//------------------------------// // Four // Story: Transspecieality // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// ═══════════════════════ T R A N S S P E C I E A L I T Y ═══════════════════════ A special PRIDE MONTH true-life novelette By Petal Chatoyance ⚧ FOUR When the Gateways opened roughly around the spring of 1216, ponies began to enter and explore the human world. They were sometimes welcomed, and sometimes attacked, but they never went away. They've been a part of earthly life for so long most people just assume (erroneously) that they evolved here right beside Man. The religious see them as either helpers or demons. Mostly demons, it feels like. I had years of shame and anti-Equestrian bigotry ingrained in me, because of this, and while it was wonderful for others to be flamboyantly ponylike, it was anathema for me to permit myself that freedom. Deep down I lived in terror of being found out, of being called a ‘fakepony’, a ‘ponyhag’, a ‘changeling', or a ‘transspecieal’. Now out of human drag and stark in my silky white fur, living full time as unicorn, I was not out of condemnations for myself, nor out of fears of punishment for the crime of being a pony. This shame and fear would haunt me in far too gradually lessening degree, for almost a decade and a half. It took some five years after my Permanentization to get to the point that I no longer felt constantly paranoid about whether I ‘Passed’ for Equestrian. I have never dared to wear a saddle, or even a peytral. I fear to wear saddle blankets, or even a tail barrette, and stick to simple and basic pony items. My vile parents, and the cruel attacks of children and adults when I was growing up, indoctrinated me well. Such concepts, such narrow and hateful bigotry, are poison to the self, intellectual and emotional cancer, and they destroy the soul. It is my dear hope to finally overcome them. Approaching the end of my first year of transmogrification, I was now living full time as Petal Chatoyance. I had chosen my name after much soul searching. At first I intended to name myself after my favorite Dungeons & Dragons character, the one I always played in high school and college. The unicorn character I had created had an invented name, ‘Sunshine Laughter’. I really liked the lyrical sound of my made-up Equestrian name, and identified with my fantasy persona. My ponification doctor thought the name was a very bad choice, and suggested that I would be much happier in the long run with a more traditional name, one less likely to draw attention for being exotic. I grudgingly saw wisdom in the concept and set to trying to find a name I could live with. One afternoon I was listening to my radio, and heard Cheese Sandwich’s song “I Love Petal Soup”. I loved the piece, and instantly identified with the Petal of the work who “Longs For Chatoyant Soup”. I immediately fell in love with the name, and as a bonus, it fit my special criterion. I had early determined that I would accept no name that had a human origin. I wanted no part of the ‘Hume’ in ‘Humane’, the ‘Monk’ in ‘Monkeyman’, or the ‘Sap’ in ‘Sapiens’. I wanted a purely Equestrian name, one without any hint of being a derivative of a terrestrial name. I demanded a non-humanistic name. Petal is derived from a part of a flower, and is never used by humans as a name (that I know of). It is utterly an Equestrian name. It was perfect, and it somehow suited me, like a perfect hairstyle. My last name all but decided itself. ‘Chatoyance’ was a perfect reference to Cheese's song, and if indeed I was somehow saved by Celestia herself, then I could only do honor by taking a name that well describes her ethereal mane. Celestia's mane is, if anything, chatoyant! Just a few months after the end of my first year of transmogrification, everything was nicely on course. I had begun my ‘Pony Life Test’ in preparation for earning the right to have Permanentization through Equestrian spells. Ponification serum had resculpted my body, and calmed my mind. Telekinesis therapy had taught me how to project as many as six separate hornfields at once. I had passed the many psychological tests and I had performed the great medical dog and pony show required of the transspecieal of that time. I had a helpful roommate, and the best transmogrification doctors. I had a stable job. By this time I had corresponded with my parents and explained my condition, the metaphysical basis behind it, and had even included helpful letters from my transmogrification doctors, written for the express purpose of helping me to be accepted. My parents did not like this, but the impressiveness of my reasonably famous doctors combined with the fact that they did not have to actually see me, made it bearable, and my mother promised to continue to help me financially. She even agreed to let me have the money for my full permanentization ritual, from the account in my name that she had started at my birth. It was truly gracious of her to let me have the money that had been saved just for me in my own name. I truly had it all. That, of course, was