9: Families, Feels, and Failings
We had finished eating and had gathered our bags and gotten up to leave when my phone rang. It was a special ringtone, which explained why the filter hadn’t directed it to voicemail. That ringtone, a clip from ‘Mercy’ by a Welsh singer called Duffy, was reserved for one person: My big sister, Mercedes. I pulled my phone out and shouldered the door open as I answered.
“Hey, Mercy. What’s up?”
“I should be asking you that! Have you seen your Facebook page?”
I only really used it to follow what friends and family who did were up to, and checking for new photos of Mercy’s twins had been the last thing on my mind after Twilight appeared.
“No, is there a problem?”
Adjusting my bags, I glanced at Twilight, who was listening curiously. I led her a short ways down the sidewalk and put my back to the building so we wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. I let the overnight bag’s shoulder strap slide off my arm and set it down next to me, but the smaller laptop tote stayed securely at my side.
“Case, there’s a ton of people posting comments to you, and tagging you in pictures… Really crazy pictures! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Mercy, I’m fine. It’s, uh, nothing to worry about.”
“Don’t give me that! There are videos all over the place. In few of them you can hear your name. And then you and whatever that thing is just vanish!”
“Look, I’m fine, but I’m a little busy right now, and trying to avoid attention…”
I could hear her sigh. “Casey… I’m worried. Do you have any idea how many views these things are getting?! Apparently people linked some of these on a fansite for some cartoon and they’re treating it like the second coming of Christ. The comments sections are flooded with them!”
“Ugh, I can imagine.”
“I doubt your Facebook page is the only thing they’ve found. I want to know what’s going on. I want to help.”
“What’s going on is a bit hard to explain… hard to believe, really.”
“I’m your sister! Since when do I not trust you?”
“Would you believe it if I told you first contact with real aliens involved fictional characters right out of your favorite Star Trek episode? And this is worse.”
“Because it’s some cartoon pony? You’re not joking, are you?”
“Magic cartoon pony. Except not so cartoony. Do I sound like I’m joking?”
“No… you sound pretty stressed. What happened to it? Where are you now? I hear traffic…”
“Well, I figured my apartment would get… visitors… of various sorts, so we went out to get something to eat, get her some clothes, and find a place to lie low while —”
“Wait, ‘we’? As in, you and the purple horse? In public?”
I winced. “Not exactly. Remember when I said ‘hard to believe’ and ‘magic’?”
“…And you said ‘clothes’, too. You realize you’re making no sense at all, right? This is not a pair of Vulcan ears you can cover with a cap or a headband! Wait, is it some kind of shapeshifter? Did it pick a cartoon character so it would seem less threatening? Case, what if it’s tricking you?! Do you have any idea what this thing really wants?”
I rolled my eyes. “Have you considered that ‘it’ might be able to hear what you’re saying, Mercy?” Twilight couldn’t understand my sister’s half of the conversation directly, even if she could hear it clearly, but I’d been mentally passing along the gist of it. Twilight was wearing an odd expression mixing concern with amusement, and covering her mouth with her hand. “I’m not sure if she’s laughing or crying here…”
Mercy cursed under her breath. “Umm, let me talk to… her?”
“That wouldn’t work very well, she doesn’t speak English.”
“You’re confusing me on purpose, aren’t you.”
I chuckled. “Sorry. Imagine a ‘Universal Translator’ that requires a touch-range spell to function.”
“So, I guess that explains part of what happened in those videos, am I right? Suddenly acting like you were having a conversation?”
“You got it.”
“Okay, look, Casey… Can you put your phone on video call? I’d feel a lot better if I could see that you’re alright.”
I glanced at Twilight and gave her a quick, silent explanation. “That okay with you?”
She nodded. “I don’t mind, if you don’t think it’s a problem.” She had set her bags down on the sidewalk as well, I noticed, except for the magic purse that had been her saddlebags.
“Okay, Mercy, just a moment.” After looking around to make sure there was still nobody close enough to overhear, I switched to speaker-phone mode and enabled video, holding the phone out a little so we’d both be visible. Mercy’s green eyes, long red hair, and freckled features popped up on the screen a moment later, her bedroom visible behind her. She looked surprised, staring at my face.
“Please tell me that’s just make-up.”
“Oh, right. It’s an illusion. We both needed a disguise, I might’ve been recognized too.”
Twilight was peering curiously at the screen, and raised her hand for a cautious little wave. “Hello?”
“That was ‘hello’,” I repeated in English. “I guess introductions are in order. Ishanna, this is my sister, Mercedes Williams. Mercy, you can call her ‘Ishanna Leuss’ for now. I’ll give you the details later, I can’t really be sure we won’t be overheard out here.”
“Come to my house,” Mercy told me.
“What? You’re almost an hour away. And what about the girls and Steve?”
“What about them? You keep telling me she isn’t a danger to you, right? If you wouldn’t trust her around my family, how can I believe that?”
“It’s not her I’m worried about! You said it yourself, people are looking for me. I don’t want to risk leading them to you.”
“Maybe so, but they’re not looking for us.”
“You can’t be sure they won’t connect me to you, Mercy!”
“If someone does decide to look here, they’ll come whether you’re actually here or not. And you can use your ‘mad kung-fu skills’ to protect us,” she added with an infuriating smirk. I didn’t bother reminding her that it wasn’t kung-fu as she was still talking, and thankfully in a more serious tone. “Casey, you need a place to stay, right? What were you planning, rent some dirty motel room and live on Chinese take-out for who knows how long?”
I opened my mouth and promptly shut it again. Exaggeration aside, that was not far from the truth.
“That’s what I thought. Your, uh… guest, can have the guest room, and you can take a couch or pull out an air mattress.”
