“Daddy?”
It was funny, Matt thought, that after all these years, he was still getting used to that word. He and his wife had been together for fifteen years now and because of all their struggles to have children, it was a word that they always felt was never going to be used to refer to him in his lifetime.
And now I have two, he thought, a wide smile coming to his face. It was still just a week after he and Anna had brought the young boy they’d named Samuel home from the adoption center. At the moment, Anna was out taking their infant son to the doctor’s for a checkup. Which left the yardwork to be done, something Matt usually avoided like the plague – when it came to housework, the two had always bucked the traditional gender roles: Anna was better with yardwork and car maintenance, while Matt always did the cooking, cleaning and laundry. But now with a family, things were going to have to change a little bit, hence why Matt was outside pruning the pear tree just on the perimeter of their home.
“Daddy!” the young voice wailed.
Matt smiled, looking down at the source of the voice: his older child, young Daisy Jo, a beautiful little girl having just turned five a few months back. In the fall, due to her age and Matt and Anna’s careers, little Daisy Jo would attend school just like all the other children.
Which was just the point: she wasn’t just like other children. Daisy Jo was an alien, a creature that Matt and Anna had found over five years prior and decided to hide from a world that wouldn’t understand. During that time, they found the alien was intelligent – and despite her equine looks and form, nothing more than a scared little girl in need of love and care, in need of parents just as much as Matt and Anna needed a child to still the empty pain in their own lives.
“Yes, sweetie?” Matt said, looking down from the ladder. He watched as his daughter walked towards him, the waddle in her gait far less pronounced than it was when she first tried walking on her legs (hindlegs?). She’d stumbled and fell a lot, probably moreso than other toddlers due to the fact that her feet weren’t plantigrade like that of humans. Eventually she worked out swishing her tail in a contrary pattern to her footsteps and it let her walk, albeit at an uneven wobble. It would probably turn into a normal step as she grew older.
“Can I help?” The large purple eyes looked at him with earnestness and a bit of hope. Like any child, she wanted to prove herself to her parents, especially now that she was a big sister with all the big girl responsibilities that came with it. But Matt knew these were the moments before his daughter’s innocence would be gone forever. A house was being built on the empty lot across the street. Next door, the lot had been sold and eventually a home would be built there was well. This part of Winchester was growing, and the previously empty neighborhood that was called Meadow Row for the only road passing through was now jokingly referred to as “Medical Row” for all the doctors and other wealthy homeowners building in the area.
Soon, there would be no place for Daisy Jo to have her innocence intact. Soon, contact with the human world would come. And Matt and Anna dreaded that day. What would happen if the government declared her a threat or worse? To the powers that presided seventy miles to the east, she wouldn’t be a child to be loved, but instead some sort of creature to be studied. Exaggerations aside, one only had to look at alien depictions in pop culture to know what humanity thought of beings not of this world. And while the jury was still out on where Daisy Jo was from, obviously it wasn’t likely from a location humans were familiar with.
But even still, no matter what, the little horselike thing with the long mane, cream-colored coat, brilliant purple eyes and ill-fitting OshKoshB’Gosh overalls cut to allow her tail to stick out would never be just as he saw her. To him, no matter what, she would always be his Daisy Jo, his beautiful little daughter, human or not.
Matt patiently got down from the ladder, then hoisted Daisy Jo and placed her on his shoulders; she giggled as she settled there. Carefully he got back onto the ladder, handing her the shears and instructing her on what to cut and how to be careful. He could feel the weight of her small body on his frame, the cascade of her tail down his back, and he knew she was a part of him. Not physically – that much he and his daughter would never share – but familial bonds were much more than mere flesh and blood.
Matt looked at his daughter. She was eight years old now, going for her annual physical at the doctor’s office.
Doctor’s. The word burned angrily within him. This wasn’t a doctor’s office, not really. Some doctors refused to touch the “alien creature”; some cited concerns about animals. Finally, to the eternal gratitude of Daisy Jo’s parents, they’d received some help. The first came from the parent of a girl Daisy Jo’s age; Tyson McAllister, a lawyer and the former legal assistant for a Michigan congressman, decided to ply his trade in town – and his first client was the Martinez family. Mac waged a legal battle against the government to have them recognize Daisy Jo Martinez for what she was – a normal girl, even if not human.