the exact moment everything explosively fell apart. Robin had found a very wonderful “Sugar Daddy” at last, and sadly informed me of his leaving. I was glad for his happiness, but sad to see him go. Then I lost my job. In a screaming fit of utterly unexpected vitriol, my employer suddenly terminated me for being a freak and a fake equine. He denounced me for breaking the laws of god and nature, and for bringing embarrassment and shame on him personally by having the thoughtlessness to be in his employ. Did I want to sue? Just try! He would win any day of the week, who would believe a (fake!) barnyard animal? What court would uphold the rights of a lower lifeform such as I? And he was, of course, correct. Transspecieals had no legal protection in 1981. In fact, they were not at all considered to be human-level beings under the law, for in a case to that effect, the Supreme Court had simply refused to rule, leaving the decision uncompleted. Legally, I possessed fewer rights than a slave before the civil war. Southern law actually required human slave owners to feed and care for their human slaves - we all know what atrocities happened to their pony slaves. I was soon to be homeless and without food, and with no recourse under any earthly law. Worse, in my half-way state, I did not yet begin to qualify for Equestrian citizenship - there would be no help coming from the other universe, or the Crown. In desperation, I called my parents, and arranged a meeting with my father. My mother, severely crippled with emphysema brought on by years of smoking, was not up for the journey to the city from the trailer in Redwood City. I had the ability to survive for the remainder of the month, about 15 days. I met my father in my apartment, and we discussed my need to survive. I had no job, few skills, and was about to lose my apartment. I had tried hard to be brave and to do it on my own, to conquer this terrible defect that was my human birth. I was only seven months from getting my permentization ritual. If I ever truly, really needed my parents help, this was now the time. My father offhandedly mentioned how much I looked just like Rarity, mostly because my coat was white - he couldn't tell ponies apart to save his life. But, in my favor, he did not actually hit or try to kill me. He did not vomit. What admirable self control! My first month of being homeless was very frightening and very difficult. What few belongings I owned had been taken by my father, who had most generously offered to store my cheap mattress and my radio for me, and even offered to not destroy them. My most difficult problems were going to the bathroom and shelter. My next most difficult problem was trying to be clean. The last and biggest problem is staying safe. Going to the bathroom is a huge issue when one is homeless. It is surprisingly difficult to find a toilet in the city that one can use. It is also fairly difficult to find a private place to defecate or urinate, if no bathroom can be used. Most businesses, and even restaurants, do not permit the homeless to use their facilities. For a pony - well, a quasi-pony - the problem is magnified. Once one becomes quadrupedal, the length and shape of that form makes it especially difficult to fit into hidden places to relieve oneself - remember, it takes decades to lose enough mass to shrink to normal pony size. Starting with a human-sized body, I was very large for an Equestrian! This obviously makes staying clean next to impossible. The cleaner one can be, though, the more neat and tidy, the more likely one is to be allowed to use restrooms - at least those restrooms not segregated against Equestrians. Also, the cleaner one is, the less one appears homeless, which in itself is good survival camouflage. Carrying things can be a problem, so what one can have is pretty much by necessity small. Saddlebags are a necessity, obviously, but nonstop wear destroys them easily. In time, entropy destroys every dignity. Food is less of a problem than you might imagine. I was still receiving money from my mother, and it was enough to eat on, just not enough to rent an apartment with as well. I could theoretically choose. I could starve in a cheap apartment, or I could eat on the street. I choose to eat. Of course, with my digestion changing, my selection of places to find food had been cut down by three-fifths. While the existence of ponies on earth meant an increase in vegetarian fast-food (all I could afford, really). That said, even with regard to cheap fast-food, meat yet dominated most locations. I could also still afford ponification serum, I was not about to quit that. I might as well just die. By this stage, I almost never was required to see my transmogrification doctors; certainly I had not needed to for months, so that expense was not an issue. I was just trying to survive until I could be permenentized. The street of a big city is a difficult place. The homeless life consists of endless trotting, essentially nowhere. Occasionally there is much sitting or standing, doing nothing. There is some