“Greg,” the girl asked, “are you sure you want to do this?”
Greg MacChraig bent on one knee, holding a ring out to the girl he’d been seeing for four years now. It wasn’t an answer he’d been expecting. “Uh, usually when a guy proposes to a girl, it’s either a yes or a no answer.”
“Would you prefer a ‘no’?” the redhead said, a smile coming onto her lips.
He sighed. “Faust….”
The look in her light-blue eyes was one of sorrow. “I would say yes. I want to say yes, Greg. But when the day is done, I wonder if you’ll still want to put that ring on my finger.”
“Of course! I wouldn’t be here on a winter day in Cleveland if I didn’t want to!” he said. “We’ve been together since our sophomore year in college, and now after I got my masters in Fine Art and finished my internship at MacGarrity’s, I want to make our life permanent.”
“Life is never permanent,” she said softly. “There are few things that are. Trust me, I know this.”
He looked at her oddly. “Is this some of that hippy commune stuff you grew up with? Yeah, I know your parents died and you were raised by the rest of those hippies in Copenhagen—”
“Christiania,” she said. “It’s technically a separate country though under the Danish Crown, and….”
He laughed. “And there you go again, hon. Little hippie girl with an American father of French descent and a German mother – you know, you never told me why they named you ‘fist’ in German.”
“Look, Greg, that’s not important right now—” she began.
“But it is, Faust. It is. Look, I want to know everything about you – what your parents were like, what your life was like in Hippieville, why you decided to come to the US – and especially why you decided to come to a nowhere place like Cleveland. Was your dad from here originally?”
“Look, I….” Tears welled in her eyes and she looked suddenly – and there was no other way for Greg to describe it – ageless. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to be alone anymore,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself for comfort.
“What would make you think you’d ever lose me?” Greg put the ring away; somehow he’d picked the worst possible time to propose, even if he didn’t know it. “Hon, I….”
She reached over and caressed his face, looking into his green eyes. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I love you and I would marry you in a heartbeat, but…I don’t know if you’ll still love me if I show you the truth.”
“The truth?”
She looked at him, and there was emptiness in her eyes. “I’m…I’m not who you think I am.”
He looked at her oddly. “Okay, is this one of these things where you’re really some leftover KGB spy kid from the Soviet days? I mean, yeah, they keep popping up from time to time, but this is 2037, hon, and what your parents did for a living forty years ago wa—”
She placed a delicate, perfect finger on his lips. “Let’s go back to your apartment,” she said. “For everything you’ve ever been to me, Greg, I owe you the truth.”
A few minutes later, they were at his place. It occurred to him that during their four years together, they’d always been at his place – never hers. She supposedly lived on the far side of town, but he’d never visited her home before. The moment he closed the doors, she started removing her clothing.
“Uh, hon, not that I mind seeing you naked, but….” He paused when he saw a tattoo he didn’t know she had before; matching ones, in fact, and how he’d somehow manage to miss them before in all this time was beyond him. The twin tattoos were of a mirrored ink quill and bottle, and an incredible job, too: the inker must have been world-class in his skill when he put them on her. “When did you get those done?”
“Not what you think,” she said, turning to face him. “They’re not tattoos. They’re cutie marks.”
“Cutie mar…huh?” He was completely baffled now. “Wait…aren’t cutie marks those tattoo-like things that ponies have on their butts?”
“No matter what happens,” she said, approaching him and kissing him gently, “I love you, Greg, and I want you to know that.”
And then with a flash, she changed.
There was a flare of light like the sun exploded in the room, and when it faded, Greg suddenly faced the largest horse he’d seen in his life, one that barely fit in the room. It took him a second to realize it wasn’t a horse, it was a unicorn – those ones from myth, not the similar ponies of the same name. And then he noticed the wings, alongside it. Wait…horn and wings?
But the unicorn – pegasus? Winged unicorn? Horned pegasus? – had deep red hair, just like his true love. And on the flanks of that purest white coat were the same tattoos that he’d seen on her just a second ago. And the unicorn’s blue eyes, looking at him with love and worry.
“This is who I really am, love,” the unicorn spoke.
Greg did the only logical thing: he fainted. He would have hit the ground, had it not been for an aura of pure white enveloping him and carting him over to the bedroom.
Well, that went well, she mused as she placed him on the bed and changed back. She’d made this decision, she noted, and now there was no turning back. Picking up her clothing off the ground and setting them on a chair in the bedroom, she sat down next to him, waiting for him to wake up.
Greg came to groggily twenty minutes later. “Oh, hell,” he muttered to himself, wiping his face in an attempt to wake himself up, “I just had the weirdest dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream,” his girlfriend said. He turned to look at her, and….
