In a sunlit paradise, dreaming of a world that never can be.
"Them's the rules."
"Why?"
"Because them's the rules, boy, that's all there is to it."
Daliér rolled his eyes and dumped another load of cut grass from his barrow into the waiting compost heap. He tugged a fork from the side of the heap and set about carefully shifting the pile, bringing the latest addition into a neat curl across the top, then just as carefully spat the fork back into its customary place at the side of the compost bins.
"That doesn't answer the question dad," he said quietly as he turned to face his father, Slowpoke, who had run these gardens for longer than Daliér had lived. The old donkey shrugged and settled back on his bench another few inches.
"Ain't no other answer but that'un," Slowpoke said, and then pushed a fat old pipe into his mouth. Daliér took a long breath and let it out slowly through his nose. He turned to sit on the bench, facing the great south garden of Lachrimose House and the solid grey walls of the manor that watched over it. With the sun overhead, there was little shade to be found this far out in the gardens, aside from a little copse of acacia trees and the greenhouse veranda on which Daliér so dearly wished he could be sitting. At least he didn't have any more work to do today, unless the mistresses of the house decided otherwise.
His father puffed on his pipe and nodded slowly to himself at some idle thought, mumbling under his breath as he did. Sometimes Daliér could make out the odd word. Once even a whole sentence, something about an old lover, whoever that might have been. A name may have been mentioned, but the thought of Slowpoke doing anything like that was not something Daliér wanted to think about, and so he had quickly banished memory of it from his mind.
"Them's the rules," Slowpoke said finally. He tugged at his pipe and, finding it had gone out, carefully withdrew it from his mouth and set about refilling the bowl with another gobbet of that foul brown muck he claimed was tobacco.
They'd had the same conversation nearly every single day since Daliér had started working at Lachrimose. The same stupid conversation with the same stupid answer, but he couldn't stop himself asking the same question that always started it. The same question that had haunted him the moment he'd laid eyes on her.
"So—"
"Because them's the rules and that's all there is to it, Dal. Askin' again won't change the bloody things."
"Nopony has ever explained these rules to me, dad."
Slowpoke paused half way through tamping his pipe and sniffed. He put the pipe back in his mouth but made no move to light it. "Yer a mule, Dal."
"I think I'm aware of that, dad. And you're a donkey. And she's a pony and mum was a pony. What difference does it make?"
"All the difference. Them's the rules."
"You keep talking about these rules! Nopony has ever showed me these rules!"
"Aye. Because nopony ever wrote em down is why, 'cause they ain't laws. Laws is just words on paper, any fool can write words an' say it's laws. Rules is different." The pipe was pulled free as Slowpoke examined it again. "Laws is things that get us in trouble. Rules is things that keeps us out of trouble."
"That's just semantics, dad. Besides, there aren't any laws against it. If there were you wouldn't have... well, wouldn't have had me I suppose."
"Aye."
Daliér waited for more from the old donkey but Slowpoke just turned back to tamping his pipe and mumbling. His mouth had turned down just a fraction at the mention of Daliér's mother.
"I expect this is where you tell me I was a mistake. That's usually how these things go isn't it?"
"No lad. You was born out of love. I loved your mother an' she loved me or it wouldn't have happened." He sniffed and chewed on his pipe for a while then tugged a long match free of his jacket and held it up for careful examination. "Thing is, our love made you a mule."
"So? Lots of other places are stuffed to the rafters with mules and don't see any problem with it. Why's it so bad to be a mule?"
"Lots of other places ain't here lad."
"You're giving me a real complex, you know that?"
"Aye, that educatin' she 'sisted on 'as done you no favours either," Slowpoke grumbled. He struck the match and let it flare, its flames almost hidden in the bright sunlight, before stuffing the whole thing into the bowl of his pipe and taking a deep draw. The tobacco crackled and sputtered under his breath. Lungs like bellows somepony had said once. Apparently it was his lifetime of constant talking that did it.
"I still don't see why—"
"Because it keeps you safe you lump-headed idiot," Slowpoke growled. He puffed at his pipe a few more times, lips pursing and puckering as he tried to hide his frustration at his son. He had never had a particularly good poker face.
"Keeps me safe from what?"