eating, usually cheap, barely nourishing food, followed by more trotting. The trotting is important for a number of reasons. Staying in one place tends to attract hassling, either from the police, or from shopkeepers or the street folk themselves. It marks one as an easy target. It is also dreadfully dull to be homeless. Except when it comes time to sleep. Shelter is difficult, especially if one is a mare. The key is to find a place isolated or invisible enough to be worth placing a bet on not being attacked, raped, robbed, abused or killed while one is vulnerable sleeping. The rooftops tended to be my choice, as almost nobody else seemed to think of visiting them. It was worth the extra difficulty of getting up to them, made possible at all thanks to my telekinesis assisting the infiltration of external fire escapes. I was also benefited by having had some rock climbing experience in my youth - though that, to be fair, was in a bipedal primate body. Even so, I found myself much clumsier than I used to be. I was still getting used to having four legs and no hands. Being homeless does provide a great window into the secret life of a city. From drug deals, to hideous beatings, to open air back alley prostitution, the homeless person is silent witness to it all. Silent, discrete, wisely gone the next second, but witness nonetheless. Never be homeless. My calls to my parents were only successful when my father was gone. His initial semi-tolerance had vanished into loathing. When my father was absent, I would get to talk to my mother, and not immediately be violently disconnected. She was constantly working on my father. Be patient. Somehow I survived that time, somehow I was kept safe. I was not attacked, no one harmed me. A few times I was desperately afraid, I stank, and hurt, and shivered. I even ended up with fleas in my fur. Much of it is a blur. But I made it. My parents met me on a street corner, and I was hurried into my father's huge new pickup truck. The trip to my old home, and my old bedroom in the huge Expando trailer was sullen. But my raven-tressed mother, now with shock-white hair - a recent change brought on by stress over me - had prevailed. I had a home, but only until my permanentization; then to hell and Equestria with me forever. Life under my father was a matter of timing and hiding. I was required to keep to myself as much as possible, and there was no question that I was barely being tolerated. No one was to see me, and I was not to eat in front of, or be in, his presence. I kept to my room, or away from the trailer as much as possible. To facilitate this, my mother lent me the use of her car. I found I could still drive, even without hands, thanks to the magic of my telekinesis. My human drivers license was still valid, despite my half-species state. I had many adventures during these months of excursions. On one excursion to nowhere in particular, the purpose of which was to fill time absent from my father’s sight, I ran into two other transspecieals. It was not odd how we could recognize each other - it can take decades to truly appear completely Equestrian. Transspecieals almost universally have some strong issues about passing, about being accepted, and become hyper critical, even paranoid, about the slightest indications of former humanity and primate qualities. Such focused concern can easily be applied to others, and in general it is fair to say that most transspecieals are very accomplished at spotting other transspecieals, even in a crowd of ponies. Candycane and Joyhooves were out shopping, and stopped to chat with me. They somehow knew that I was a lost soul, and offered to talk with me. They invited me to their home. They lived together because they were a couple, self defining as lesbian mares. This was a stunning revelation to me. It was something that opened vistas of wonder to my soul. When I was first facing transmogrification, I had only one book, Lauren Faust’s ‘Conundrum’, and a few snatches of televised information as my entire basis for understanding my plight. I just assumed that I would become a mare in a cis-het herd family out the other side, a proper 'Roseluck The Homemaker', complete with stallion and adopted foal (batteries sold separately). This was certainly what my transmogrification doctors seemed to desire me to be, and I dearly wanted to please those doctors, because they held my very life in their hands. I was willing to do anything, be anything, to earn my passage to ponyhood. I had little concept of even what all of that lifeplan meant exactly, only that such was clearly my goal. Certainly nothing would stop me in my quest. Not even the accepted truth. My first, early, evaluations by a required psychologist indicated that I had a "primate-oriented mentation", and would not be a safe candidate for permanentization. I was "human fixated". This was news to me. So I hit the books at my former college library, to find out how on earth such a conclusion could possibly be reached. What I learned shocked me. The tests I had been given, the Rorschach Smooze-Blot