But the other was William Hilton, the family’s local veterinarian. Incensed by the treatment of a young child whose birth was no fault of hers, he took a section of his vet office and at his own expense retooled it with hundreds of dollars in human medical equipment and care. Half-jokingly referring to himself as the world’s first “equiniatric medical practitioner”, he chose to treat Daisy Jo not just like another pet in need of medical assistance, but a human patient in need of the healing hands of a doctor.
“Everything okay in there, Will?” Matt asked as the man walked out. To Matt, Will reminded him of a latter-day Errol Flynn complete with the thin mustache, dapper attire and the ever-bright eyes. Perhaps he could have been an actor in another time.
Hilton shook his head. “Just friggin’ disgusting. We were asked for another blood sample, this time by the National Xenobiology Center in Rosemont, Illinois – I looked ‘em up; it’s nothing more than a bunch of UFO nuts with money, so I told them to go pack sand.”
Matt looked at the slightly open door; inside, Daisy Jo sat there, talking to a nurse; another thing that Matt owed Hilton for: that he insisted that Daisy Jo be treated as a little human girl regardless of how she looked and backed that up with hiring a human RN specifically for assistance with the young alien girl.
“Thanks. But I guess you’re not telling me something.”
Will sighed as he nodded. “We got a court order to test her intelligence against baselines for other kids her age. Now that’s not the problem; Daisy Jo is extremely smart for her age. My concern is that the testers will either try to play this off as either she’s a danger because she’s smarter than the average human her age – but big deal, so are a lot of other kids; or that they’ll try to humiliate her by trying to make her play Sparky the Magical Counting Horse.”
“Guess I’ll have to see if I can get a tutor to help her with whatever test.”
Hilton waved a hand dismissively. “Already took care of that for you. My daughter’s in town from college this week. She’s studying to be a teacher, so this would be a great opportunity for her to work with special needs kids, if you’ll excuse the term.”
“Will, you don—”
“Sorry, Matt, but I do. I take huge offense at the medical profession for abandoning your daughter just because she’s a little different from the norm. You and Anna are raising a wonderful little girl and you need to keep on doing that. But as her doctor, I have to make sure what’s best for my patient, and that means proving to the world that the worst thing we’ll ever fear from her is that she’ll catch a normal human rhinovirus and then pass on a cold like every other kid like her.”
Matt smiled. “Thanks. I mean that.”
“No problem – just think of it as payback from all the times I enjoyed your novels. Besides, this experience has taught me a lot about human medicine. Maybe it’s time I hang up the old vet lab coat and head to medical school to do more that way. Lord knows, Daisy Jo will need it as she grows up.”
Those words sank into his mind as they drove home. A lifetime of having his daughter in his life. It was as dangerous as it was promising. Provided they won the case and she wasn’t pulled from their lives, she would grow up with them the same way as Sammy would, growing up, growing older and the like. Would she date? Would she be interested in the same things as others when she grew up? Like any other child, it was hard to tell.
“Daddy?” At the moment, she sat in the passenger seat, Daisy Jo was scratching absently at a bandage where she’d gotten a shot. Due to it being late fall, her winter coat had set in and her fur was now too long to have a simple bandaid as she would during other times of the year.
“Furball, don’t poke at that,” he told her. “You don’t want to make it hurt more, right?”
She nodded, removing her “hand”. She then looked at him and asked the question he and his wife was always afraid their daughter would ask. “Daddy? Why am I different?”
“What do you mean different? You’re just as pretty as your mother, so I don’t see how you’re different.”
She looked at him, a sad look in her eyes. “I mean…you and Mommy don’t have tails. And you have ears that are different. And different nose and mouth, and you have hands and I don’t. And then someone told Dr. Hilton that you and he and Mommy were all human…and that I wasn’t.”
Matt pulled over the car, then looked at his little girl. “Daisy Jo, yes, you’re not exactly like me or your mother. But you know what? Neither is your brother.”
“But Sammy looks like you and Mommy,” she countered.
Matt shook his head. “Not really, because Sammy, like you, was adopted.”
“Adopted?”
“It means that you weren’t born to us like other kids, but that we brought you home because we love you. And let me tell you, princess, you are very special, one of a kind. I know a lot of kids don’t have to go to the doctor like you do, or have special classes like you do, or other things. But your mother and I do all these things for you because we love you. Not many parents would.”