Slowpoke pulled the pipe from his mouth again and stared into the bowl. After a moment's careful examination he sneered and tutted. It had gone out.
"Politics," he said quietly as he tamped at the tobacco again.
"Politics be damned, dad. I love her."
"Oh no you don't, Dal." The pipe clunked as Slowpoke set it down. It was a rare event for Daliér to see the pipe go down like that. It usually meant bad things. "You don't love her at all, you love a fantasy you've made up about her. She'd never even talk to the likes of you an' you know it. Some fancy unicorn bint who hangs around with princesses and runs off saving the world talkin' to a donkey or his thick-headed mule son for anythin' other than to order em around? You are havin' a laugh, son. An' anyway, even if she did turn her eye to you an' fell croup over crest it'd not make a blind bit of difference."
"But—"
"But me no buts, Dal. She couldn't touch you even if she wanted. Them's the rules." He picked up the pipe and started to work on it again. "Just leads to heartache and politics. Your mother, Celestia bless her soul, she'd lived politics her whole life an' she figured she could ride it out, but she couldn't. Chins did wag and scandals did brew an all we were doin' was rollin' around in the greenhouses now and then. When you came along, well, that changed everythin'. It were either end it or see her whole life blown apart."
"But if she loved you—"
"She 'ad a daughter too, y'know. Three of 'em in fact, by her last boy, Celestia rest his poor soul."
The pipe rested in Slowpoke's mouth but his work on it had been abandoned again as he stared at the walls of Lachrimose House. He tapped his forehooves on the bench, grumbling under his breath again until he spoke up.
"She told me once that she'd done some nasty, horrible things in her life. Politics it all was. When she were younger she'd had pony's lives torn apart because they got in her way or just because she could. She'd even married one of her daughters off just to get a bigger title for her descendents but it never worked out that way, 'an I reckon that might be when she realised it were all a waste of her time. Anyway that's about when she met me. She was lookin' for somethin' to idle away the time I s'pose, an' I was just a pluggin' duncan with all that time on his hooves and an easy smile. T'weren't nothin' but relaxation at first for her, aye, but I loved her all the same, and in the end she loved me too."
A blackbird settled in the branches of a nearby tree and began singing. The tune was familiar, Daliér thought, like something she might sing. He hummed along with it for a few bars and wondered if she was singing as well somewhere. "I'm not sure what this has to do with it all, dad. You make it sound like she was pretty heartless."
"Aye. She could be at times, but not this time." The pipe wobbled. A match flared as Slowpoke sought to light it again. "A mule in a family like hers means things. She would have been okay by herself, she were old enough to stop carin, by then, otherwise she wouldn't have done all that to me in the greenhouses."
The old donkey paused a moment, a lopsided smile on his face as his mind retreated into memory whilst Daliér tried not to think about some of the more unusual stains on the greenhouse tables. Slowpoke shook his head a short second later.
"Aye, well, point is it weren't her. It were them daughters. Havin' a donkey as a lover weren't a thing even then, but if she foaled a mule, well, that meant ponies'd start wonderin' how much it had gone on in the past. These thoroughbreds is all about their bloodlines, see. If they had donkey in em," and here he paused to chuckle as he took the pipe from his mouth, "they 'ad to say so. As long as they did say so it were all fine, but if they was even suspected of lyin' about it... well it don't bear thinkin' about how political it'd get."
Slowpoke's pipe was forgotten now, abandoned on the bench on its side. A little of the tobacco had leaked out and smoldered gently on the bare wooden seat. Slowpoke himself had turned his face to the ground, forelegs hanging limp at his sides.
"You know what ostracised means, Dal?"
"Yes. It's from the ancient Nephaeleoni word ostrakizein, related to—"
"Figured you might know all that rubbish." Slowpoke sucked at his teeth and grumbled something likely obscene. "That's what they'd do, she said. Ostracise her fillies. Turn em out of their homes, take everythin' they had, turn em into the poorest of the poor. Toss em to the donkeys she said they'd do, and then pardoned my pardon for hearin, it so."
"That's awful!"
"Aye. An' I couldn't let em do that. It'd break her heart it would. So... when you were born, I told her pretty certain to pretend we'd never been together an then I took you off and raised you alone. To her very dying day she did it too."
"I didn't know."
