Chapter 2: Birth
Night of April 30th to May 1st, YOH 1481 - Walpurgisnacht, South-Dunnich
The birth of Claire and Pinkie Pie proved rather unusual, even by the standards of the Daughters of Paradise.
It had been a difficult pregnancy. Cloudy had gotten very big this time, and her mother Goldie -- who was also the best midwife in the district -- was worried. Goldie had just about decided that her desire to keep secret the likely anomalies attending the birth of her new grand-children (she was fairly sure both for spiritual and mundane reasons that there was more than one) should be overruled by the very real danger of losing her beloved daughter, and was planning to prepare the wagon tomorrow morning to take Goldie in to Ponyville, when matters were taken out of her hooves by the inconvenient reality that Cloudy had actually entered labor.
So it was that Goldie wound up doing the work herself. Jasper and a hired filly helped her prepare clean towels and pass her instruments, but Goldie was the only one on the Pie Farm who actually knew how to deal with birth complications. If this proved as dangerous a birth as Goldie expected, her daughter might die before there was time to get her to a doctor any more capable than was Goldie herself. The Pies had sent off a colt to try to fetch a doctor from Ponyville -- the one in Dunnich itself knew less than Goldie about birthing -- but they were well aware that the chances were that he would only arrive after the birth had occurred.
The First Foal
"Push!" cried Goldie as she reached into her daughter, trying to find the first foal's head. There was something wrong -- Cloudy was well-dilated, and she should have been able to see her daughter's foal by now, but there was nothing but a vague sort of translucence, which Goldie attributed to the poor lighting conditions and the increasing dimness of her own 61-year-old eyes. As an Earth Pony mare who had always been in good health, Goldie still in likelihood had more than half her life left ahead of her, but her mortal senses were no longer as keen as they had been when she had been a young maiden half a century ago.
So she extended her other senses.
There she is! thought Goldie exultantly. She tasted the first foal's lifescent -- a little filly, lusty and powerful -- she had never sensed a soul this strong before. There was something behind it that shone even more brightly, which seemed sheerly impossible, but she had no attention to spare for the second foal, as if she couldn't get the first one out she would have to perform a surgical extraction right here in the barn, by the light of a single lantern, as best she could with her makeshift instruments and homemade anesthetics and antibiotics, which was not something Goldie wanted to have to try with her own daughter for reasons that had nothing to do with the likely fury of the Equestrian Medical Association and everything to do with the desire to have that daughter still alive and well when she was finished.
There was something strange about that first foal's lifescent, though. It was bright, but diffuse -- was there more than two foals? No, there were only two distinct lifescents aside from Cloudy's own, but the first one's life seemed to be in more than one place, as if there was more than one body -- or brain?
How was this possible? She had scented deformities before, including Thai Ponies, but in that case there would have been two souls sharing one body. Here there seemed to be more than one brain -- at least six or seven, she thought -- but all those brains were hosting the same soul! That was deeply inconsistent with anything she had ever heard about or sensed directly.
No time for deep analysis of this -- Cloudy was pushing and the second foal was going to wind up injured if she couldn't get the first foal out in time. She reached out with her hooves -- I'll try to grab the foal and ease it out before I resort to forceps, too much danger of hurting the babe if I start poking around with steel. She breathed steadily, muttered a little meditative cantrip that relaxed her, opened her hoof-suckers to their full reach, let her Earth Pony magic flow through her hooves and add to her sucker-strength with what she knew, even if far too many Earth Ponies didn't, was the exact same telekinesis that let Pegasi fly or Unicorns manipulate objects at a distance with their horns. There was no Goldie, no task, just a unity of purpose that represented the highest concentration achievable to her, the best she could put forth.
She reached out -- and gasped in surprise as a little wet tentacle wrapped itself around one outstretched fore-hoof -- the right one. She reflexively pulled back -- and realized that despite its small size, the tentacle was amazingly tough and muscular. Her eyes opened wide, and she could plainly see a depression where the tentacle was pressing into the softer parts of her hoof, but she could not see the tentacle itself, despite the fact that it should be literally right before her nose. Logic told her what common sense wanted her to deny. The first foal was invisible!
As she pulled back, she saw the outline of her daughter's opening change, and perceived that the little creature was squirming, trying to get out of the birth passage, to cooperate with its mother's contractions. This should also be impossible, as it was not even yet newborn, but compared to invisibility a slight difference in developmental schedule was minor. Another tentacle wrapped around her hoof, then another ... what sort of anatomy did this strange child have that it had, at birth, multiple foot-long tentacles?
Another Pony would have been shrieking in horror at this point, but Goldie knew that this was a Daughter of Paradise, albeit a very unusual one, and in her experience nothing evil ever issued from Paradise. And in her over six decades of life on Earth so far, Goldie had seen some very strange things, some of them truly dangerous and evil, and the lifescent of this tiny new life did not taste evil, but instead good and innocent as any newborn. Rather unusually sweet, in fact.
Anyway, the tentacles weren't hurting her. In fact they were helping her, providing a strong connection with which she could draw forth the new little Daughter. Wait, this is a Daughter of Paradise, and one of the anatomical differences between the Daughters and normal Earth Ponies is that most Daughters have long, muscular, prehensile -- tongues! Are those tentacles actually her tongues?
Multiple brains -- multiple heads -- multiple tongues? Why not? Actually, it made complete logical sense, though the mental image it produced was strange indeed.
Goldie pulled slowly and steadily, and the little creature slid forward to a point, then stopped. Further pulling accomplished nothing, and Goldie dared not risk injuring the tiny one by pulling further. She reached forth her left hoof, reached out, and gently touched the little heads from which those tongues issued. There were three of them -- the others must still be within Cloudy -- and they were attached to what felt like a fairly normal body, though one exceptionally-large for an Earth Pony newborn. She could feel its birth hair and -- yes -- it was long and fluffy, as she would have expected for a normal Daughter of Paradise.
