Broken Heartstrings, Part Two
The car pulled up in front of the house in Leesburg, Virginia. A flagpole in the yard flew the flag of the Principality of Equestria, and the as the car stopped in the driveway, the driver, a human, got out of the car and opened the back door. “Ambassdor, we’re here.”
Lyra blearily opened her eyes. “Huh…wha?” She looked – but they just left the embassy just a few seconds ago! She was going to do some paperwork on the way and…Oh, who am I kidding? She hadn’t been sleeping well in the past few weeks. She hadn’t been doing much of anything the past few weeks.
She grabbed her briefcase, fished keys out of her pocket and got out of the car. “Thanks for the ride, Terry. Got plans?”
He smiled. “Oh, absolutely. Wife took the kids to see her parents in Chicago, so it’s just me and the Nats. They’re playing the Padres this weekend, and if San Diego wins, it’s going to make things dicey for us in the second half of the season. We’re barely just ahead of the Mets.”
“Go Nats,” she said. “Maybe Bradshaw’ll shut ‘em down tonight and the Mets’ll lose bad to Oklahoma City.”
“That would be just beautiful.” As Lyra made her way to the door and Terry went back to the car, he stopped. “Ambassador?”
She looked up. “Hrm?”
“Congratulations. You of all people deserve this weekend.”
Lyra gave her chauffeur a great smile, the kind of smile that said volumes. “See you in a couple of weeks!” She raced into the house, happy as a lark.
The house still smelled of roses and candles, sandalwood and other delicate scents, just a few of the changes that had occurred in the past five years. She’d made some changes to the house, some things she didn’t like now gone and some things her ex-wife had put in the house…well, Lyra was pretty sure Goodwill made the best of them. The house had undergone such a radically different look, it almost seemed as though a different couple lived there now. Which wasn’t too far from the truth.
That being said, she went over to the phone.
“YOU HAVE TWO MESSAGES. FIRST MESSAGE:”
“Ambassador Heartstrings? St John Colmes. I’m the new ambassador for the United Kingdom, and I was hoping to meet with you sometime. I understand you’re somewhat busy this weekend – my congratulations – but when you return I’m available whenever you are. Please give my office a call – I understand you’re well familiar with the number from your conversations with my predecessor, who I understand will be at the ceremony. Again, my congratulations to you, and I’ll talk to you soon.”
“NEXT MESSAGE.”
“Hey, Lyra? It’s me, DJ. Just got in yesterday from LA. I’m really touched that you want me to be part of the bridesmaids – or is that bridlesmaids, ha! Anyway, I’ll drop my stuff at my parents, then meet you at your place. By the way, I’m seriously jealous – Mike and I have to at least wait until we finish college before we think about it. Well, I’ll let you get back to being Bridezilla. See you when I get there!”
“END OF MESSAGES.”
“Hey, sis – glad you’re home.”
Lyra turned and dived at her older brother. “You made it, Harper!”
Harper Heartstrings laughed. “As if I’d miss this mess you made for the world.” Big brother looked down at little sister, and it was amazing in the similarities between the two; even though they were two years apart in difference, they looked almost like twins. “I’m proud of you, Lyra.”
She let go of him and sat down on the couch, he beside her. “I’m so nervous, I feel like a little filly – like I’m getting married for the first time all over again.”
“Well, in a sense you are: first marriage between a pony and a human; or as they’re seeing it, a human and a non-human.”
“Yeah, and you’re going to be meeting the ‘loser’ in that race – at least for some reason, she thinks she is, even though I keep telling her it’s not a contest. DJ will probably complain up a small storm, but she means well.”
“Well, we’ll just have to give her some grief about it then, won’t we?” a familiar voice called from upstairs. Lyra leapt off the couch and raced towards the stairs, squealing like a schoolfilly when she saw who it was.
“Paul, I thought human tradition said you’re not supposed to see the bride the night before the wedding.”
“Um, that’s in the bridal gown, gorgeous – and that’s probably a Christian thing…I think. I’m Jewish, so it’s not like I keep up on that stuff.”
Getting up from the couch, Harper looked at his soon-to-be brother-in-law. “So, you ready for the bachelor’s party?”
“Yeah, Adam’s got it all planned. I just don’t want you to get any grief, Harper.”
He shrugged. “There’s only two unicorns with my coat color here on human Earth, and only one is a male country singer popular on the Billboard country charts right now. I don’t have much chance to hide, so I’ll deal.”
The two males continued to talk as Lyra made plans for tomorrow. Her friends would be here soon, and the last minute details settled. She still had to call to make sure that the honeymoon was all set up – Germany was going to be great, though Paul joked that only she would want to spend their honeymoon watching soccer games. And then there were all the rest of the hundreds of details that needed to be dealt with before tomorrow, not the least of which was the dozens of guests that were invited.