"Course you didn't Dal, you bloody great nit, seein' as I never told you."
"I still don't see what this has to do with her."
"Everythin', Dal. Everythin' on account of her ladyship up in the house was Ceru's youngest. That filly you've been lustin' after? She's practic'ly your cousin."
"What? Dad, why—are you kidding me? I'm..." Daliér held up his hooves and stared at them. He was, what, some sort of noble bastard now? "All these years I had a sister?"
"Well, aye," Slowpoke replied, the two short syllables dripping with his reluctance.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Slowpoke seemed to shrink away then, becoming every inch the old donkey Daliér had never quite wanted to admit he was. Worn out. Old. "I didn't want you to know, Dal. It never does to know, not with a thing like this."
"But why? Dad, this changes, well, everything! I'm a—"
"Mule, Dal." Slowpoke's hooves thudded against the dirt as he slid from the bench. "Yer a mule. Neither one thing nor t'other an' that counts for a lot round these parts. Mules ain't a pony an' they ain't a donkey. For a pony like her ladyship to admit you was her brother'd bring nothin' but shame and penury. And that filly of yours, why she'd be brought so low even Celestia herself could do nothing to raise her up again."
"You're saying I could never be with her."
"Aye, because of what it'd do to her and her family as much as anythin'. A donkey'd be bad enough, though leastways they can tolerate one like they did with me. A mule?" Slowpoke shook his head. "You're a handsome lad, Dal, but to that lot you'll never be nothin' but ugly and shameful. It ain't your fault an' it ain't theirs either, they just don't know any better."
"But she seemed so kind."
"Aye lad, she is kind, an' I bet livin' out in the sticks so long will 'ave give her a better view of it, but it don't change none even if she were a saint. Round these parts ponies ain't for mules to love. Them's the rules. A pony don't break the rules an' neither does a mule."
Abruptly he turned away to potter off down the garden, leaving Daliér alone on the bench. For a while he just sat there, staring at nothing in particular until his eyes came to rest on the great windows of the house. On a particular window where he knew she would be watching the garden sooner or later. She always did when she came to visit, always the same intensely curious set to her eyes as if she were trying to dissect and understand everything in front of her. Always the same smile when she saw him looking at her.
Perhaps he'd fooled himself into thinking that smile was meant for him alone. Maybe it was just kindness and not interest as he'd secretly hoped.
He sighed. "I'm an idiot."
"No lad," Slowpoke responded as he trotted back up the path, though trot wasn't really the best way to describe the loping amble his father employed to get around these days. He was smiling just a little, a sad sort of smile that he normally reserved for those times when he had to prune back a particularly rambunctious vine. His hoof reached out to grab the pipe from the bench beside Daliér, and then abruptly diverted to pat the young mule's shoulder. "You're a lot of things but you ain't stupid. Just hopeful."
"If what you said was true—"
"Dal, I'm just an old donkey set in his ways." Slowpoke tapped his pipe out against the bench and tucked it away in his jacket. He patted Daliér's shoulder again. "Don't take it to heart. Besides, plenty more mares around and abouts."
"But they aren't her."
"Aye. They'll be their own selves," Slowpoke replied. "An' they won't be some snooty unicorn neither. Now come on, her ladyship says we 'ave to go an' see to the mess young Guiding has made of the primroses again. Heavens and Celestia save us from young and curious fillies."
He smiled and then looked up at the sky.
"Life goes on, Dal. Best you can do is go on with it."
Slowpoke turned and began the long trek toward the flower beds on the far side of the garden. Daliér looked toward the house as he followed his father, his eyes again coming to rest on the window. She was there, smiling as always, her brightly striped mane still in that cute cut she always wore and her lavender coat shining in the sun. A blue pegasus and another pale green unicorn stood with her. They weren't looking at the garden this time but at one another, lost in some deep discussion about whatever. Lost in each other's eyes it almost seemed, unless it was just his imagination.
But then, hadn't it all been his imagination?
Just before he looked away again she turned. For a moment their eyes met; she smiled at him again and he raised a hoof in greeting. The unicorn he had thought his heart's desire mirrored the gesture and nodded, but already her attention had returned to the mares at her side.
With the sun blazing on his back, Daliér turned away from the dream that could never be and sloped toward the mundane reality of his life.