Really, aside from the multiple heads and the fact that she's coordinated enough at birth to use her tongues like that, this is perfecty normal! She snorted and for a dangerous moment felt herself teetering at the edge of hysteria. What to do, what to do?
The newborn solved the problem for her by suddenly and without warning retracting those tentacular tongues, then seeming to gather itself. She felt the creature shaking ... withdrawing slightly ...
And then to her shocked extra senses spacetime rippled right at the entrance to her daughter's body. She felt a familiar but impossible sensation as another ripple appeared over one of the warming pans she had ready. A Gate? she asked herself in confusion. Here? Now? But I'm not casting it -- who --?
Something bigger than a normal newborn plopped into the birthing pan. There was a moment of silence, as the Gate vanished, and then multiple throats drew breath, multiple voices sounded lusty birth cries. The first foal had made its own exit, and it was one which should have been impossible to all but a few trained mages.
She can Gate -- at birth?!! Goldie was momentarily frozen in astonishment But only a few Daughters of Paradise can Gate at all, and the ability never appears until after they received their Cutie Marks. What kind of Daughter is this ...
Then she remembered that there were still many things left for her to do with the first foal, let alone with the second, which had not yet emerged and might not for a good long while.
"What ... what happened?" gasped Cloudy. "Where's my baby? I want to see my baby!" she shrieked.
Cries continued from the birthing pan.
"Um ... eh ... First one's born!" Goldie said brightly. "Hold on, Cloudy-girl, let me tend to her a moment, then I'll bring her up here."
Goldie picked up the birthing pan, complete with living contents, in her left foreleg. She tried to orient the front end of the little creature toward her right side. It was difficult to figure out which end was which when she couldn't actually see the child and when its entire anatomy was as yet to her mysterious. It gasped, cried and complained. The multiplicity of these noises was rather distracting.
With her right hoof, Goldie grabbed a wet rag, twisted it, dipped it into the milk she had ready. She didn't want to let it suckle from Cloudy yet while there was still another one on the way. She immediately encountered a problem -- she had planned to drip the milk into the thirsty mouth of the newborn, but it had multiple mouths and she could only feed one of them at a time. Multiple tentacles -- she was pretty sure at least half a dozen of them this time -- solved her problem for her and grabbed the rag. Milk spattered everywhere, but at least some of it oozed down those tongues into what must have been mouths.
With the fraction of her mind which was still able to function as the scholar she was, Goldie noticed that she could see a mist of milk spreading out within a very oddly-configured upper digestive tract. So she's really invisible, Goldie thought. Structurally, rather than merely deflecting light around her as with an invisiblity spell. Of what kind of matter is she made? And will she be able to see anything, with transparent retinas?
This reminded Goldie of an obvious trick she could try to literally get a better look at her problem.
"Elsa!" she called out to the hired filly.
"Yes'm?" asked Elsa, coming to her side. The young mare's eyes were bugging right out at the unusual spectacle of milk being drawn from a rag suspended by nothing and flowing into an invisible container by multiple invisible channels.
"Go to Jasper and tell him to give you my working tools. Not the midwife kit, it's in here. The other kit. For my special work," Goldie emphasized.
Elsa's eyes bugged out further, and she seemed in a hurry to leave the room.
Goldie was annoyed by her attitude, but couldn't entirely blame her. If she hadn't lived a life of somewhat peculiar experiences, and if this hadn't been her own daughter lying on the birthing table, Goldie might have been in a hurry to leave the room as well.
More cries reminded Goldie that the new visitor was still rather demanding. She grabbed a second rag, twisted it, dipped it well, then gave it to the thirsty tentacles. At least she wants milk, like any normal foal, thought Goldie. Rather than blood, like one'a those Star Vampires.
"Can I see my baby now?" asked Cloudy rather plaintively.
"Well, Cloudy-girl" said Goldie slowly, "there's a bit of a problem with that ..."
"What's wrong with my baby?!!" wailed Cloudy. She began to thrash about on the bed, trying to sit up, an action rendered difficult by the straps on her hind legs and the burdened condition of her lower abdomen.
"Don't do that!" snapped Goldie quickly. "You'll hurt the second one!"
"I have twins?"
"Definitely at least twins," Goldie confirmed. "Now set back down, girl, I gotta make sure you keep both'a them!" She gave the invisible multi-headed newborn more milk. This time, the baby seemed satisfied; at least she stopped complaining. Then something rippled in what must have been one small throat, a bubble appeared, strange sounds emerged.
Oh, of course, thought Goldie, veteran mother herself of several children. She lifted the little fluffy form and burped her, with surprising success given its invisibility and the unconventionality of its digestive tract.
There was a sound. She looked around to see what she expected, Elsa, and instead had to look down into big solemn purple eyes in a little gray face under a purple mane.
"Elsa was scared," said Cloudy's five-year-old first child, "So I brought in your tools." She had the rather heavy bag balanced on her back, and without apparent effort reached back, grasped the bag in one hoof and gave it to her grandmother. Maud's voice was high, but not at all childish in her speech patterns, and was astonishingly calm. She was already stronger than most Earth Pony fillies at adolescence. She was not at all fluffy, but she too had been sired by Paradise.
Elsa is a cowardly imbecile, Goldie thought irately, making a five-year-old filly do her work for her. And in such circumstances! She kept her anger out of both face and voice -- no point scaring either mother or child now -- and instead smield down warmly at her grand-daughter.
"Thank you, Maud, you did really well," Goldie said. "You are a very grown-up filly."
One corner of Maud's mouth quirked up slightly and her ears twitched, which Goldie translated from Maud to Normal Pony body language to mean happy and proud adoration.
"Now you should --" Goldie paused to reconsider. Actually, she could use a second pair of forehooves in the room right now, and Elsa probably wasn't coming back. Her own husband Jasper had been feeling a bit poorly of later -- she didn't want to make him run around the room fetching everything. "-- stick around. I might need you."