She sat there for the longest time, as if thinking about it. Matt wasn’t sure what was going through her mind: was it the human processes of the only life she knew, or the genetic instincts of whatever species she was? One thing for sure: it was clear that she was thinking, the sign of a sapient mind and not, as a recent report from the Toledo Zoo suggested, “mere repetition on line with a parrot.”
“So…I guess that means you love me more than Valerie’s mommy and daddy love her? I heard they got a divorce.”
A weighty topic there, Matt mused. He answered as best as he could: “Well, I can’t answer either of those, but I can tell you this, sunshine: your mother and I will always be there for you.”
“Promise?” The look in her eyes showed a flash of worry. Not the same kind of primal worry as the dog whenever they left him at home, but the kind of a young heart fearing being broken.
Matt reached over and hugged her. “You’re my little girl. You’ll always have me around.” He felt her small arms wrap around him with no hesitation, the sign of a daughter holding her father and though she couldn’t see it, he had a wide smile on his face. As he broke from the hug, he gave her a smile and said, “Hey, you wanna get lunch?”
“Can we go to Roy’s?” For some reason, she liked Roy Rogers, a regional burger chain. Despite the fact that it was regional, there wasn’t one in Winchester; the closest one was roughly twenty miles north, in Inwood, West Virginia.
“Well…I dunno….” Matt said, a mock-serious look on his face.
“Please please please?”
He faked a sigh. “Well, only because the best little girl in the world wants to go.” She whinnied in joy (another one of the reminders his daughter wasn’t like other children, but still a joy regardless) and with that, he turned left onto the Berryville Pike, headed eastbound towards Interstate 81 and the trip up to West Virginia.
Matt turned away slightly so the cameras wouldn’t record the tears of joy in his eyes. While he was used to some degree of celebrity due to being an author, this wasn’t something he wanted his family to be known for. Regardless, for the rest of eternity, they would be known in both history books and law texts for the events of this week.
It had started off on Wednesday, DJ’s tenth birthday (she’d recently shown a preference for being called “DJ”, because initialisms were the current tween fad and she decided it made her more mature, just like girls at that age always thought) and ended the day with a jubilant call by Mac and the greatest gift a girl like DJ could ever have: the unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment, as applied via the modified Turing test batteries DJ had taken over the years and the proof that she was sapient, applied to her as well, thus giving her constitutional legal protections and more importantly, the right of every person in the United States, of which she now joined them in the definition of “person.”
There had been a lot of joyful bouncing and cheering that night and a tired but elated DJ had went to bed that night happy, even if she had yet to understand the full ramifications of the legal decision.
But it was the call the next day that meant the world. “Mr. Martinez? This is the Office of the Governor, down in Richmond. Good morning to you, sir.” Matt stood there slack-jawed as the gubernatorial assistant explained everything: now that DJ was legal, the State of Virginia was now required by law to give her proof of residency and since no one could prove where she was from, the governor had decided to issue her a certificate of birth with an adoption amendment instead of a generic certificate of adoption. What it meant was that DJ was, as far as the government was concerned, a citizen by birth; and though her birth parents would never be known, the decision now made Matt and Anna her parents by law.
There had been a lot of joy that night, followed by shopping for clothing for the ceremony the next day and drive down to Richmond for the signing.
And now, here they were, cameras rolling and the world watching the first “person” of was already being termed Equine-American ancestry. Nervous by all the attention, DJ stood by her parents, holding her birth certificate as the governor chatted on about something, rolling it into his reelection plans, etc. etc. etc. – Matt tuned it out by that point. He’d already heard the words he wanted to hear, and that was simply that no one was going to take his little girl away from him.
After it was all over, he felt a tug on his jacket and looked down to see DJ staring up at him. “Uh, Dad?”
“Yes, furball?”
“Uh, this paper says that you and Mom are my parents now, right?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
She gave him a smile. “I wonder why they needed to give me a piece of paper to tell me what I already know.” At those words, Matt looked at Anna and saw her smile as she held Sammy’s hand. They’d been a family for years now, but as DJ now well knew, they never needed a paper to know the obvious.
The family – now officially one – smiled for the cameras and the assembly. Tomorrow would be just another day, but for now, there was triumph.
