//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: Paths Less Travelled 
// by Botched Lobotomy 
//------------------------------//

Vinyl at her mother’s house. This is more like what you’re used to. You wish there was a mirror here, to be more certain, but you’re pretty sure these are the teenage years.
{How old are you now?}

{Fourteen. I...Celestia, this one’s awkward.}

{Whaaaat? Why?}

{Just...you’ll see. Or not! Feel free to close your eyes, I’ll tell you when it’s over.}

{I’m sure it’s nothing I’ve not seen before.}
“Mum.”
“Vinyl!”
“Do you have a minute.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I have a few. Do you have something you’d like to tell me?”
Vinyl nods, and takes a step forward. Bristling with put-on pride. “I have something I’d like to tell you.”

{Urgh, Celestia kill me now.}

{You’re so serious!}

{I know.}

Vinyl’s mother sits down expectantly, and Vinyl swallows, begins to pace about. “As you know,” she begins, and launches into a clearly well-rehearsed speech about just what it is, exactly, her mother already knows, which ends a few minutes later with the impassioned proclamation: “I’m gay. I like mares, mum. I’ve thought about this long and hard, and I’m pretty sure stallions just aren’t doing anything for me. At all. So if you have anything to say to me about that, you can speak now. But I’ve really given this a lot of thought, and I hope that even if you can’t love me any longer, we can still be friends.”
{Ouch.}

{My mum’s trying really really hard not to laugh now.}

{No, how could she!}

{How could she not, more like. I sound like I’m breaking up with her.}

{You were fourteen.}

{That’s no excuse!}

“...and so when did you first realise, Vinyl?”

{I thought Vinyl sounded more grown-up than ‘honey.’}


{I was fourteen.}

Vinyl’s thinking, tapping her chin with alarming concentration. She waits a good five seconds before she says, “I think it was when I saw Princess Cadance at her coronation, last summer.”

{Unhear that part?}

{I will not!}
{Don’t worry, how can I put this delicately... The Princess of Love gets this sort of thing a lot.}
“She’s just so cool, and pretty, and her mane, sweet Celestia, her mane...”

{Can we leave this memory, now?}

{When we’ve seen everything the spell needs us to see.}

{And how much is that, exactly.}

{Aww, come on, surely this isn’t all that bad? Trust me, I’ve seen far worse than awkward comings-out.}

{Worse for you, maybe.}

{Hey, these things are always awkward! When I came out, to my dad—}

{Wait, what? Since when are you...?}

{Princess of Love, remember.}

{Hah! Yeah, I suppose tha—}







{—t would make sense. Woah! Where are we now?}


{I don’t remember this at all...}

{Well. This isn’t supposed to happen.}
This time, there’s a mirror. Where Vinyl Scratch was short and sober, you’re gangly and frothy and have more limbs than you quite know what to do with.
“Mum, dad, I gotta tell you something! I’m gay!”
“That’s wonderful, darling.”

{Well, that was easy.}






“Mum, dad, I gotta tell you something! I’m bi!”
“That’s nice, dear.”





{Aaaaand...}
“Mum, dad, I gotta tell you something! I’m gay!”
“Again, darling?”






{Again.}

“Mum, dad! I’ve gotta tell you something! I’m actually pan!”
“I called it, you owe me ten bits.”





{And again.}
“Mum, dad! I’ve figured it out! I’m—”
{This went on for a while.}
{Was that a snrk?}

{Ahahahaha!}

{Thank, you, thank you. You can’t see me, but I’m bowing in my head. Thank you.}

{So what did you settle on, eventually?}

{Eventually? Some form of bisexual, I suppose. I don’t think I ever really settled, I only stopped thinking about it. All that matters if that you’re happy, in the end.}

{And you’re happy now? With...}

{Yes. I certainly am.}

{I’m glad. So how did you...you know. Figure out that it was him? That he was the one?}

{You watched it happen, just a minute ago. At the parade, when he sang. I’d thought before that, too, of course. I hoped that it’d be him! But I didn’t know till then. Of course, being the Princess of Love, I had to make sure...}