Maud nodded slightly, just a twitch of her mane which most Ponies would have overlooked. :"Yes, Granny," she replied.
Goldie reached into her bag, pulled out a complex looking pair of glasses with multiple lenses that swung down individually. She fiddled with it for a moment. "Let's see," she muttered, "She's warm so I can assume she's radiating in the infra-red ..." Click "Let's try that." She donned the glasses and looked at the birthing pan.
She could see her new grand-daughter!
Not very clearly, of course. Infra-red images were difficult to resolve, as the wavelengths were longer than that of normal light, so the image was a bit fuzzy. But image there was, and she looked mostly as Goldie had expected.
In outline she was not dissimilar from a normal Pony. There was a front end, back end, top and bottom around a barrel-shaped body. There was a medium-sized head on the front, two small heads on each side with a really small one between them, and a big head on top positioned to look upward. The heads were mostly quiescent now -- apparently the milk had satisfied her new grand-daughter. The faces on those eight heads were normal for a Daughter of Paradise, though interestingly the features of each face were slightly different. All of them were very obviously Pie faces, and the big one on top looked touchingly like Goldie herself. Despite their multiplicity, the faces of the new Daughter were fully as cute as one might expect given that this was, after all, a newborn fluffy pony.
There was something odd about her posture, though. Goldie peered more closely, and realized that the little Daughter had at least eight legs. These were articulated mostly like those of a normal Pony, though the hooves were abnormally big and there was something unusual about the way some of them seemed to fold up, as if the cannons and pasterns within could somehow partially telescope. You'll be a big 'un, I think mused Goldie, when you're full-grown. Mebbe the size of an alicorn -- mebbe even bigger. There was something about those legs that minded her of graviportal rather than gracile structures. Won't be able to really tell until she starts walking.
Despite the anatomical oddities, there was nothing deformed or monstrous about the child. All its features fit together into a symmetrical wholeness, as if it had been carefully designed to function correctly in its multi-cephalic, octopedal form. Knowing Paradise, Goldie mused, "designed" was probably the precisely correct word -- this Daughter was neither some mutational sport, nor the product of any process which she could recognize as normal biological evolution.
"All right, Cloudy-girl," she said. "You can see the first foal now." Her statement was completely and literally true. She reached over toward the birthing-pan, reconsidered and fastened the buckle on back of her goggles to secure them in place. Her caution proved advisable -- as she picked up the birthing-pan, the eyes on the nearest heads opened sleepily, and their mouths opened to flick out those tentacular appendages which -- Goldie had been right on this -- turned out in fact to be the baby's tongues. The tongues mostly licked Goldie affectionately, perhaps probing for milk (naively, at the wrong end of Goldie's body for such a fluid even had the old mare been capable of lactation), but one or two of them pulled at Goldie's own hair, and one tugged at her glasses. Had she not fastened them in place, the baby would have grabbed her glasses, possibly damaging or even breaking them. And they were, of course, entirely custom-made -- Goldie had only the one pair, and it would take at least days to have another set crafted.
"I can't see the foal," observed Maud, blinking. "Just a sparkly thing with too many heads."
Your eyes are better than mine! thought Goldie. She'd long suspected that Maud's visual range was a bit wider than that of a normal pony -- Maud could see Ponies faintly glowing in what looked like full darkness to most, which meant she was probably observing the near infra-red; and had once told her that the bees were "flying to the glow," which had to mean the flourescence exhibited by some flowers in the near ultraviolet. Maud's eyes were not as capable in this regard as were Goldie's special lenses, but it was surprising that she could see the new foal at all -- briefly, Goldie wondered if this was something that Paradise had intended when it had sired Cloudy's eldest daughter.
"Is something wrong?" asked Cloudy, not really hysterical any more -- but understandably stressed.
"No," said Goldie, "there's something very right -- your baby's alive and healthy. There's just a few things I better tell you before I pass her to you." She paused, considered how to say this.
Cloudy inhaled deeply, waited.
"She's invisible," said Goldie. "In the normal light octave. She's quite visible by infra-red, and I think she may be flourescing a bit in the near ultra-violet."
Cloudy breathed out. "Is that all?" she asked in what seemed a remarkably calm tone.
"Well, no," Goldie continued. "She's also got eight heads. And eight legs. Oh, and she's a fluffy, but then we were sort of expecting that."
"Eight --" Cloudy's eyes widened.
"She's not monstrous!" Goldie insisted. "It all sort of -- fits. And she's only one soul, and a good one too." Something swished at the hind end of the little Daughter on the birthing pan. "Oh, she's also got a tail. A cute little tail! Only one'a those." The part of Goldie that had gotten a degree in biology, forty years ago at Miskatrottic University, twelve hundred miles to the northeast of South Dunnich, noted the coo in her own voice, and realized that her own maternal instincts were responding to the very strange child in exactly the way evolution -- and whoever had first meddled with the proto-Ponies -- had intended them to in order to ensure the survival of their species.
"I see ..." said Cloudy flatly, as if she had gone beyond fear or surprise into some entirely new region of experience. "Yes, I guess a body wouldn't need more'n one tail."
Goldie was moderately worried. It was important for both her daughter and newest grand-daughter that they bond. She approached Cloudy with the birthing-pan, then considered something. "Oh, and she's got tongues. Like a fluffy but eight of 'em, one fer each head, and she's a mite precocious so she'll probably lick or even grab you with 'em. No need for fright -- they don't hurt none."
Cloudy's alarming calm did not change.
"Bring it here, Mother," she said.
"T'aint an 'it,'" insisted Goldie, passing over the birthing pan. "She's a little filly foal. Your little foal."
Cloudy's face remained rigid as the little Daughter gurgled at her dam, extended her tongues to flick and lick randomly at stray parts of her mother's anatomy. To her credit, Goldie's daughter did not flinch. Nor did she respond.
