The Elusive Facts of Life
The Elusive Facts of Life
Twilight Sparkle panted in frustration in the Carousel Boutique back room, shifting her gaze among the confused faces of her friends. "Doesn't everypony know? Stallions' gonads produce a particular cell, sperm, and a fluid carrier, semen, for them to swim in. Mares' ovaries produce egg cells that are periodically released down the fallopian tubes into the uterus. If the stallion's semen makes it up past a mare's cervix, and the mare's... in... heat..." She frowned.
I've never actually seen a mare in heat. And those illustrations seemed off. Those ponies' legs were very thin, and the faces quite angular...
"Okay, maybe that isn't how it works for us. So, Pinkie, would you tell me again your theory on how I got pregnant?"
"Sure! Remember last month?"
"I'm more than a month along, Pinkie."
Pinkie pouted. "So you know how all this works, do you?"
Twilight Sparkle tentatively crossed out another layer of her supposed knowledge. "Okay, so I guess you're referring to when I got sick, and I pushed myself trying to help in the hunt for that missing filly, and woke up having been dragged back by... whatshisname."
"Yup. Wouldn't you say that's a compromising position?"
"Well of course! But it really didn't seem like he'd done anything untoward to me, let alone penetrate me!" But of course if semen hasn't got anything to do with this, that's meaningless.
Rainbow Dash looked queasy. "You thought you had to get stabbed to get pregnant?"
For the first time that morning, Twilight managed a laugh. "Well, not exactly... see, the way the semen makes it up past the cervix is... would have been... appears not to have ever actually been... umm, well, setting aside the grammar..." Twilight Sparkle became flustered. She swallowed. "He, you know... sticks his wee-wee up your ya-ya!" she wailed.
She swallowed, and monitored the reactions. Their confusion and concern had intensified.
Applejack said, "Umm, Twilight, I'm not the most educated, so it could just be me, but I've never heard of those."
"Penis. Vagina. One goes into the other."
"Those too."
"What." Twilight Sparkle, perplexed, said, "Excuse me, could I have a look under your tail?"
Applejack backed up. "No!"
"Please?"
Rainbow Dash took off, hovered on her back, and spread her legs. "Will this do?" When Rarity buried her face under her foreleg, Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "Oh come on, it's not like there's really anything here to look at."
Twilight could, to her surprise, verify Rainbow Dash's disclaimer. Urethra, Anus. She re-checked, the other direction. Anus. Urethra. "That's enough, thanks." How did I never notice that I haven't got a vagina? Is it just me? She sat and curled her head down. The angle wasn't good enough...
She levitated over a mirror, ignoring Rarity's complaint. She put it down, afraid of what she'd find... and, as she'd feared, the view was similarly lacking in a particular feature that she had been expecting. I am not the mare I thought I was. And now that she thought back, it did seem odd that she would have never once seen a penis outside a book. The illustrations had been... well, they should have been noticeable. She hadn't really been looking, but still, she should have seen.
"But... but... where does the foal come out, then?"
Embarrassed pause. Rainbow Dash eventually said, "You poop her."
"That's disgusting!"
Rarity indignantly exclaimed, "Not half as disgusting as having to have a stallion stick himself into you to get the whole thing started!"
"But... but..." The energy left her. With resignation, she went on, "All right then. So, umm, Pinkie, you were saying?"
Pinkie resumed. "It sounds like you didn't say the words!"
"What words?"
"'Pinch of salt, lump of coal. I'm not ready for a foal.' You say it after you've been alone with stallion out of the family, especially if you were asleep or you were kissing."
Twilight Sparkle could not stop blinking. Rarity added, "Or rubbing horns."
As if it would help with Twilight Sparkle's confusion and incredulity, Fluttershy added, "If you think he might've said his words, then you better say it a few times."
"His words? What are they?"
The mares looked to each other awkwardly. Applejack said, "I can't say it. It just ain't right for a mare to say 'em."
Twilight Sparkle's heart was pounding. Everything she knew was wrong. "But you know them, right? Could you split it up, maybe?"