She wondered if one in particular would come. She wondered if even sending the invite was a good idea.
In the five years since, the house was as broken as its owner. At first glance, a pony couldn’t tell, but upon closer inspection, that’s where the cracks in the foundation were seen, both in the house and the pony that lived in it.
“Are you sure you’re not coming?” Twilight asked. “She’d be happy to see you again.”
“Twilight, just leave me alone,” Bon-Bon moaned. Tomorrow should have been just another day. Instead, it would be the worst day of her life.
“Leave her alone, Twilight,” Octavia said. “She did this to herself.”
“That’s a pretty harsh thing to say to a friend, Octavia.”
“Not really; I don’t consider her a friend anymore,” Octavia huffed. “If she hadn’t been such a coward five years ago, this would be just another day for her – instead of her worst nightmare.”
“Tavi, that’s enough,” Vinyl said. “We’ve gotta go, so let’s get going. We’ll see you later, Bon-Bon.” As they walked out of the house, Vinyl looked at Twilight. “Please tell me you’ve got someone keeping an eye on her. It’s going to be hell for her this weekend.”
“I had Sweetie Belle set an alarm spell on the house. Anything out of the ordinary happens, it’ll notify just about everypony in the area that Bon-Bon knows, and Sweetie’s staying at a nearby hotel just in case.”
Octavia was surprised; Rarity and Sweetie Belle were once as close as sisters could be, but things had changed far more than anyone had ever expected in the past five years – and the former fashionista wasn’t the mare she was twenty years ago. “Not at her sister’s?”
Twilight sighed in frustration. “Between Sweetie Belle being my apprentice and me taking over Cinnamon’s education, Rarity’s accusing me of stealing our family’s foals. I’m ignoring it – it’s just Rarity being Rarity, but Sweetie Belle was seriously ticked. They’re not as close as they used to be way back when.”
“Well, get that gate open, Twilight,” Vinyl said. “We’re running late as is.” At that, the purple unicorn’s horn lit up with arcane forces, and the very fabric of reality tore apart in front of them, leaving nothing but a soft blue shimmer. The three ponies walked through the gate, and it disappeared as if it never existed.
Watching from the window, part of Bon-Bon wanted to go, wanted to see her again, wanted to kiss her again, hold her, tell her she was so, so sorry and to beg to take her back. But with that portal shut now, that avenue was closed forever. Tomorrow, Lyra would remarry, and Bon-Bon would forever be alone. Just as she deserved.
She regretted that choice she made now, that choice she made five years past. She thought she could live with the choice; that it would only be temporary and Lyra would come back to Ponyville and they could go back to the way they were, back to the days before humans and the return of a human-raised pony long thought dead. But that was naïve, foolish – time never rolls back, it just keeps going forward and dragging everything along with it.
It was a year after she moved back that she found out Lyra had moved on, had fallen in love again – with a human…shockingly, a male. When she found that out, she knew their relationship was truly over and Bon-Bon tried to start a new life: she dated a couple other mares, but nothing ever stuck, and each failed relationship always ended in the same way, each paramour accusing her of turning them into twisted versions of Lyra.
And how could she not? That’s what was in her mind every night and nearly in her thoughts every day. Those beautiful eyes, that sleek coat, those tender sighs that she once knew were for her and now belonged to someone else. It became so bad she fantasized about Lyra all the time, at night, in the sheets when she was so cold and alone. She could almost feel her former lover’s forelegs around her as she cuddled, feel her breath on her neck….
Bon-Bon was slowly driving herself mad with her memories. And it showed in many small, barely noticeable ways: there was no more light in her eyes, and she developed a false grin humans referred to as a “Pan Am Smile.” Her confectionary still did wonderful business, but long-time purchasers noticed something different about it, as though the love in Bon-Bon’s craft was gone and everything was being done by rote action. The paintjob on the house began to peel, left untouched; the furniture inside no longer quite as taken care of as it used to be. By the time the fourth year came around and the news that Lyra was to marry her boyfriend, the unicorn’s ex-wife was nothing more than a shell of herself.
Bon-Bon knew the house was being watched, that even if she wanted to end her life nopony would allow that. And so Bon-Bon sat in a hell of her own making as reality came down on her.
Celestia smiled. “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” To the side of the alicorn princess, Paul’s father, a rabbi, gave the traditional Jewish blessing for a happy marriage.
Lyra and Paul kissed as the crowd clapped in applause. Watching from his seat on the bride’s family’s side, Midshipman 3rd Class Mike Hengst, USNA, watched the happy couple…and his girlfriend, DJ, standing as one of the bridesmaids. DJ had expressed frustration that they weren’t the first pony/human married couple, to which Mike had pointed out they had been the first human/non-human couple, period, to which she then admitted that she’d been joking and she was really happy for Lyra and Paul.