Test, as well as other visual tests involving pictures of people, ponies and scenes from both universes, were not grounded in any rational science. In fact, they are essentially arbitrary, culturally based catalogs of expected interpretations, based on a laughable model of what it means to be human or Equestrian of mind. For instance, if one sees in a random Smoozeblot suitably Equestrian images, such as flowers and horseshoes, then one is judged equine. If one sees cars and planes, then one is judged a human. It is that silly. In my first evaluations, I saw what was relevant to my life. I played fantasy games, so I saw dragons and griffins (which did lean me toward the Equestrian side a little!). But I also read science fiction all of my life, almost exclusively, so I also saw starships and galaxies. I studied science, so I saw cells and DNA. Guess what? According to respectable psychology, none of these things could possibly interest a pony. Only humans should care about, and envision such technological things. Equestrians should only see fantasy and magical subjects, or matters relating to infant animal care. To say this merely angered me would be to ignore the vast disillusionment and disgust I felt. I resolved that no idiotic psudoscience - however entrenched - would determine my survival. I studied the same textbooks that my parapsychologist used. My next evaluations uniformly portrayed me as the ideal of blessed unicornhood. I saw butterflies and daffodils. I saw magical tomes and enchanted glades. I saw magepunk aerostats with flapping wings. And the most telling part is that my psychologist ate it up with a spoon. Of course all of that useless, degrading therapy I endured to meet the standards of care must have helped me to mutate into a successful equine psychology. How wonderful was the 'science' of psychotherapy to accomplish this. Back pats all around, and a hug for our exemplary case study. There is no shame in lying to tyrannical fools to save your own life. Suddenly, Candycane and Joyhooves, lesbian transspecieals, exponentially expanded my vision. In one meeting I gained a wondrous new view. I could be free. I did not have to swap one limited role for another, equally limited role. I could actually be whatever I wanted, and still be a pony. I really did not want to be Roseluck The Homemaker. I could love who I chose. I could love mares! I really did not like stallions, for they reminded me of human men, who were the constant source of most of my misery for my entire human life. Human males were the ones who beat on me, called me names, degraded me, bullied me, hurt me. Mares - and many human women - were nice. Mares were like me. I did not hurt ponies. I realized I could love mares, and yet be a mare. I could do this and still get my permanentization ritual - provided I continued to lie to my doctors of course. I was prepared to do this. Gladly. Candycane and Joyhooves introduced me to another like soul, an astrophysicist of some renown named Marionberry. Marionberry was wonderful, kind and brilliant, and absolute proof to me that not all transspecieals have to end up like the street people and half-ponies I had known. Again my horizons expanded: transspecieals could be wealthy and successful, even outside of Equestria! Not that I wanted to live outside of Equestria, but full emigration is difficult even for a permanentized pony. I might be earthside for a very long time, before I ever got through a Worldgate. The three of them offered to take me to a local support group, called the Gateway Species Alliance. I was happy to go, and it was perhaps the most vital event of my life to come. In 1982, at the Gateway Species Alliance, the rented room in the Unitarian church was effectively divided by a simple difference of purpose. On one side were the fursuiters, who had started the organization. These were mostly much older men, with a penchant for old cartoon mascots and white-gloved characters from animated movies, and a predilection for growling like animals in deep voices about WW2, the Big One. They dressed in partials or full fursuits as they preferred, to satisfy the sexual fetish they had with regard to cartoon animals. They were loud and happy to pursue their occasional hobby. And it was a hobby - none of them were at the level of quadsuits, for example. On the other side of the room sat the ever timid transspecieals, dressed only in their natural fur, the better to blend in and be accepted as Equestrians, or at least, left alone. They tended to favor saddlebags and simple hoofboots, or the occasional saddle blanket. They were there to cope with the complexities of living their lives entirely and completely as what they were inside, and all were quietly burdened with the life or death struggle they faced. On one side, the furry Team Mascots, on the other the grimly serious Celestia-worshippers. That was the state of the Otherkin in 1982 San Jose. Prim little me, I entered in the company of my new friends, and looked about. Mascot, Mascot, Mascot. Celestia-worshipper, Celestia-worshipper, HUH? Something