After a few seconds of nervous glancing, Pinkie began, "Drip of water..." Rarity continued, "Scent of oil. And yes, he does need to say it like 'oal'. For the rhyme, see." Then Pinkie blurted out the second line so quickly it was incomprehensible.
As the five rapidly and loudly repeated the mare's preventative chant several times, Twilight Sparkle facehoofed. "I get the idea. But girls, girls. Do you have any evidence that this works?"
Applejack said, "It's as real as the Pinkie Sense."
"But... it'd have to be magic! Earth ponies can't use magic!"
"Of course we can, darlin'! What, do you think when I kick a tree, the apples fall in the buckets on their own? That'd be violat'n the second law of thermodynamics!"
Everything went bright white, then dark.
Twilight woke with a start. "Oh thank Celestia, it was just a dream." She was still unsettled, though, and reached to her bedside table. Grabbing the receiver and pressing speed dial 2, she lay back in bed.
Her free hoof fell on her belly. Her slightly round, definitely-not-unoccupied belly. Panic.
Rarity groggily answered, "It's 3 AM."
"Rarity, I'm pregnant."
Pause.
"You woke me up for this? Of course you're pregnant. Everyone's pregnant."
"What, even the stallions?"
"What's a stallion?"
"We're parthenogenetic?"
Click.
Or hermaphroditic, I suppose. She hesitantly slid her hoof down and ran her grips over the area. No, not hermaphroditic. Phew.
A glow preceded Celestia's arrival.
Twilight crawled out of bed and supplicated.
"Stand up and look at me." The voice was iron, every syllable accented.
Twilight crawled upright, but took a moment to actually face the giant pony. The princess' floating 'hair' was nearly the only recognizable part - the hugely bulging belly looked awkward, and her face was barely-restrained fury. As she looked into Twilight Sparkle's eyes, she calmed. The fury fell to mere anger, which was overwhelmed by sadness.
"This has to stop."
"Yes, your majesty."
"Rewriting the universe three times?"
"But I didn't..."
"Who's your brother?"
"Shining... wait. How can I have a brother?"
"See? You mustn't rewrite the universe in a panic. You'll generate inconsistencies. This last time your changes were anything but surgical. Claws? Telephones?" The princess wearily sat on the foot of Twilight's bed. "I knew ever since the day you got your cutie mark you had terrible potential. And until yesterday, it remained... unrealized."
Twilight Sparkle bowed her head again. "I'm sorry, princess. I'll do my best to put it back."
"We'd best do it together. You can still only access the full extent of your power when you are in a panic." She drew Twilight to sit next to her. "To go back, you will need to understand. What were you running from this last time?"
"Not having bothered to learn basic reproduction properly?"
"No, because you didn't fix that, did you?"
Twilight bowed her head. "Then I don't know."
Celestia was clearly disappointed. "This change removed the last traces of responsibility. Everyone's born pregnant with all the children they'll ever have, so how could you possibly be blamed for your situation? I hope you see why I had to step in now, even if you'd done it seamlessly."
Twilight Sparkle closed her eyes. "If I could remove the last traces of my responsibility, why couldn't I just... make it go away?"
Celestia pushed up Twilight's chin, turned and raised it. Twilight reopened her eyes, and looked into Celestia's. "Because you don't want to. Just like you didn't want to forget the way things 'really' worked, back in the old world."
Twilight Sparkle looked down to her belly.
"You don't need to rewrite the universe to get rid of an unwanted embryo, Twilight. You knew that when it was still early enough. You knew that, and that wasn't the change you wanted to make. What you wanted different was the circumstances. The history."
Celestia put a wing around Twilight's shoulders. "I'll let you keep the first change, that you were drunk. And you'd remember it that way. That's reasonable enough."
Twilight smiled weakly. She'd deal with it, whatever had happened. "No, princess. I'll face it as it actually happened, now."
Princess Celestia nodded, and they got to work.
Author's Note
It came to me in a dream, and I wrote it in 40 minutes. I do not expect it's everyone's cup of tea, to say the least.
Edited to make the last forms not quasi-human. It was excessive. Also, clarified Celestia's emotional state.