As the newly-married couple walked down the aisle and headed towards the reception, DJ walked up to her boyfriend. “They look so wonderful. When are you going to make an honest woman of me?”
“Isn’t that honest mare?” he joked. In turn, she gently slugged him in the arm – gently being a relative term, as with her being an earth pony with significantly increased strength as compared the average human woman, it hurt like hell. As she looked at him with that pout she’d long mastered that weaseled into his heart, he sighed. “We agreed that we’d do it after you finish college and I graduate from the academy and get commissioned,” he reminded her. Ever the gentleman, he offered her his arm, which she of course took as they headed towards the reception.
“I know, but...you said they’ve been stationing more personnel in the Fifth Fleet and NAVCENT, and if you get assigned there, we’ll have to wait until you transfer somewhere else.” That was true, and that was a problem: many of the Middle Eastern countries refused to accept the ponies and denounced them as demons; one of the officers at the Academy told him about a editorial in an extremist newspaper talking about “the unnatural bestiality of infidels consorting with demons” – and then lengthily discussed DJ and Mike by name. The lieutenant in question who told him about it was a Muslim himself and told him that “normal members of my religion don’t care who you marry – it doesn’t affect them. But as I’m sure you know, things are different over in Batshit-istan.” But it unnerved Mike that they knew so much about both his life and hers – especially DJ, who longed to be nothing more than a normal “human.” Mike had told his parents and asked his father to tell DJ’s parents about it; everyone in turn agreed this was something DJ didn’t need to know about.
“Mike, is something wrong? You’ve got that lost in thought look in your eyes again.”
“Yeah. I was just thinking about what you were talking about. If something like that happens, would you wait for me?”
“Do you really have to ask that? I knew a long time ago you were the only man for me, and that will never change.” She leaned into his arm. “I am always yours.”
“I know,” he said with a soft smile, and as he looked at the happy couple by the wedding cake, he said, “and someday, love, someday that will be us.”
The next day, the newlyweds were on a plane to Munich. Paul was asleep in the chair next to her, while she read the latest issue of Cycle World on her iPad – she promised him she wouldn’t bring work along while they were on their honeymoon, and she kept to it. Well, almost to it: while in the airport, she chatted with a couple from Japan who had been in the US for fertility treatments, only to have them fail. They had told her since that happened, they were thinking about adopting. Lyra found that sweet and just off-handedly mentioned that orphans in Equestria rarely if ever got adopted, something that the Crown hoped they could someday improve. When the couple expressed interest, Lyra pointed them in the way of the Honolulu consulate; as there was no embassy in Japan yet, the Honolulu branch was in charge of Japanese issues along with Blossomforth, who had been tapped to be the ambassador to Japan as soon as relations were set. They sincerely thanked her and went off.
Lyra smiled; it was nice to know that she’d helped someone along. She didn’t know if the adoption would go through, but considering the War of the Elements was now six years in the past, hopefully things had changed. She would have to pass Blossomforth the name of the family…Umega? Uema? No – Ueda. That was it.
At her side, Paul woke up. “Oh, we there yet?”
“No, we’re over the Atlantic right now.”
“Ah. I hate flying, personally. Always afraid I’m going to die in a plane crash – yeah, I know the chances are infinitesimal and there hasn’t been a plane crash in the US in three years now, but it’s always something that’s just nagged me since I was a kid.”
“Well, I like it.”
“It’s also your first time on a plane and we haven’t hit turbulence yet,” he said. “What are you reading? Hope it’s not work.”
She smiled. “I promised you I wouldn’t. I’m reading Cycle World. My MRX is getting long in the tooth, and I was thinking about replacing it with a new bike, maybe a Fischer GRF Special or a Buell 1125R Renaissance.”
He grinned. “Or you could suddenly become sane and get yourself a Harley softail like mine.”
“Uh, sweetie? Buells are made by Harley; they’re just sport bikes, not hogs. And personally, I prefer sport bikes.”
“Well, what about that Ducati you had your eye on last month?”
“Read the reviews,” she said, rapping a hoof on the tablet screen. “Breaks down too often and the reviewer says it’s not worth it.”
“Well,” he said whimsically, “just make sure you get something with adequate horsepower.”
“Ugh – that joke is as old as DJ’s ‘pony with a ponycar.’”
“Just as long as I get to keep making bad jokes with you for the rest of my life, Lyra Heartstrings.”
“Nope,” she said as she leaned in to kiss him. “Lyra Phillips.”
A bunch of ponies pointed and laughed at a gaunt, solitary figure as she walked through Ponyville. She looked utterly destroyed, and it was clear the mare had seen better days.