wonderful caught my eye, and in that moment, time stopped. In a timeless space, beyond adequate description, I somehow knew the yellow-maned, rather bored mare in the middle of my view. Imprinted on my memory is her tan corduroy saddlebags, her frilled white saddle blanket, her scuffed hooves, her little white ribbon at the base of her tail, her medium-length mane tied in a French knot. I knew she was it. I knew she was my future, I knew her outside of time and space. When the world began again my heart was all aflutter and shy. I was terrified. I could not blow this. I knew that my entire life, my entire future lay in meeting that mare. Everything in my existence depended upon it. I did not know what to do. I was frightened to act, and horrified at the thought of doing nothing. I nervously went about the room meeting and talking with everyone; everyone but her. All the time, I never knew what I or the individuals I met said. All I was thinking about is what I would say to her. How could I possibly do the perfect thing, say the perfect words? The meeting was coming near a close. I had to act. I had no choice. I forced my fear aside and went out to face my destiny. I introduced myself. I asked her what she was, unicorn or earthpony (her hair covered up her horn). “I don’t really like fussing about breed” she responded. “Putting ponies in little boxes is kind of shallow, don’t you think?” Uh oh! Damage Control respond, we’re going down, all engines destroyed, Danger Will Robinson. “Uh, I agree; you are right. I really do know better, usually. Um.. the fact is I’ve been waiting all night to speak with you and I just plain didn’t know what to say.” It turned out she had been waiting for me to speak to her too, and was miffed that I had introduced myself to everyone else but her. It seemed that she had had the oddest feeling when I came into the room, and she just knew she could not let me get away. She felt compelled to make certain that I did not just disappear, even if she had to follow me out to the car. She was afraid to approach me, because I seemed so be avoiding her. Sandy Shores, my very best friend in the world, my primary partner, and the love of my life, had just found me, and not a moment too soon. I was pretty happy for the next week. At this point, I had but a month and a half to go until my surgery. Everything had been paid for by that account my mother had started for me at my birth, the 11,000 dollars (converted into Equestrian bits) neatly paid for my permanentization in Trinidad, Colorado, at the hands and hooves of both Dr. Stanley Biber and a noted refugee from Equestria, a disgraced elder unicorn medical-mage called Tagtail the Obsequious. Time had seemed to drag on forever, but now, I was on the verge of achieving the completion of the primary prayer of my entire life. I was accepted almost completely as a pony, and I was Petal Chatoyance in every way but the constant requirement to keep taking ponification serum. I was eager to be rid of that expensive dependency, to have my entire body forever be equine, and never have to worry about magically reverting to some twisted shade of human. I had a date set up with Sandy Shores, our first, and I was excited to get to know her better. I was feeling hopeful, despite the difficulty of my life in my parents trailer. That had actually improved slightly in the past months leading up to my trip to the Gateway Species Alliance, once my father had been put on medication. My father had been forced to do this as an alternative to prison. A few months prior, he had received a phone call from his favorite prostitute. She was threatening suicide, and he was beyond consolation. He forced my mother to drive him over to save his little pet, because he was too drunk to make the trip himself. I do not know what happened, but when they returned, my father had gone out in his flashy truck anyway, leaving my mother to abuse me for my fathers indiscretions. My father parked himself on main Street in Redwood City, and drank and took some sort of pills. He then started window-sniping with the semiautomatic handgun he, much to my amazement, possessed. The local SWAT team was brought in, but before a standoff occurred, he collapsed. After a few days in the county Nut-Bucket, he was released with the provision of having to undergo psychiatric treatment and medication of some sort. By this stage in my father's career, he had become a GS 14, a fairly high level of governmental status, and we had actually been settled for the first time in my life, in the Bay Area. The central office of the United States Geological Survey was there, and my father had become a high level programmer, no longer sent into the field. He had earned his special status in part because of the many mysterious jobs he had done, offered out to the World Bank in places like Yemen and the islands of Truk. Whatever it was he was mapping, he certainly got to travel the world during the summers we went to Baker. I have wondered if my father was some sort of spy or agent, because he