DJ had a very rough look on her face. “Well, that sucked.” She moved the joystick around, slapped a button combo and on cue, Chun-Li blasted out a fireball, the blue projectile rocketing across the screen towards its target.
“DJ, your mother did try,” Matt said, tapping in a sequence of buttons on the control pad. Onscreen, Ken parried the blow, then returned the volley with a hadoken of his own. “And she’s not mad at you, furball. If anything, she’s mad at herself.” He paused the game briefly, nodding his head in the direction of the stairs, where Anna was down in her office working on the latest pages of her comic. “We talked about it last night and she really feels bad about insisting you get an ‘equine’ perspective on biology as well as the normal one.”
“I know. I just…I didn’t expect horses to weird out like that, Dad! Actually, it was kinda creepy – they got turned on by me being around, and then after actually looking at me, they went serious-time whack job.” She made more inputs and Chun-Li lashed out onscreen with a lightning kick, easily blocked by her father’s controlling of Ken, though the hit did chip some life off the bar. In turn, Ken delivered a light dragon punch, which Chun-Li blocked before moving with a jab that connected. “I mean…it made me feel…well, y’know, like a barn animal.”
Matt grinned slightly and said, “And I know that your mother already told you age-old jokes about women and horses, right?”
“No, actually, I heard about all that from other kids at school,” she said, a grin sliding onto her face for the briefest instant before she frowned as Ken slammed Chun-Li hard with a hard hurricane kick. “But it just made me feel…less than human, if that makes sense.”
Matt nodded. “It does. But I hope that you understand that your mother just had your best interests in mind.”
DJ nodded. “I do. And I know it’s hard putting up with me when I’m not as normal as Sammy. He’s a regular human after all.”
“Sweetie, you’re just as human as the rest of us,” Matt answered. “You’re just…well, differently-shaped.”
“You mean ‘pony-shaped.’ God, I hate that word,” she seethed. Her anger reflected on the screen, where she let out a point-blank kikosho, the penumbra of energy enveloping the character as Ken took the blast full brunt. Just enough damage had been done that the character fell, beaten.
Matt looked at his daughter. “I’ve been playing Street Fighter since I was just slightly older than you. How the heck are you beating me?”
She grinned. “I got mad leet skillz, Dad. Gamer grrl, just like Mom.”
He chuckled. “And this is what I get for your mom insisting that I buy Street Fighter 5 SuperMix.”
“So…when do I get it?”
Matt rolled his eyes. “Get what?”
She nickered. “C’mon, Dad, you promised that if I beat you on tournament mode in SF5SM, you’d get me a phone. Personally, I’m drooling over the Nexus RAZR.”
“What about hidden characters?” he asked, coyly. “You still haven’t beaten me using Akuma, Evil Ryu or Charlie.” In turn, she merely crossed her arms and looked at him with a familiar glance that Anna usually used on him when she was annoyed – when did DJ pick that up? Throwing his hands in the air, he said, “Okay, since you insisted,” as he reached around the pillow at his side, producing an unopened Nexus RAZR 5G Plus.”
She squeed in delight as she took it, then went over and hugged him. “Dad! You’re the greatest!”
“Don’t thank me, furball. Your mom actually got it for you yesterday. We figured you were old enough for one.”
“Well, I guess I should go down and thank Mom then,” she said as she scampered away down the stairs. Once out of eyeshot, Matt went over to the options screen, dialing down the difficulty settings for his control to baseline. If he hadn’t dialed it so high, he would have likely beat her, but that wasn’t exactly the job of being a parent. Then again, he doubted that most father-daughter bonding time involved fighting games.
He grinned. At the rate she was improving, soon enough he wouldn’t even need to give her the handicap.
Twilight sighed as she looked at DJ’s father. While they hadn’t quite won the court case, the end result was the same: that DJ would be allowed to return to her human family. But there would be a price to be paid, and Twilight knew she’d be the one who’d end up with that bill.
“I don’t know how everypony can’t seem to understand that she’s nearly a grown mare capable of making her own decisions,” Twilight began.