Goldie was getting rather seriously worried at what she was seeing -- or rather, not seeing -- between mother and child. Cloudy hadn't been this way toward Maud -- she'd accepted her right after birth, and loved her well, despite the filly's almost unnatural lack of emotional display. Goldie knew that a child needed mother-love to grow right, and though as a Daughter of Paradise the new little one would never lack for love from its sire, she had to be loved by a Pony if she were to develop properly into a sane member of her own species. Goldie was getting a bit old to take on the care of a newborn herself, which would of necessity mean paying that child very close and nigh-continual attention for the next decade, with strong emotional support for another half-decade.
She leaned over the birthing pan, looked at the sweet little eyes of the two nearest heads, which gamely tracked her motions with the wobble-motions common to newborn foals. Poor little mite, she thought, haven't yet figgered out how to use all your shiny new equipment, have you? Warm love washed through her as she regarded the strange baby, and a glistening made her aware that in all the confusion she had neglected one of the most simple and obvious duties of midwifery.
"Get me that towel, will you Maudie?" she asked her pint-sized helper, and before Maud even stepped over, Goldie acted wholly on some remnant of primal Pony instinct, extended her own tongue and began licking the infant clean of the afterbirth. It wasn't completely sanitary: however, Maud had of course cleaned herself completely before attending the birth, and in any case Pony tongues were relatively clean organs. There was a very slight peculiarity to the taste, but nothing alarming.
The foal giggled as Goldie's tongue tickled her, then squirmed as Goldie took the towel from Maud and finished the job with that implement held in hoof that the midwife had started with her own mouth. Goldie smiled fondly at the little living thing that was her newest grand-daughter, smelled her newborn scent, flehmened to taste it on the air. Her new little life shone brightly in Goldie's other senses, and she was getting used to the odd multiplicity of sources from which that life most strongly issued. The foal was full of love -- so full that Goldie thought briefly of the interlocking wards around the Pie Farm that rendered it a very unfriendly place for any buzzies who might chance by, and even more briefly of that one very strange and conflicted Infiltrator she'd met years ago within Dunnich itself -- whatever had happened to that one?
Then she only had eyes for her new grand-daughter. She was so unbearably adorable! Why could Goldie see this, and the foal's own mother not .... oh, wait.
Goldie realized the obivous. Brilliant university-trained biologist, she told herself, slowly planting a hoof over her own face. Wise old mare with lore from afore the Cataclysm. High Friend O'Paradise. Yep, I'm all o'that. And sometimes I ain't got the brains of a blade o'grass
"Here," she said to Cloudy. "This oughta help you some." She passed her the goggles. "Strap `em on."
Cloudy did as her mother asked, then looked down at what bubbled and gurgled happily in the birthing pan.
"Oh!" Cloudy said in surprise and shock. Only a little shock -- Goldie's description had prepared her well for the manifold anatomical abnormalities of her offspring. "Oh," more calmly as her eyes explored its outline, saw how everything fit together not in monstrous anomaly, but rather a strange sort of perfection. "Oh, with a bit of a chuckle as she focused on some detail which was -- of course -- now invisible to Goldie. "Oh ... awww ..." Cloudy's expression softened, broke into a smile as she watched her little Daughter. "Oh, that dear half-face on top -- it looks just like you, Maw, but so cuuute ... guess she takes more after her father, though ... awww ..." Cloudy stared fascinated at the little life before her. She reached out, grasped it in both forelegs, cuddled it against her neck. "She's so sweet ..." Her face bore an expression of utterly blissful mother-love. Contented noises came from the invisible being she cradled.
"Oh, Maw," Cloudy turned to Goldie, face radiant. "She's so wonderful! She's an invisible little treasure, one that only we can see. We have to give her an Old Family Name, one of the ones from the Lost North-Realm. Something with crystals ... something Princess Iolite herself might have called her. But one that expresses who she really is. What she really is.
"What do you want to call her?" asked Goldie.
"She's fresh and new like the dawn," said Cloudy. "And she's infra-red. We could call her Rose."
Goldie thought about it. "I dunno," she said, frowning. "That's the female form of 'Crimson,' and that's been a name o' ill-luck since ... you know who. Not superstitious, but I can tell you that this young'un is gonna grow up strong. Someday we'll hear her call out to her Father atop Lookout Hill with the rest o'us, and one'a the strongest voices, too. I don't want to expose that kind of power -- that kind o'goodness -- to the influences o'Shadow. Stories say the original Crimson was a strong 'un -- and a good 'un too -- before he Fell. Too much morphic resonance, too much."
Cloudy nodded. "Well then, something else. What does she look like aside from being infra-red?"
"Clear," piped up an unexpected voice.
Goldie and Cloudy turned to regard little Maud.
"You can see right through her," the filly pointed out. "Like clear quartz. So she should be Clear."
Cloudy wrinkled her nose. "Almost. But that doesn't work that well as a girl's name. What would that be, a little Prenchified?"
"Claire," said Goldie. "It would be 'Claire' in Prench."
Cloudy smiled. "Claire." She looked back at the little warm foal, who from the motions of Cloudy's own mane seemed to be exploring her mother's features with her numerous tentacular tongues. "Do you hear that, my little one? My little own Claire, that's who you are! Yes, you're a little Claire-Bear, yes you are!" She became lost in adoration for her own offspring.
Goldie smiled at the scene. The danger -- that Cloudy would reject her strange child -- was past.
This danger was past. There was still another foal coming.
And anything could happen in childbirth.
The Second Foal
After a brief period in which Cloudy let her eldest daughter have the goggles so that she might gaze upon her newborn younger sister -- something which Maud did with the sort of fascination she normally reserved for a particularly-unusual pebble -- Goldie wrapped the newest addition to the Pie Family in a blanket. This was a more complex procedure than this sounded because she had to be careful not to cover any of Claire's eight heads. Then she put the rather strangely wrapped filly to bed in a cradle.