“Hey! Stop that! That’s not nice!” a young pegasus filly said. She was just five years old, and surprisingly, she was here, standing up to the bullies.
“Whatever. Who do you think you are, brat?” the oldest colt said.
“I’m Cinnamon Star!” the filly proudly proclaimed. “My Mommy’s Fluttershy, the Element of Kindness!”
“Yeah, but you aren’t,” one of the other colts, said, taking a threatening step towards Cinnamon. The young filly suddenly realized that maybe standing up to defend the mare, who hadn’t noticed and was still walking on, was not a good idea after all.
A figure rounded the corner – a pegasus, majestic and yellow in color. Her outstretched wings flaring in the sunlight, the sun obscured her face; but the colts knew who the pegasus was. “Is there a problem, gentlecolts?” the pony said in a mild, even voice tinged with unassailable authority. The three colts responded by running in the opposite direction as if their lives depended on it.
“Try that again!” Cinnamon said to their backs, unaware her mother had been the one to stop them.
“Sweetie,” Fluttershy said to her daughter, “I’m proud that you stood up for that mare, but you need to be more careful, okay?” Before Cinnamon could answer, Fluttershy placed the filly upon her back. “Now, we’ve got to get going for Canterlot – you’re late for your studies with your aunt.”
“Yay! I get to see Aunt Twilight today!” Cinnamon smiled; Aunt Twilight was bestest pony, and Aunt Sweetie Belle, who was also there often, always gave Cinnamon candy. Once in a while, she’d get lucky and Uncle Spike or Cadance would be there and things would be even better. But a thought crossed the filly’s mind and she asked, “Mommy? Who’s that mare?”
Fluttershy turned and looked at the wreck of a pony that was once Bon-Bon. It hurt her to see the earth pony so destroyed, but there was nothing anypony could do: Bon-Bon had just about cut everypony out of her life, closed her store and nowadays only left her increasingly dilapidated home to get food from the market. Ponies were now calling her the recluse and crazymare; enough so that even Berry Punch’s undue reputation had been redeemed.
“She was somepony,” Fluttershy diplomatically told her daughter, “who was happy once. And I hope that someday she’ll be that way again.”
“Happy Anniversary, love.” Lyra felt absolutely spoiled; Paul, in addition to his myriad other talents, was also a good cook. In her previous relationship, Bon-Bon had done all the cooking, and so Lyra had never really learned. Now, she was trying, and while she was nowhere near her husband’s skill level, she was learning. Fortunately, she did pick up a few extra things here and there, as evidenced by her put the finishing touches on the chocolate cake.
“Has it been two years already?” he asked, lovingly running fingers through her mane and then caressing her horn. “It just seems like yesterday that we had a rude awakening in my apartment in Vienna.”
“Yeah,” she said, taking his hands in her forehooves and kissing them. “Seven years, two of them married.” She smiled at the man she loved with all her heart. At first, their relationship didn’t go well; both of them were using each other and they knew it. But in time, they stopped and became friends, real friends, true friends – and when that happened, genuine love had taken hold. It was a nervous excitement for both the first time they made love, truly made love as a couple instead of just being “friends with benefits.” And then three years ago, while at an exhibition match between United and Barca, he popped the question – via the jumbotron screen, of course. There was no other answer she could give, no other answer she wanted to give.
It had helped much that his parents had adored her from the very start; Paul’s mother Joan was a painter and for most of her life, much to Lyra’s chagrin, the subject of her paintings had been unicorns – not real unicorns like Lyra, but human Earth’s mythological horse with a horn, goat’s gruff and lion’s tail. Paul’s father joked that because Lyra’s hooves weren’t cloven she wasn’t kosher to marry, but they’d make an exception since she was so nice – that, and like Lyra, David Phillips was a huge soccer fan.
But the other help in her life had been, strangely enough, DJ. The human-raised pony helped Lyra through a lot of things that the so-called pony authority on humans knew nothing about; the older mare learned as much from the younger one as did vice versa. She was there to help DJ when her heart had been broken; her fears had come true and Mike had been stationed at Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain as part of the UN’s constant watch over the powder keg that was Somalia.
As Lyra understood it, the area had once been three prosperous African nations, but starting in the 1970s, decades of neglect and corruption had turned army against army and turned everything into a perpetual warzone. With the addition of piracy and terrorists attempting to carve their own nation out of the ruins, the United Nations was left to piece together an international coalition to deal with the problem. Unfortunately, every attempt to rectify the situation, whether through diplomatic or military means, ended in brutal failure. With chaos now a way of life in the former countries of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, international politics had essentially merged them into the latter “nation”, just for convenience; in the “Greater Somalia Conflict Zone”, human politics were far more diverse and troubling than those from Alter-Earth had ever expected. The only country left in that part of Africa that remained stable and free was Djibouti and that was only due to the constant presence of peacekeepers from the Netherlands and Turkey, later backed up by Draconia, Griphonia and Gazellis.