Matt took a sip from the cider mug Twilight had supplied; Equestriani cider was far stronger than the scrumpy they were used to at home, and could get someone blasted fairly quick. Instead, he looked briefly at his daughter as she spoke with her pony aunts Pinkie Pie, Sweetie Belle and Applejack; even from this distance he could tell her body language indicated she was very uncomfortable seeing what was essentially her own kind constantly in the nude even if it was natural here in this reality – he didn’t blame her for that; he was having problems with it himself.
To get his mind off it, he said, “I think she would beg to differ on your statement.”
“How so?” Twilight’s eyes reflection curiosity and confusion at that statement.
“Because she doesn’t consider herself a mare. She considers herself a girl, a woman, a human and not really a pony, and that’s because of how we raised her. I know that’s hard for a lot of your people to understand, but the truth is we couldn’t have raised her like a pony. You’ve seen equines on our planet; they’re non-sapients just like regular horses are here. Plus, as you’ve said before, your adopted younger brother considers himself more of a stallion than a drake, am I correct?” He nodded his head towards her. “Look at her now: her body language, the way she’s moving and what does that tell you?”
“It tells me humans are really uncomfortable without clothing in public,” Twilight said with a slight smile. She also knew he was, but this was her home and her world; if humans and ponies were to coexist now that they knew of each other’s existence, they would just have to adjust. She just hoped that a certain female individual could do so. And that chance, right now, seemed very remote.
“Sumthin’ wrong, sugar?” Applejack asked, seeing the teen mare, standing wobbily and uneasily. Applejack had observed DJ in the last few weeks to know that it wasn’t due to the unfamiliarity of standing upright and more with the disquiet look on her face.
“It’s…nothing.” Applejack noted Sandalwo…DJ waving a foreleg (or what the teen pony would likely term an “arm”) dismissively. “Nothing at all.”
“Darlin’, Ah know that ‘nuthin.’ Y’ can’t fool this filly,” Applejack said, kindly.
“Yeah! Turn that frown upside down, DJ! You’re going home, you’ll be happy, and you have us!” Pinkie chirped.
DJ sighed. “But how do I know that we won’t be back here again next year, fighting another battle?” Her voice was anguished and the worry clearly reflected in her violet eyes. “Or even six months from now? How do I know that Rarity won’t keep at it until I’m in her claws?”
Sweetie smiled wanly. “For one, neither Twilight nor I would allow that – nor would Celestia. Two, I get the feeling AJ and Pinkie here wouldn’t, either,” the unicorn said, looking at the older mares. Lastly, she commented, “And in the end, one thing was proven at the end of all this: this isn’t your home. You came from here, but you don’t belong here. You belong on human-Earth with your family.”
At that, DJ perked up slightly. “Thanks.”
“Just don’t forget: we’re your family too, DJ.” And with that, the four came together in a hug.
Both Twilight and Matt watched as the four ponies embraced. “You’ve raised a beautiful individual,” Twilight said, choosing her words carefully. “No matter what happens to her, you’ve raised her to be smart, intelligent and kind – and that’s an accomplishment for any parent.”
“Thanks, Twi,” Matt replied with a grin.
“You’re welcome,” she replied, returning the smile.
“So….” Matt said, standing just outside the airport checklines. He was holding his carryon bag, ready for the return flight from Los Angeles to Dulles.
“Um….” DJ looked down, shuffling her feet. It was, needless to say, an uncomfortable moment. A week ago, father and daughter had driven cross-country to LA, where DJ would be attending college. Just the week before, she’d had to bid farewell, to everything she knew, ready for a new life here in the place where her father had come from, and she’d do it almost alone – sure, Logan was attending cross-town rival UCLA while DJ would be at USC, but for the most part, it was time to….
“Grow up,” DJ said the words slipping from her lips. “My God, I’m getting old.”
Matt chuckled. “Gee, way to make me feel good about all this, furball.”
“Sorry.”
“So…you sure you’re going to be okay here on your own?”
She rolled her eyes. “Dad, we went over this. I’ll be living with abuelo y abuela for at least the first year, then afterwards I’ll think about getting an apartment. Your old hometown of Huntington Beach isn’t that far up I-405 from college.”
“The 405, sweetie. They don’t use ‘I’ terminology here. It’s a SoCal thing.”
“Oh, so that’s why Mom teases you about ‘the 66’ and ‘the 81’ instead of I-66 and I-81.” After she said that, the two fell into an uncomfortable silence that lasted for several minutes until the announcement about Matt’s flight. DJ went and hugged her father, tears silently streaming down her face. “I’ll miss you. I already miss Mom, Sam and the rest.”