I frowned as I contemplated other issues. “What about the girls? She can’t keep the disguise going all the time, and I really don’t think it would be wise to let them know about the…” I looked around quickly and decided, based on the proximity of other pedestrians, to avoid ‘the real, live magical talking pony princess’ and instead opted for “well, you’ve seen the videos.”
“Let me worry about the girls. And you don’t have to stay permanently if you can come up with a better solution, you know.”
Tricky woman! It would be a lot harder to leave if we’d already agreed to stay. But she made a good point. Several of them, really. I glanced at Twilight, wishing she could’ve been more involved in the conversation.
“Mercy, we need to discuss this. And we have at least one stop to make while the stores are still open. So, how about I call you back in a couple of hours?”
She sighed and studied Twilight. “Fine. But speaking of clothes, you better find her something that looks decent. Those sweats are awful. Where did you even get such ugly women’s clothing? Do you have a girlfriend you haven’t told me about? One with absolutely no taste?”
I blushed a little. I really did not want to tell my sister that my companion was actually standing there in the nude, with nothing but an illusion between her and the world. At least it wasn’t too cold out this evening, and she did have that fur coat, as short as it was. I certainly didn’t intend to relay my sister’s opinion of her ‘outfit’, but Twilight seemed to have caught on from her tone and the direction of her gaze and was blushing slightly. Great.
“No, Mercy. Ah, I guess it came with the disguise? I don’t know how this stuff works, sorry. We’ll definitely get Ishanna at least a couple decent outfits. Gotta look the part of a tourist for now, anyway.”
“Hmph. Knowing you, I’ll have to take her shopping myself before she has anything even halfway decent.”
“Hey!”
She smirked at me. “Love ya, Case.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Back at’cha. Later, Mercy.”
Twilight burst into a giggle fit as soon as I shut the phone off. She’d apparently been holding it in all through the conversation about her clothes. She received a glare for her trouble, but it only made her laughter worse. “Oh, your… your face! That was so awkward.”
“You’re not upset about the ‘ugly’ comment?”
“Of course not, she’s absolutely right. I said as much when I created it, didn’t I? Rarity would never be so rude as to suggest that I’m lacking in taste, but I am even less familiar with what looks good on a human form than an equine. And that’s saying something. There’s a reason I was never big on clothes.”
“It’s not that bad. I figured you were just being humble. Mercy can be a bit….”
“Headstrong? Forceful? Opinionated?” Twilight grinned. “You two remind me of myself and my big brother.”
“Really? That’s… I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or…”
She chuckled. “Just the way you talk to each other. It sounds like she cares a lot about you.”
“Yeah, well, we had to look out for each other as kids, after Mom died…”
Her smile did an immediate flip. “Oh, no… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s just one of those things.”
“Is it alright to ask what happened?”
“Yeah… Cancer. She’d had it when she was in college, but the doctors thought it was all gone. Until a few years after I was born, when it came back. They struggled with it for a few years, but in the end it just kept coming back, worse each time, no matter what they did. I was eight…” I suddenly found that I couldn’t make my voice work.
Twilight hugged me, and without thinking about it I put my arms around her. The unexpected feel of warm fur made me blush vividly. But it was just a hug, and I’d be damned if I rejected her innocent compassion out of mere embarrassment. The tips of her little invisible wings were brushing against one of my arms, and I tried to focus on that instead. I finally managed to swallow the lump in my throat and went on.
“Anyway, Dad worked pretty hard to take care of us, so we often had to look out for ourselves until he got home at night. Mercy’s four years older than me, and she kinda stepped into Mom’s role for a while.”
Twilight was still quietly embracing me, and showed no signs of letting up. After a few increasingly awkward seconds I cleared my throat. “We should probably get moving again…”
She gave me a squeeze and then let go, much to my relief. Not that it was unpleasant, but it was hard to keep my cool while being reminded yet again that the pretty lady (even if some of that was illusory) who was pressed against me was actually naked. And the last thing Twilight needed right now was to find herself on the receiving end of awkward inter-species ‘romantic’ advances, or anything that could be mistaken for them. She kept a hand on my shoulder, though. I suppose it was meant to be reassuring.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I was just… It sounds like such a terrifying disease. To never know if it’s really gone, or if it might just come back even worse next month or next year…”
I took a better look at her, and noticed that she actually had tears in her eyes. Maybe she was the one looking for reassurance?
“You’re… not familiar with it? Or did it not get translated properly?”
“No, I think it did. Uncontrolled cell growth, spreading to and damaging healthy tissue?” I nodded, and she shook her head. “That doesn’t… well, I’ve never heard or read of that happening to us. And I’ve studied a fair amount of medical literature. Not nearly as much as a specialized healer, but enough that I can help with the most common injuries and a number of illnesses where quick treatment is important.”
“Well, that’s good. I know some basic first aid too. I just hope I never have to find out if it works the same on ponies.” I shivered, and she squeezed my arm, chuckling softly.
“Well, anything that basic should be equally applicable. We’re surprisingly similar, physically speaking.”
Twilight bent to retrieve her bags and I did the same.
“What makes you think that?” I asked her, and began walking.
She hesitated. “I did a little research… You know, with your folding computer, and that encyclopedia in your world network.”
I glanced at her with a frown. “Tw— Ishanna, you can’t read English. And the only time I left you alone with it was while you were busy working on your… project, anyway.” There were people passing us on the sidewalk, so I couldn’t just say ‘transformation spell’.
“Er… right. Well, I… Okay, I may have… harmlessly… scanned your body while we were looking up those pictures. Just a little bit.”
If it was so harmless and little, why would she need to lie about it? I pressed my lips together to avoid barking out several choice curses, but my anger must have leaked through. Twilight suddenly broke contact and shrank away as if I’d screamed at her, and the worst part was that she looked like she was actually frightened.