“Hon, you’re thinking about work again, aren’t you?”
“That obvious?” she asked, to which he nodded her head. “Sorry. I just can’t stop thinking about the Somalia situation, and how sad it is.”
“It’s been that way since Pop was a kid,” Paul murmured as he snaked his arms around his wife. “Something…just happened there in 1979 and the country descended into chaos, and it was exacerbated by the famines in Ethiopia, then the civil war that split Ethiopia and Eritrea, and then after the assassination of the Somali president in 2004, everything completely went to hell. But why are you thinking about that?”
“I was talking to AC the other day. The UN’s asking if REA troops would be willing to take over the Dutch part of the peacekeeping mission once their mission ends at the end of the year.”
“This world is crazy, Lyra – we humans aren’t very good at keeping the peace.”
“You’re better than you realize,” she said to her husband. “This world could have been destroyed a billion times over with all the weapons mankind has at its disposal, yet it hasn’t happened. A small nuclear-armed country like Iran could easily defeat all the militaries of my Earth, and yet that hasn’t happened either. Humans might be chaotic, but they’re also very peaceful. I should know – I’m married to the best one of them all,” she said with a smile.
“Well, this might not be the best Earth in the world to raise our children on, but it’s the only one we’ve got. Okay, well, yours too, but that’s not the point,” he said, tenderly kissing her.
Lyra immediately caught what he meant. “You…you mean it?”
He nodded. “Of course, we can’t have children of our own, but I’d have no problem adopting. There are tons of children out there that could use parents, and if I remember what you said once, the situation’s even worse on your Earth.”
She gave him a wide smile. They were going to have a family.
“Redheart,” Twilight said to the doctor standing by her side, “thank you. I really appreciate you going to the trouble.” Twilight’s face was stoic, but for anyone looking at the anguish in her eyes, it was too much to see.
“No need to thank me, Twilight,” the doctor said. “This was going to happen sooner or later, and I’m glad we did this before it was too late.”
Vinyl turned to cry into the chest of her coltfriend. She’d met Licorice Pizza, the lead singer and guitarist pegasus of the rock band HUFSTOMPR shortly after Lyra’s wedding, and though they’d never tied the knot they were clearly together for life. The stallion held his crying fillyfriend to his chest, whispering, “She’ll get better, Vinyl. She’ll get better, I promise.”
Octavia, held by her husband, couldn’t look anymore and turned away both in sorrow and shame. She now regretted everything she’d ever said, wished she could pull back every nasty comment. She never wanted this to happen, never.
The group was at Elysian Fields, Equestria’s top mental health care center in the center of the country, a hundred miles north of San Caballo. The grounds were well-kept and beautiful and the staff was some of the best caretakers in all of Equestria and Redheart had joined them when she got her doctorate in medicine. She was an old friend from Ponyville, and it was nice to catch up on old times. But that wasn’t the reason they were here.
The reason was the pony sitting on the bench, alone save for the nurse that hovered nearby just in case. She was catatonic, her mind gone to wherever those afflicted with mental illness went. She bore the wounds from her suicide attempt; it had been sheer luck that Sweetie Belle had forgotten to remove the alarm wards that had alerted everyone in time. But Bon-Bon was now gone, never to return. Instinctively, the earth pony curled into a ball, clutching a doll that looked disturbingly like a plushie version of Lyra.
“Should we tell Lyra?” Twilight asked as she continued to watch what was left of her friend clasp the last memories of her shattered mind.
“No. I don’t want her to know about this, not like this,” Octavia said. “Ivory and I have a guest performance with the New York Philharmonic next week. We’ll leave a day or two early and visit Lyra. She should know about this, but…this would only hurt her if we were blunt about it.”
It was a month later when Lyra and Paul visited Equestria. Both of them were already hurting: the Equestriani adoption commission had turned down their request to adopt a foal due to the “instability of a pony raised by a human”. Meanwhile, on human Earth the couple had been turned down because of Lyra’s age; though she didn’t look it, she was in her fifties now and that raised a concern to the various adopting agencies they’d worked with. But now the news of what had happened to Bon-Bon nearly tore Lyra apart. It wasn’t her fault and yet she felt so guilty. She could never thank her husband enough for agreeing to go with her.
And so there they stood, in front of the broken earth pony. Lyra looked at her old love; she looked so frail and fragile, so devoid of life. And yet she grasped a strange plushie that no one knew where she got from, that looked eerily like the celeste unicorn mare. Bon-Bon stared straight at Lyra, and yet nopony knew who she looked at, as her blank face gave no sign.
