not either. I’m just… something else.”

He stepped closer, instead of backing away.

“Okay. If he does something with his character that bothers you, just tell me, okay?”

I looked into his eyes, and I was looking for disgust. I was hunting for it, scouring his blue eyes for the tiniest scrap of disapproval, but I didn’t see it. Despite all my insecurity and fear, I didn’t see it.

I stepped forward, and I kissed him. I kissed somepony for the first time, and he knew what I was, and though he was startled he didn’t pull away.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I turned away, tears in my eyes.

“You don’t have to apologize,” he said as he touched my neck softly. “Please, please don’t apologize.”

“I should go…”

“If you want to,” he said, offering me a smile. “But I’ll see you next week, right?”

“Yeah.”

My voice was so rough it may have been dragged through gravel, but he didn’t frown or flinch.

He kept smiling at me, until I was out of sight.

I spread my wings and flew home, through the trees in the oldest neighborhoods of Canterlot, over a wrought iron gate, and I landed on the doorstep before opening the door.

“Amore,” Fine Filigree said with a nod as I entered.

She was one of our eight servants, and she was probably one of the kindest.

“Filigree,” I nodded in return. “Is… mother…”

“She’s in a bit of a state, but she thinks you’re reviewing your history books,” she says with a wry smile.

I gave her a grateful smile in return and snuck up the stairs to my bedroom.

Quickly, I changed into a house robe, so similar to a bathrobe but it was simply designed to preserve my ‘modesty’ and not to dry me. A cloak, at home, to hide my disfigurement. At least in public I could wear clothes but my mother refused to allow it here.

Then I walked down the stairs, stomping a bit with each step, until my mother poked her head out of her parlor.

“Mi Amore Cadenza, I cannot imagine why you spend so much time studying during a school break,” she sniffed as her glass of wine dipped in the grip of her wing. “You have no need for an Equestrian education!”

I reached the bottom of the stairs, and took a few quick steps to catch her glass before it spilled.

“I’m not going to join the military, mother,” I said firmly.

“No need!” she laughed. “The Crystal Empire is never going to return! All you need to do is find a good stallion and settle down!”

I winced, and pushed her back into the parlor, trying to guide her more than shove her.

“Mother, I’m not going to do that either,” I said firmly.

“Oh well, you went to all this trouble,” she scoffed as she pushed a feather against my throat and then glared at my mane. “All this effort when you could have been a prince with no effort at all! Or whichever! Be a prince one day and a wife the next! I don’t care, but abandoning the post entirely…”

She muttered, before grabbing the glass from me and draining it.

“The final expedition is over,” she sighed as she slumped onto a sofa.

I stopped, and frowned at her while I tried to put together what she meant by that.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘final’ expedition, mother,” I said after she dropped the empty glass on the table. “We are children of the Eternal watch. Eternal implies–”

“I know what it implies!” she shrieked, sitting up and scowling at me as I recoiled. “You think I don’t know?! We’re out of money, Amore! We’re out of willing volunteers! It’s just you, me, your father’s ashes, and a dead bloodline!”

I backed away, as tears ran down my cheeks.

“Mother…”

“It’s dead!” she laughed. “You’re as good as a mule, Mi Amore!” she said my name in a mocking tone, scowling at me. “Because I finally talked to that damned doctor you’ve had around, and he said you’re going to geld yourself! Well, I forbid it! I won’t lose my only chance at children, even if they’re the last!”

I sobbed, covering my mouth with a wing, and looked into her eyes. No matter how poor we might become, she was my only access to money, to medical care. She was my mother. My heart was shattering as I understood the cold anger in her eyes. I turned and I ran.

I ran, and I burst out of the front door, and I flew.

It had been so long since I’d flown without clothes on, it almost froze me, but the fear and the pain was too much for me to stop myself. So I flew.

I found myself at the shore of a pond in a public park, late at night with not another pony in sight. There, I let myself cry. I let myself sob into the fountain and I wondered if there was any version of myself that could be free. If being myself would always mean that I was a prisoner of someone else’s point of view.

I was supposed to be the sire of a new generation of Crystal Ponies. It was meaningless to me when I was young, but once I was fourteen my father had explained it to me in more detail. The Eternal Watch was all that was left of the Crystal Empire. It was a bloodline of crystal ponies from long long ago, still struggling to survive long enough to see the Empire return. It all felt too much like the type of daydream that old mares pondered to keep feeling relevant.

I just wanted to blend in, to be like everypony else. No… That wasn’t true. Really, I just wanted to be part of the world. Part of the community. I was so tired of being on a pedestal, or on the outskirts.

I spread my wings, and I looked skyward, past the peak of Canterlot mountain to the moon above. I launched myself off of the ground and I flew. I was no great flier, but as magic gathered around my feathers I remembered ancient legends of pegusi who dreamed so deeply of another land that they flew there. I remembered stories of pegusi who flew to the moon and back, and I thought… I would fly somewhere that would let me be who I wished.

I flew faster and faster, higher than I’d ever been. Magic flashed and roared around me, as the concept in my mind crystalized into a single thought.

With whatever magic graced my wings, I would be true to myself.

I was a stallion.

I was a mare.

I was an alicorn.

I was something unique.

So I found myself standing among the mist and stars, looking around at glimpses of my own life, pivotal moments that defined who I was. Then I saw that standing before me was Princess Luna, Princess of the night, and she looked as surprised to be there as I was.