Cloudy rested a bit and then the contractions resumed. Elsa had run off, so Goldie's choices boiled down to either Jasper or Maud to assist her, and the same logic applied as before, so it was Maud who remained. The child wasn't complaining -- there was a certain subtle light in her eyes which made it obvious to Goldie that Maud was utterly-ecstatic to be so useful to her family at such a crucial moment.
It didn't seem as bad this time, as Cloudy was still well-dilated, and the second foal did not seem quite so large.
"Push!" instructed Goldie in the timeless redundancy of ritual, since pushing was pretty much the only option Cloudy had right now which did not involve the death of either herself or the second twin. "Push!" There was actually some point to this, as Goldie was trying to coordinate her own ministrations with her daughter's efforts.
"I can see the head," said Maud. The very slight quaver in her voice at this point bespoke Maud's utter awe at being here to witness the emergence of her second sister. "She's very pink."
"Good girl," replied Goldie, presumably to Maud though there were in fact two other good girls currently involved in this procedure. Goldie could barely see anything against the immense Shine that was glowing in her extra senses. What kind of Daughter is this one? she wondered vaguely. How many heads will she have, what sort of creature will she be? It was very obvious now that when Paradise had told her that these twins would be special, the deity had, if anything understated the situation.
She was feeling surges of psychic power now that she had never known save on the few occasions when she had directly viewed Princess Celestia. That had been stronger, but well-veiled -- this was blatant, with the rawness and naivete one would expect of some new Power emerging into the world. Once or twice complications seemed to develop -- each time, Goldie felt a strange disturbance, as if reality itself was rippling and settling into a new configuration, and the complications vanished.
The Wish, Goldie realized in utter awe. This is The Wish itself, or part of it -- the greatest and most dangerous power of Paradise -- and it's manifesting not in The World That Was Lost, but in our own reality! Oh, Great Forgotten Ones, it's Herself that's being born tonight! The Herald! The Promised One! I can't believe this is happening -- not in my lifetime! We are unworthy of such honor!
And unprepared for such danger, Goldie realized grimly. This birth has to go smoothly. She's just a baby -- and her power is already much, much greater than my own. If anything blocks the birth -- frustrates her long enough -- Starlight only knows what will happen. She could destroy Cloudy, destroy me, destroy causality itself in her eagerness to emerge! She redoubled her efforts to bring forth the baby, not wanting to communicate her fears to her daughter or her small assistant.
Then a great calmness desceneed upon her. Be not afraid, a familiar voice said in the back of her mind, for you are my well-beloved Friend, and my Pink Daughter shall harm only mine Enemies. And that only with reluctance, for malice is not great in Her nature.
Paradise? asked. Are you the source of the Power I sense, then?
Yes, replied Paradise, And no. I have given great Power to my Pink Daughter, that she may not only prepare the way for My immanence, for the fulfillment of the Promise, for the rebirth of the World That Was Lost -- and also tp fight against a dreadful Evil that approaches, something which only great Power can oppose.. But she is now but a baby, and is far from being able to master such might. I have locked out some of her abilities, to be unlocked when she attains the maturity to use them.
Understand -- my Pink Daughter shall be neotenous even by the standards of your Kind, and she shall see the world with childlike eyes even when she seems a mare full-grown. Nevertheless, you must let her pursue her own path. There shall come a time when she must leave you to fulfill her own high destiny, and you must not check her departure, though you shall fear for her safety more than once. She is Laughter, her True Name is Thalia, and what she shall grow into, over the long decades, will be beyond your current comprehension. And then Paradise added something which Goldie found starkly unbelievable. Possibly beyond Mine.
But ... but how shall we keep her safe? asked Goldie. There is malice in this world, malice aplenty both magic and mundane. And if she shall be as a child, how shall we --
Do not fear, good Friend. I shall always abide with and within your Pink grand-daughter, replied Paradise. I have gifted her with Mine own powers of precognition, and she shall dance past dangers more than once, and emerge unscathed. She can choose her worldlines, and she shall live amongst Happy Endings even before her oldest friend attains that ability. And should something manage to menace her despite all this, I have already given unto her a powerful Guardian, who shall never fail to be there when she is really needed, whose strength is already great in fillyhood and which shall wax ever greater as she becomes a mare full-grown, who is unshakeably Loyal and shall literally move mountains if she must to save her Sister.
Maud ...? thought Goldie.
Even so, affirmed Paradise, then continued
As for the elder twin, she must abide here in Dunnich, for here shall be the Gate to Me, and she shall have the power to open Gates to anywhere. You have so far seen but a tiny manifestation of Claire's full abilities -- the day shall come when she opens the way not only to me, but to all Creation, for your world. She is the Opener of the Way to Paradise, and her destiny shall also prove a high one. You shall not need to fear for Claire-- she shall need no Guardian -- for her flesh heals as rapidly as she can think, and she shall prove almost indestructible.
I return you now to the flow of your own time, Paradise said, and with a start Goldie realized that everything around her had been frozen, and she unawares. All shall be well, both for you and your species, for Paradise is always with you. Remember that, and be comforted.
I shall, whispered Goldie in her own mind. Oh, I shall.
Reality resumed.
Goldie could see the bright reddish-pink mane, the crown of the little cranium. She placed a suckered hoof against one side of the small head, another against the other side, just the tips because of course her hooves were far too large to fit inside her daughter even at this great degree of dilation. Briefly, uselessly, she wished that her hooves were somehow longer and thinner -- but not even the near presence of the Great Wish was likely to make that happen. She let her paramagnetism flow down her hooves, grip the little Pink one at many points, avoiding any stress to the neck which -- though tough like all Pony necks -- was still a relatively weak and vulnerable portion of the Pony anatomy. Gently and firmly, she eased forth the small head.
There's no face! she thought in a moment of horror, then, relieved. Oh. A caul. Really big 'un too. Well, given what She is, I guess a caul would be only traditional. She smirked at what may have been a little joke of Paradise. "Scissors," she said to Maud.
The little filly quickly and efficiently passed her the scissors.
Before Goldie could apply them, reality rippled, and the caul fell away of its own accord.