He reached down and stroked her hair. He noted people stared at the two of them: even after all these years she was still recognizable as the “alien girl” because of her relative ubiquity; after two years of humans and ponies starting to come to terms with their shared existences, DJ was still one of the very few ponies outside of diplomats who lived on Earth…that is, ‘human-Earth’, a disambiguating term people still tongue-tripped over.
“We’ll miss you too, DJ. But don’t forget: you are a grown woman now. We’ll be there for you, always, but it’s time to start taking your own steps. I did it long ago, so did your mother. In just a few years, your brother will as well. And I suppose that there’s some sort of path that your family in Equestria had to take as well. It’s all a part of growing up.”
“Getting old, you mean?” she said, looking at him with a smile despite the tears.
“Damn straight. You know how many gray hairs I’ve got because of you?”
“Probably too many.” She let him go.
“Keep in touch, kiddo.”
“I will – God knows abuela won’t give me a moment’s rest otherwise.”
“I know.”
DJ stood there for a few minutes long after her father disappeared from sight on the other side of the inspection point. Just a few more minutes, and she’d get back in her car for the drive back to her grandparents’ place in San Marino. She knew her grandparents would be understanding of the whole situation and spoil her rotten, but she really didn’t care about that right now.
Right now was about time for growing up and being an adult, and as she now stood alone in an airport, 3000 miles west of where she was from, was probably the first time she felt like one. Childhood departed on the plane five minutes ago, and as she walked towards the parking lot, the young woman had to now deal with the rigors of being amongst people yet not being part of them, and at the same time being amongst those who were young and not part of that world now, either.
“You know, Dad, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in your dress uniform before, except for pictures,” DJ told her father. At the moment, he was in his old Navy dress blues, befitting the current moment.
Matt felt the back of his head, where his ponytail had been until two days ago; since Navy regulations prohibited them and since he needed to be in his old uniform for this, it was a sacrifice he could afford to make. “Well, it’ll grow back someday,” he said to himself, absently.
“I could give you some hair extensions from my tail,” she teased. “Had to thin it out to fit through the tail slot.”
“Your hair’s thicker than mine, furball. Wouldn’t work,” he replied right back, trying to keep his voice from cracking. There would be time to recollect and focus on all of this later; there would be time for him and Anna to think back. But best to keep on the here and now, especially as the minutes ticked down.
“So, Dad, I was thinking,” DJ started.
“I would hope so. Otherwise all of this today would be for nothing,” he replied gently and as a result got a gentle tap – gentle being a relative term – from her in response. “You know you punch like a TLAM?” he said, rubbing his arm.
She merely grinned in response, then said, “Seriously, though: do you remember when I was just a little girl – I must’ve been eight or something – and I asked you why I was different?”
“You’ve asked me that quite a few times,” Matt mused.
DJ pouted slightly and then added, “I think it was after a trip to the doctor’s. You and I then went up to the Roy Rogers up in Inwood. But I remember asking you why I was different, and you told me that I wasn’t.”
Matt nodded; like everything with his daughter, it was a cherished memory. “Maybe,” he said in a teasing tone.
She huffed, then smiled softly. “I know why I’m different. It’s because I’m yours and Mom’s.” She knew he was going to say something, so she waved her arms and said, “Let me finish, Dad. I know you would have adopted me whether I was human, or a dragon or a fairy or whatever. You and Mom are just like that. But,” she said, leaning up to give him a kiss on his cheek, “that’s what makes me yours. I couldn’t be me without having parents who gave everything for me. And I couldn’t be happier.”
“Even now?” he said, a smile wide upon his face and eyes flickering with the first glint of tears of joy.
“Always, Daddy,” she said softly and genuinely. For a moment, Matt saw the five year old girl she’d been, then blurred through the years into the woman she’d become. That she wasn’t a human woman was immaterial. That she was the pride of him and Anna was.
He offered his arm. “Ready?”
She took it. “Just like you taught me.”
The pair walked out of the room, walking down the aisle towards the wedding procession at the other end. Today, Matt would give his daughter to the bonds of marriage and the boy she’d loved for over a decade. But even in loss, there was much to be gained.