seemed exempt from the laws of man. Whether it was the rape case against him in the halls of the USGS, or this new, sniping event (I had no idea he owned guns), he never got in trouble. He also had the most interesting photography to show us of his trips, usually of unusual planes and vehicles, which he said he had an interest in. One in particular, I remember, was the SR-47 Blackbird spy plane, which I marveled at, all black and futuristic in his photographs. At the time he took the picture of it, to do so was a criminal offense of the highest level. What the hell was he really doing for the government? Which government? With luck, I will never know. The medication they put him on actually worked. He was almost nice. It was very odd. He let me eat at the table, he was civil with me. He showed me his elaborate HAM and microwave radio system, and even let me speak to distant parts of the world. It was almost like having a father for two months. The day before my first date with Sandy Shores, my father came home to inform us that he would have nothing further to do with his psychiatrist or his medication. The psychiatrist was younger than he was, for Christ’s sake, and what did that little shit know anyway? My father started drinking and taking his own little helpers again. Suddenly, I was laying in the middle of the street. Under me was the pile that was my saddlebag, blanket and spare hoofboots - it was nicer than laying on the blacktop. The night was cold, and very loud. My father was screaming obscenities at my mother, and throwing what was, from the sound, very breakable objects. The trailer, all 40 feet of it, visibly rocked a few times. Loud slams and shrieks filled the night. I shivered as much from fear and shock, as from the cold. My father, at the door to the trailer, screamed at me to leave, to gallop away forever. My mother interrupted his tirade temporarily, saving me further abuse. Where could I go? I had nowhere to live or be, and no money to live on. I had lost the job I had gained at the local K-mart some months back, because one of my old high school teachers had come to the conclusion that it was immoral for a shapeshifer, such as I, to work in a public place. I had gone to my high school to change my school records, and had bothered to stop by and see my old, favorite teacher, and to thank him for his kindness. He had excused me from dissection and other awful activities that I could not - with my pony nature - bear to face. I had no idea that he was a fundamentalist Christian, and I had made the mistake of telling him proudly of my transmogrification, and my new job. I was poor, broke, homeless again, and six weeks from permanentization as a unicorn and thus a potential citizen of Equestria. I thought of an idea. It was perhaps my only hope. I called up Sandy Shores and timidly asked her if our date might be an extended one. I explained my situation. I left the trailer park payphone and sat down on my pile of clothing, like a pegasus in a fabric nest. Soon, heralded by my mother's blood curdling wailing, my father emerged from the trailer and strode purposely over to me, huddling on my pile. Suddenly I was looking down the barrel of his semi-automatic. A real gun looks like metal, and it has a funny smell. It is all dark inside the tube of the barrel. The end looks really huge, close up. “You goddamn fucking pony freak! You stinking little fuckhorse. You should have killed yourself long ago, you piece of shit! You’ve ruined my life; look what you did to your mother! You are killing her, you dirty shit. Why are you still here? I told you to leave, you god damned spiteful fucking piece of horseshit!” Guns make the funniest little clicking sounds sometimes. I don’t know guns, but he adjusted something and it made this little soft click. I remember that click. It did not even sound metallic exactly, it sounded almost ceramic. My whole world was that dark barrel and that red, screaming face. “You ugly, ugly, god damned little piece of stinking shit. You little pone. You listen to me, You listen you...” In the distance a car could be heard. It actually could be heard. It was dead quiet except for him, and he actually noticed the sound of the car that was entering the trailer park. “If I ever see your fucking face again, ever again you sickening freak, I will fucking blow your brains out for you, I swear to god I will kill you, you ugly little shit. If you try to come back to the trailer, I swear to god I will set fire to it, I will shoot your goddamn mother and I will set fire to the goddamn trailer and I will kill you and myself. Do you understand that? I am not kidding around here. I will kill you, you goddamn little fucking pony freak.” My father turned abruptly and almost glided into the trailer just as a pair of headlights turned the corner, and began to illuminate my dark world. Sandy Shores got out. She could drive with telekinesis too. I could not stand up, so she helped me. Terrified urine was all over my flanks and hooves, and splattered on all four of my legs. It was so warm it burned.