Well, I don't blame you for not wanting me to use sharp pointy objects right next to your face, she thought at the tiny filly. Can't say I'd like that much either. Though you can't keep using that power so vulgarly. That's how your daddy got in trouble, over a thousand years ago. She didn't think that the little pink filly -- she could now see her coat, and it was a lighter shade of pink than the mane -- could understand those thoughts, but thinking them soothed Goldie and let her proceed as if this were merely a normal birth, rather than the Nativity of the Promised One.
Pinkie abruptly slid free into Goldie's waiting hooves. There was something strange about that sliding, and Goldie saw what -- Cloudy did not appear sufficiently dilated for such a smooth emergence to have been possible. Goldie examined the newborn foal -- she was physically perfect, a creature of raspberry mane and pink coat and, opening just now, lovely blue eyes that wondered at her strange new world. With a swift pass of the scissors, Goldie expertly severed the umbilical cord. Goldie was about to tap clear the respiratory passage, when the little pink filly coughed once, spitting out a wad of fluid and then emitting a lusty birth-cry.
That was incredibly smooth, thought Goldie. I've never seen a birth this easy.
Goldie held high the third daughter of Cloudy Quartz Pie and Paradise, the Promised One that Goldie's own faith had been awaiting for over a thousand years, showing her triumphantly to the other three occupants of the room, counting the pink child's twin. She was moved by a sudden impulse to speak.
"I shall name this one," Goldie told Cloudy, "for I have been in communion with her Father." Cloudy's eyes widened in awe at this revelation.
"She is Pinkamena Diane Quartz Pie," continued Goldie, which means "The Pink Unique Shining Girl," which is exactly what she is, and what she shall become, in ways you will all understand in time. My daughter," she said to Cloudy, "you must raise her with firmness and with love, as if she were any filly, but she is more. More, even, than most Daughters of Paradise. All your daughters are that, and all have important destinies. You have been blessed, Cloudy, for you are thricefold the mother of greatness."
It was a very solemn moment in the history of Dunnich, of Equestria, and of the Pie Family. And then the moment changed, in the way that was inevitable given the nature of What had just been born.
For Pinkamena Diane Quartz Pie did something that was very strange for a newborn foal, but very characteristic for the mare she would one day become.
She smiled. And laughed.
It was the happy gurgle of a newborn, not the rich sound it would be in times to come. But it was enough.
And everypony there looked upon that happy little face, and they did exactly what almost everypony would when they met Pinkie Pie, in all the long decades and centuries and millennia to come.
They smiled. Even Maud smiled. And though none noticed, the eight little faces of little Claire were wreathed in broad grins.
Laughter was in the World again.
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Oh, MAN.
Y'know, when I opened this chapter, I was thinking, " . . . tentacles?"
I had no idea where this was coming from, because I hadn't read all your other fics yet (I've read some of the Luna ones) and I was sort of confused.
By the middle, you had reduced me to tears. Oh, MAN.
Because while I underplay it like crazy, because I write light romantic comedy, I always have it in the back of my mind that this is what Cheese Sandwich sees when he looks at her. And he simply cannot understand why everypony else doesn't see it, too. Are they blind and deaf, or what? (EDIT: by the way, he's entirely right. He's not some dolt blinded by romantic love.) It's not exactly the same--for me, it's based on Party Pony Magic--but it is a big, huge, huge deal. It's a kind of Earth Pony magic, and without Equestria's handful of Party Ponies, Laughter dies out of the world. And Pinkie herself--well, she's a genius of Party Pony-ness, the omphalos, the Great She--and this is why he does not simply grab her and kiss her as though she were a regular pony. I mean, that would be rude anyway, but She is something entirely different. It's not completely surprising that he sees this in her. His magic is born out of hers.
And this makes things very confusing for him. It's hard to tell where one kind of love and recognition ends and another begins, and on one level, it is just unfathomable that she might choose him for anything as mundane as her romantic partner, but he can't help wanting that, as well. Does that make sense?
Anyhoo, not derailing onto my stuff--it's just that you NAILED something I was thinking for a while.
4343464
Claire gets mentioned in An Extended Performance and is the main character of Least Noticeable and Little Flappy. She's physically a Ponified version of Wilbur Whateley's Twin from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft; and emotionally an Ingenue from an Edwardian to Jazz Age romance novel. She's very sweet and innocent, and never entirely loses her sweetness even after she becomes the matriarch of her own very large (and very strange) outgrowth of the Pie Family.
Later on, in Twelfth Equestriad Interview, it is more or less stated that her Gate ability, marketed by The Pie Sisters, Inc. (run by Limestone "Blinkie" and Marble "Inkie" Pie); has become the backbone of the Equestrian economic expansion to other worlds, because Claire can with the expenditure of protracted time and energy make permanent interplanetary Gates that the Equestrians run railroads through. Inkie and Blinkie are full sisters, the daughters of Cloudy Quartz and her husband Igneous Rock, half-sisters to Maud, Claire and Pinkie, and while they are also very nice mares, they are a bit more hard-edged, mercenary and businesslike than are their Paradise-sired elder sisters. (Maud is tough and sharp enough, but can't sustain any interest for very long that doesn't involve either geology or a loved one).
(will respond to the rest of your very lovely and appreciated comment later ...)
I am loving this story. The pseudo religious like references that the Paradise exerts on the story make it a very interesting premise. We know there are big things ahead for the Pies and yet this chapter shows that everything that they do that we know are nothing compared to what is going to come.
Is Paradise supposed to be always in italics? Because the para that starts "as for the elder twin" isn't.
4343464
Which segment in particular? The one where Cloudy goes from regarding Claire as monstrous to seeing her as her own adorable little foal? Or the one where Pinkie is being born and Goldie realizes that she is -- basically -- her faith's version of the Messiah?