“Bonnie,” Lyra whispered, as she brushed Bon-Bon’s mane. “It’s me. It’s Lyra. Please, come back to us. You don’t deserve this, you deserve so much better. Live your life, Bonnie. Live it for yourself.” And then, the heartfelt admission: “Live it for me.” Leaning forward, Lyra kissed Bon-Bon as he had so many years ago. A part of Lyra’s skin bristled; standing not too far away, there was no way her husband hadn’t seen that.
But a miracle occurred: for once, there was a flicker of life, of recognition in Bon-Bon’s cyan eyes, and just as quickly it was gone again. But for the first time since she’d been admitted to the facility, there was a soft, fillyish smile on her face, as if she’d received the greatest gift in the world. Lyra whispered, “Live and be free, Bonnie.” Looking at the nurse, she said, “Please take care of her.” The nurse nodded and Lyra went off to join her husband.
As Lyra joined up with Paul, he scratched the back of his head. “Well…that was interesting.”
“Please don’t be mad at me, Paul. She just looked….” Lyra had no words she could say.
“You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?” His tone was not unkind nor was it an accusation.
“Yes.” Lyra couldn’t deny it: after all this time, her heart was still there. “Do you hate me?”
He looked at her, surprised. “How could I? You’re my wife and I love you. You still love me, don’t you?”
“I married you, didn’t I? Of course I love you, with all my heart.”
“No, not with all your heart,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. Love is a very human thing – excuse the term – and it doesn’t always make sense. Would you be mad at me if I told you I still cared about Kendra after all this time?”
“Not at all. Had circumstances been different, you would be married to her.”
“Then why would I deny you your feelings? Lyra, we are together forever, but I know that Bon-Bon was a larger part of your life than I’ve been. That just doesn’t go away, and you wouldn’t be the person you are if you let it.”
She leaned into his shoulder. “You’re the best man in the world, Paul Phillips.”
He grinned. “That’s because I have the best wife in the world, Lyra Phillips.”
“Lyra, I’ve got great news!” Twilight chirped.
“Look, I hate to break this news to you – I realize this might come as a shock to you, but your niece just got married,” Lyra said with playful sarcasm. “It’s her day today, so you might just want to pay a teensy bit of attention to the happy couple.” Lyra and Paul sat at the table with Twilight and…whichever guardspony one (or more) of the princesses insist escort the unicorn archmagus to the wedding. Twilight wasn’t much for relationships. On the other end of the room, the happy couple were cutting the wedding cake together, a dozen years since they’d first met and went through hell and back for this most joyous moment.
“That’s what I’m talking about, goofball,” she said with a smile. “I’ve spent the past year or so working on improving Star Swirl’s amniomorphic spell.”
“So? It’s an incredible spell, but all it does is just let us assume a human form down to the organic level,” Lyra said. When her husband looked interested, she said, “I never mentioned it because it doesn’t go all the way – I still couldn’t get pregnant. And you don’t seem to mind me being a unicorn instead of human at night, so….”
“Oh.” Paul was downcast. All avenues of adoption had failed, either because of his being human or her being too old. They both wanted a family, and now that chance was gone.
“Ah, but you didn’t let me finish,” Twilight said with a smile that made her look like the cat that ate the canary. “I’ve improved the spell so that it goes down to the genetic level.”
That caught Lyra’s attention. “You did…what?”
Twilight held up a sienna-colored rock with spikes of a chartreuse mineral jutting out from it; the rock pulsated with magic energy. “DJ and Mike had been discussing having children for the longest time, and I wanted to do something for my niece. But then I realized there’s another couple that could benefit from this. Now, this stone is for DJ; she’s just an earth pony with no ability for magic manipulation, so this should help her cast the spell. But a unicorn trained in basic spells, well, anyone like that should be able to keep the spell powered for about twelve hours at a time, though it might exhaust the user’s magic for a few days.”
Lyra looked at Twilight, then at Paul. The sudden smile on her face was absolutely beatific.
“Twilight, you’re my new best friend for all time, did I ever mention that?” Lyra said as tears of joy started to water in her eyes.
“Are you ready, hon?” Paul asked.
Lyra removed her clothing. “Here goes nothing. Remember: don’t touch me until I say so. I’ve never tried anything remotely like this,” she said, her voice nervous with both anticipation and worry.
“You’ll do fine, love,” Paul said. He was also nervous. He knew nothing about magic, but a lifetime of wild guesses and complete clueless explanations by human creative artists had him completely worried.
“Okay. Here goes.” She closed her eyes, and her horn began to glow with power the shade of newly sprouted leaves.
And then she exploded.