Oh, I agree with you, and not entirely because of the specific role Pinkie plays in the larger context of my verse. In canon, Pinkie is clearly a very special Pony -- all of the Mane Six are, really, but Pinkie has essentially the mission of bringing joy and laughter and love to everypony through her parties. She is greater and nobler than most Ponies, as is each of the Mane Six in her own way, and she is extremely admirable.
I've noticed that there are two general (and opposing) tendencies expressed by authors writing about Equestria in general, and the Mane Six in particular. The first is admiration at the beauty and virtues of such a society and its champions, attempting to elevate them further by exploring the full implications of their awesomeness. The second is resentment at what is assumed to be hidden ugliness and hypocritical vice hiding beneath the mask of virute, attempting to degrade the characters by making them mean and petty and false.
As you may have noticed, I'm firmly in the camp of elevation. Yes, Equestria is not a perfect society, nor are the Mane Six perfect ponies in every respect. Yes, they have vices, and sometimes do things which are not entirely heroic. But, by and large, Equestria is a good and noble civilization, and the Mane Six are good and noble Ponies. It requires some fairly serious twisting from canon in order to turn Equestria into a cruel culture and its champions into false heroes.
Where Pinkie is concerned, there is a tendency for those practicing the second approach to assume that "party pony" means that she is insanely promiscuous, and that her manic good cheer means that she is not very bright. While the first is not directly contradicted by canon (because canon doesn't dare go there) it is strongly implied that this is not the case because at no point does she display the G-rated aspects of such behavior which could be shown on screen -- her parties seem rather innocent affairs, at least in terms of Pinkie's contributions to them.
If she was promiscuous, it would have to be in an utterly-benevolent and innocent Free Love manner, and there is no sign even of this. Pinkie is simply not a scheming seductress -- the required mindset is close to 180 degrees from her own, which is childlike -- a point which I had Paradise state explicitly and which is also stated rather explicitly in the show. Pinkie is very likely to futher mature over her lifetime, but she is very unlikely to become evil.
And yes, Cheese Sandwich very obviously even in canon deeply and profoundly respects her. She showed him that the world could be happy and beautiful, and that he himself could find a place in society bringing joy and laughter to others. I would wager that he is grateful to her, is in serious awe of her, and probably thinks of her as being in some ways a higher being than himself. The fact that she now respects him back must make him tremendously happy and proud.
Part of this profound respect is that, even if he loves her romantically (and the episode in canon implies that he may), this love is tinged with extreme admiration and respect. So, yes.
Oh, tremendously so. She, in turn, seemed by the end of "Pinkie Pride" to just be coming to the realization that -- for the first time in her life -- she's found someone who is enough like her to understand her, to be a true soul mate. Pinkie is in her early 20's (in my timeline, around 23 by now) and even though childlike in many ways, she's starting to mature to the point that she may be thinking about finding somepony to be her potential life-mate (which is to say, she's reaching a point that most ponies probably attain in their teens -- but then she's highly-neotenous, as I have Paradise directly state.
Given what we've seen so far in the show, Cheese Sandwich is, in fact, a very likely candidate for her future husband. After all, she knows a heck of a lot of Ponies, but I don't think she's ever met anypony at all like him. Which is to say, rather like herself.
4343800
Well, yes, if she Ascends.
4346612 Mostly the second, although the first was sweet once I understood what was going on. I don't read Lovecraft and things like that, so I was thrown for a loop.
One thing I particularly like about Pinkie is the way in which she represents Mirth, or Comedy, or the Wisdom of Folly. It's an underrated virtue, maybe more so even than Kindness. Sometimes I'm thrown a curveball on the show, as when she performs a Wonderbolts rap, and then I just remember that this is Pinkie we're talking about. My particular read on Cheese Sandwich is that he would immediately think, "well, yes. That was the obvious thing to do." He wouldn't understand it 100% of the time, of course, but he would most of the time, and he'd take the other fraction on faith.
I'm not so keen on dark readings of Equestria. I can see its purpose sometimes, as an AU illustration of what they don't have, but mostly, I don't see the point.
As for Pinkie's parties getting all orgiastic: this is the pony who was accused of planning a wedding as though it were a six year old's birthday party, to which her response was a sincere, broken "thank you." Not a bad model, if you ask me. Cheese's edge more towards a grown up or a teenaged model, but we're still talking about cake and streamers. It's much more "something for all ages," and not at all "21+ only."
As Big MacIntosh says, "ee-yup."
If you'd asked me the week before Pinkie Pride aired whether I thought there should even be a hint of romance in MLP, I would have said, "good golly, no! There's plenty of it everywhere else." I certainly would have scoffed at the idea of my supporting a Pinkie Pie ship. I could have gone on happily not shipping any of the characters at all. There was something about this concept and this episode that completely turned my thinking around. I think the admiration and respect is a big part of it, and another component is his explicit statement that she gave him something wonderful and life-changing without even noticing it. And as much as he is in awe of that (and yes, I think he acknowledges her as his superior, or at least that he would not exist in his current form without her), that actually is enough. She doesn't have to "love him back." All he wants to do is to demonstrate that: "this is the gift you gave me: I have made good use of it."
And then things temporarily reel out of control, as they will among young creatures, and particularly (and I hope this doesn't sound sexist) among young masculine creatures, who can sometimes do some rather silly things in pursuit of admiration. One thinks of peacocks. But I don't think of that as a vice. It's just normal. And upstaging is what he does for a living. Among ponies, what you do is deeply tied to who you are. The end involves both of them acknowledging the ways in which they blew it, moving beyond that, and joining forces.
That's pretty awesome even without romantic love whipped into the mix. Or, as you might say, admirable.
I don't usually become interested in "ships" unless I think there's some kind of realistic basis for it. So for me as a writer, it's a chance to explore some mystic elements that go beyond love-marriage-baby carriage, not that there's anything wrong with that. But, naturally, retaining the comic elements. I'm still writing light comedy, but it's a pleasure to see the more esoteric angle!
Oh yes. Her virtue is the Element hardest to analogize to the Medieval Scholastic Seven, but it's one the Medievals recognized in practice, as witness the strange social position of jesters. Pinkie's virtue strikes through pretension (which is why she can dispel illusion) and restores good cheer -- it is inimical to fear.
Cheese Sandwich is in a very real sense Pinkie's disciple. Which, given the romantic attraction between them, would make him her equivalent of Mary Magdalene. If that's not too serious (and to some blasphemous) a comparison. Though it's not a perfect analogy, either, in part because Pinkie's message is a bit different.
I don't think that Equestria is a perfect society -- I think that there are dark ponies and dark currents here and there -- but I do think that it is, overall, a pretty good society. Probably their equivalent of what the best cultures of the West are to Humans, and then the Ponies tend to be a bit nicer than Humans, by and large.
I think there are some ways Equestria could be better. I think there are a lot more ways it could be worse. By and large, while I don't think that Celestia's regime or her servants are perfect, I think they are on the whole benevolent, honest and in most ways fairly competent.
Yes. One has to seriously distort Pinkie's character as shown on the series in order to see her as a promulgator of drunken debauchery. Yeah, some alcoholic beverages flow at some of her parties, and yes, I'm sure someponies sometimes have sex at (or more precisely near) them, because she throws big parties, but liquor and random sex just isn't what she's about. What she's about is spreading the innocent joy of childhood, and showing adults that they can still experience this.
And that's what Cheese found and finds special about her. Which is not to say that they can't lust after each other as well, because that's part of love too, but to assume that Pinkie's main focus in life is "sex" misreads her. Rather obviously, as a charismatic traveling pony, Cheese has probably had plenty of merely sexual opportunities -- that's not what he finds special about Pinkie Pie.
There was something about this concept and this episode that completely turned my thinking around. I think the admiration and respect is a big part of it, and another component is his explicit statement that she gave him something wonderful and life-changing without even noticing it.
Both agape and caritas are big parts of Pinkie's nature. It's actually characteristic of her to give off so much love that she could turn around somepony else's life without even trying all that hard.
Cheese is an expression of the same spirit as Pinkie Pie in masculine form. Which makes him very special and important in my verse, because Paradise only sires Daughters. Cheese is proof that the joy that produced Paradise in the alternate world isn't dead in this world; that Paradise and that which it creates can inspire creatures wholly of the main world to return the sentiment and radiate it themselves. Or in other words "Paradise is Spreading."
And I actually do think that Pinkie was beginning to love him back, and not just in terms of her usual expression of diffuse love for all Ponykind. I think that Cheese was starting to awaken her capacity for romantic love -- without even particularly trying to do so. And will, if they meet again and spend much time together.
As I said, "recognition."
They realize that they can complement, rather than oppose, one another.
The moment when Cheese confesses his true origin to Pinkie Pie is very significant, because that lets her see all his behavior in the perspective that you just stated. Which is I think when she starts to realize that he loves her.
It seems I have a bit of a bad habit of not favoriting your new stories. Hopefully I've corrected this.
In any case, a great chapter. In Claire's birth, you captured the shift from panicked to disquieted to relieved magnificently, both in grandmother and mother. Claire's multiple faces and limbs, arranged with symmetry, artistry, and intent, call to mind the portrayal of some Hindu gods. I can imagine each of her tongues holding a different item representing one of her roles as the Gate of Paradise, and it's kind of fantastic.
Pinkie's birth was impossibly perfect in every sense, both in terms of events and writing. I think she guided your keyboard as much as her own entrance into the world.
Oh, and Maud is as awesome as she always is, but that doesn't come as any kind of surprise.
Also, re: comments:
Mental image number two: Cheese polishing Pinkie's hooves with a rubber chicken. Again, kind of fantastic.
In any case, eagerly looking forward to more.
4357859
This is a simply gorgeous idea.
The way I look at it, there have been party ponies before, and they've always had more or less the same task: to keep Joy alive. I don't have as developed a mythology as you do, but in a way, they're Equestria's Franciscans, in the sense that they're usually itinerants, they tend not to acquire property and the "rules" involve freely giving happiness. There are never a lot of them: it isn't inherited or inheritable. You've probably heard the expression "you can't teach funny?" There are no written rules, no real history. They just pop up, seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes one will take a younger one under his wing for a short while and pass along some of his tricks, but that's about it. (Cheese suspects they're all Earth Ponies. Cheese is right.) Point is, they don't have the lineage or historical record or anything like the lore that the Friends of Paradise do.
But there hasn't, in fact, been "a party pony quite like Cheese," or not for a hay of a long time, because there hasn't been a Pinkie for a hay of a long time. The more I think about it, the more I think that on some level, the magic that drives Pinkie picked him out. Why him? He doesn't know, and I'm still trying to figure this one out.
But I'll take "Paradise is spreading," too. Simple, covers everything, and as I said, gorgeous.
*late
*extraneous colon
*to
... "Thai Ponies"? What are those?
img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120409090108/mlp/images/thumb/b/b4/Pipe_on_Pinkie%27s_tongue_S2E24.png/320px-Pipe_on_Pinkie%27s_tongue_S2E24.png
I have no idea what you're talking about. Pinkie is a perfectly normal pony, with a perfectly normal pony tongue. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Dude. Stop making your stories better than the last. There's a limit to the good an author can produce. You'll cap out, then it's all downhill from there. It's the conservation narrative, dude.
Anyway, this story is just plain awesome, and this chapter may be the best thing ever.
Re:CheesePie
I actually ship TwiCheesePieLuna in this 'verse as of the revelation that Twilight was Minty in Dragonshy. I somehow see Cheese and Luna getting along really well, perhaps like Pinkie and Rainbow. Twilight would be stuck in the middle of three utterly insane ponies and no way out! Until she realizes that she's also completely bonkers...
4481885
Think Siamese Twins...
¡The Daws!
5162225
Well, it's about her whole family. But it will become more Pinkie-centric as the story progresses, for obvious reasons.