Paul freaked at first, but the motes of light surrounded him, caressed him, let him know everything was okay. He grinned; it was her, somehow. The lights flitted like a small universe of butterflies, then centered on a single spot before coalescing into a human shape, and then into a young human woman not visibly older than he.
“Lyra?” he asked, wondering if it was really his wife. The woman stood 5’6”, looking to be the average weight, with a lithe build. She had green hair with a broad white stripe down the middle; her hair cascaded down past her waist. Her hair was the same colors in other parts that had hair, he thought for a brief moment, as she opened her eyes with those familiar golden eyes.
“Did it…?” the woman spoke, his wife’s voice ringing clear. It had a softer timbre to it, probably because she didn’t have a muzzle now.
“Lyra?” he asked again.
“Paul? You look so…different,” she said, rising to her legs and then tripping while she tried to gain her balance. He moved forward to catch her.
“You look beautiful,” he smiled. “You’ve always looked beautiful to me, but…well, your human form is as beautiful as you normally are.”
She looked at him and the love in her eyes shone. “Oh, Paul….” She sighed as she leaned into his chest, feeling the warm touch of her skin against his chest, hearing his heartbeat from the side of her head instead of the top, feeling her hands hold him….
“HANDS!” She bounced back, lifting the appendages to her face, feeling them on her skin, wiggling her fingers. “I have hands!”
“Yes, you do,” Paul said, chuckling.
“No, you don’t understand: hands!” It was as though this was a breakthrough for all of ponykind. She was giddy as a schoolgirl.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Hungry.”
“Let’s get you some food, then,” he said, slipping a bathrobe around her. “You’ll probably need your strength for tonight.”
“But…. But…. Hands!” she said, as though she’d just discovered the all-important thing about being human.
In turn, he kissed her. The feeling was intense, electric, like nothing she’d ever felt before with anypony in her life. This was the big secret of humanity: their emotions were far stronger than those of ponies, and it was what drove them even as they mastered those emotions. The feeling threatened to overwhelm her when he stopped.
“Wow….” she said, giving him a smile that said volumes.
“Hands?” he asked.
“Screw the hands. Let’s get some food, and then let’s explore the other things that make humans what they are,” she said with a tone that indicated there’d be much experimentation tonight.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Phillips,” the doctor said. “They’re both healthy children.”
“Can I see them?” Lyra said, exhausted. She’d just gone through an extremely painful birth, not to mention the fact that she had twins, which was extremely rare in ponies…but not so rare for humans, of which her children were half. She was also extremely jealous of DJ, who had gotten pregnant at the same time and had an easy delivery of her son, Stuart, the week prior.
Her fur matted with sweat, she grinned like a lunatic. She looked at Paul, who had been there for the delivery. “How do they look, honey?” She heard the cries of two newborn children, and it was music to her ears.
“Here they are,” the doctor said, passing the two children to the jubilant mother. Lyra took her children in her arms and just cried for joy as she held two little pink things, softly yawning and so, so very tiny; her son and daughter. One had a shock of green hair with a white stripe, while the other, with Paul’s black hair, briefly opened her eyes, revealing Lyra’s own golden ones.
Colby and Orchid, both named after Lyra’s parents – a cheese sommelier and a florist, she’d told Paul. It was pure luck that both just happened to match human names, much to her pleasant surprise. She’d expected a battle with him over the names; human names were, despite not being tied to cutie marks, much more stringent than she expected.
“You’re special, you know that?” Lyra said to her children. “You’re the true children of love, of two people who did everything to bring you into the world.” Both children yawned again, and she looked at her husband.
“They’re as beautiful as their mother,” he said softly.
“They’re as wonderful as their father,” the unicorn replied.
“Now, Mrs. Phillips, I don’t need to remind you that your children will need checkups for the meanwhile,” the doctor said. He conferred with a colleague – a unicorn doctor brought in from Canterlot just for the delivery – and he continued. “Your children, while human in appearance, are technically chimeras – human/pony hybrids. I strongly recommend bringing them by more than the usual scheduled visits for human children. Dr. Hearthealthy and I will work out a schedule for you.”
“Thank you,” she said with a depleted but triumphant grin. “Thank you so much.”
In her new apartment in Manehattan, Bon-Bon sighed. She’d finally started over, after having been declared back to normal health. It had been a horrific time for her, having spent two years in a catatonic state. But one day, she dreamt Lyra came out of nowhere to kiss her and beg her to live again. That was impossible, of course; Lyra had her own life with her husband now, but that fantasy was enough to pull Bon-Bon away from the edge, towards the long road to normalcy. The scar she bore on her chest now, an ugly gash that the doctors could not completely fix, reminded of her of the dark times and how close she’d come. Her doctor had told her that human medicine could remove the scar with a technique called plastic surgery, but she refused. She’d keep the scar forever as a reminder of where she’d been and to never venture there again.
Her friends helped her move to a new city to start a new life: Vinyl had found her the apartment; it was cozy and inexpensive and perfect. Octavia, apologizing for all the things she’d said, paid for the furnishings for the home. But it had been Twilight who had given the best gift of all: through Pinkie, they’d gotten in touch with master chocolatier Mulia Mild and got the earth pony a job at Mulia’s confectionary. Mulia, recognizing a fellow talent that had fallen on hard times, put Bon-Bon in charge of the new store she was opening in mid-town, just a stone’s throw from Bon-Bon’s home. Bon Bon had even met an extremely cute mare the first day she’d started managing the store; Bon-Bon would have to ask her out as soon as she had the opportunity.
The earth pony sighed in contentment. This was her life now and Bon-Bon was finally at peace, finally free of her demons.
Bon-Bon had just settled down to read a new book – a fantasy novel from human Earth called The Rimefrost Sword – when there was a sudden knock on the door. “Just a moment!” she called out as she set a bookmark in place and set the book down on the coffee table. She went to the door, and found Twilight standing there, gasping for breath.
“Twilight? Are you okay? What brings you here to Manehattan?”
“Just…had to…teleport…hundreds of…miles,” Twilight said, clearly exhausted. Bon-Bon raced to the kitchen for a glass of water for her friend. One glass later and a chance to catch her breath, she said, “On the bright side, no one’s ever teleported that far. However, I don’t think I’ll want to try that again anytime soon.”
“I wish you told me you were coming,” Bon-Bon said with a smile. “I could have taken some days off from the store so we could go around town.”
“No time,” Twilight gasped. “This is an emergency. We’ve got to go to Washington. Lyra needs you now, possibly more than ever.”
Bon-Bon gently waved it off. “She doesn’t need me anymore. She has her husband now, and from what I understand, he’s perfect for her, a far better spouse than I could have ever been.” She wasn’t beating herself up over that; it was realization. Bon-Bon hadn’t been ready for marriage when she’d tied the knot with Lyra and the unicorn had suffered for it. She hoped to someday make it up to Lyra, but perhaps living a full life with a chance to finally move on was that way.
“No, you don’t understand,” Twilight said forcefully, looking at Bon-Bon, and there was worry in her eyes.
“What’s going on?” Bon-Bon said, seeing that worry and suddenly feeling a lump rise in her throat.
“It’s about Lyra’s husband,” Twilight said, sorrow coming into her voice. Bon-Bon heard that, and braced for the worst.
“He was killed in a plane crash two days ago.”
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poor Lyra
Oh shhhh aint good he died in a plane crash
Upon reading the first few sentences, I had to make sure I hadn't clicked on Part 1 by mistake!
As for the story, I suspected Lyra and Paul were going to get married, since this is taking place before the first chapter of AAG and in AAG I noticed that among the firsts attributed to DJ, being part of the first Pony/Human married couple was not on the list, and now that curiously absent detail makes more sense.
The hands bit also made me think of the other Lyra's reaction back over in Anthropology when she got her human hands.
But that end...damn, that's pretty hard for Lyra, but might also be pretty bad for Bon Bon since now she has to go back to the very mare she had finally learned to live without through a mental breakdown.
Agreed, poor Lyra.
Eritrea is written Eitrea in some places.
Humans have stronger emotions? That is very interesting.
Life is really jerking Lyra around.
Oh the irony.....
628759
I figure if I'm going to have JasonTheHuman coming after me for what I'm doing to Lyra, I should at least get in an homage.
Don't be too sure.... All the signs say they've reconciled, which does not mean necessarily that they got back together.
Alaborn, I'll get that fixed.
warpd, we're not done yet.
This is probably a silly request, but to whoever wrote this chapter, could they please provide at least a few details on the plane in the next? It's not really anything major, but I've always been interested in those kind of things. (Even if the plane is made up, although planes like the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner would most likely still be in service, as planes serve forty to fifty years, although with variations over time. The Boeing 747 was commissioned over 40 years ago, and it's still being revised with new variations and sofourth.) Thanks!
Frak, there goes the happy ending I was hoping for.
Great chapter, but I'm kinda hoping you don't get Lyra and Bon-Bon back together.
Would a changeling get more love out of a human because of the more intense emotions or would it not matter?
"honolulu consulate"
YES 808 STATE FTW
All the local braddaonies and pegatitas represent!
Then I read the last line. fuck
Wow after all the problems Bon-Bon went through and Lyra living her life something like this had to happen. That will definitely put a damper in anyone's day.
The way this chapter started out the same as the last one confused me enough to think I was reading the same one again.
ending:
No...No...No.
Oh... damn.
One downside to reading this after getting up to date with the "mane" story is knowing that the cliffhanger is trolling me.