…she was glowing. She sat on the edge of his bed, dressed in a gown of what seemed to be the purest white, lined with interwoven threads of gold, silver and copper. On her head she had a tiara and it seemed to complete a halo effect on her head. “Greg, I’m sorry I have to break it to you like this,” she said, “but if you really love me, you’ll understand.”
“Oh my God….” he trailed off. “You’re an angel? Oh, crap – I’ve been having sex with a literal angel. I am so going to hell. Ninth Circle, full Dante all the way. Fuck – I’m not even Catholic and I know about that shit. Man, Pastor Johnstone told me in Sunday School that I was damned if I had sex before marriage, but…crap, I didn’t….”
She laughed slightly. “I’m not an angel – or a demon or succubus or anything like that,” she promised. “What I am is an alicorn…a pony. A special kind of pony.”
He looked at her as if she was crazy. “You’re a pony? But…how…why…when….” He buried his head in his hands. “I don’t get it. I don’t.”
“Do you still…love me?” she asked, and there was a tone of worry in her voice. He didn’t understand much of what was going on, but his girlfriend, sad and troubled? That he knew how to deal with.
“Just as much as the day we met,” he said. “And you still owe me for that coffee you spilled on my pants,” he added, an old joke between them as they met forward to kiss. There was something far more powerful and tingling he could feel in her lips as they met. Kissing her was not like any girl he’d ever dated before, but now he knew it was more than just being Ms. Right.
“Are you ready to hear my tale?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “This is going to be a hell of a story, right?”
“Well,” she said, hopping next to him on the bed, “you can honestly say you have a girlfriend – or marefriend, like I used to say so long ago – like no other.”
“Well, for starters, what’s your real name?” he asked.
“It’s Faust, just Faust. My last name, A’Licorne, is really just what I am; I just chose it for a play on words with a coincidental French surname. I was born…well, let’s just say that I can’t explain how I was born and I don’t have parents, not as people understand them – you could say reality itself is my mother and father. What I am is the Avatar of Creation, though some back on Alter-Earth considered me a goddess.”
“Are you?”
She shook her head. “I’m an avatar, an embodiment of a power. Someone or something created me, and that means there’s something superior to me – my power has to come from somewhere. As for my age, well, you know how the saying is that it’s impolite to ask a woman her age? Mainly in my case it’s because you have to count in geologic eras to get close.”
“Heh, and I thought you were turning 27 next month.”
“We can still celebrate my birthday, if you’re up to it.”
“Not enough candles on the planet, I’m guessing.” For that remark, he earned a sock on the arm and a pout from her beautiful face. “What’d I say?”
“Just because I’m ancient doesn’t mean I’m old, sheesh!” But she flashed him a smile to take the sting out of it. “As to why I’m here, it’s because I am exiled from my world and I can never return. I am a queen without her crown and I am a mother without her daughters.”
“Wait…. Queen? Mother – you have girls?”
“Fillies…well, they’re both mares now and the joy of my life, though I haven’t seen them for thousands of years.” She snapped her fingers and in a flash of light, his iPad appeared in her hand. She went to the Cleveland Plain Dealer and brought up their headline page; on the front page of the website was EQUESTRIA ROYALTY TO VISIT CLEVELAND TOMORROW with the second title being Princesses Celestia and Luna to Dedicate New Wing of Universities Hospital for Non-Human Medical Services. In the main picture was a white alicorn similar to what he’d seen a second ago, and a smaller dark-blue one.
“And they’re the same age as you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, because I gave birth the moment I was created, dummy. Of course not. Celestia’s only four thousand or so years old, and Luna, if I recall correctly, is a shade over 3500.”
He head suddenly became very, very dizzy at that thought. “Wow, and I thought because you’re supposed to be a year older than me that I was into older women.” He then looked at her and asked, “And a queen, you mentioned?”
“I was a queen, past tense. My realm, the Dominion of Equus, no longer exists, and hasn’t existed for at least three thousand years. When I left, Celestia was barely the equivalent of a teenager and raising her sister, since I could not do it. My realm split into five different nations, and it’s only been as recently as twenty-seven years ago that the final portion of my old domain, the part now known as the Crystal Empire, was folded back into what is modern-day Equestria. But by then, most ponies had forgotten me and it’s only been in recent times that recollections of the past have been unearthed by pony historians.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“Prophecy,” she replied. “I know…I’ve said I’m not one for prophecy in the past, and to be honest, I still don’t buy it as an excuse. But I call it that, because…well, I suppose in a manner of speaking I was warned about it. The Rules. Even I, for all my power, am bound by them, and when they came a knockin’ I got tossed out in my butt.”
Greg turned his head slightly. “Well, I’ve always thought it was a cute butt.”
“You would,” she said, teasing. “But getting tossed out cost me the most important thing in my life: my foals. I miss my daughters every day of my life and I fear I’ll never see them again.” Her voice sounded empty, devoid of life at that point and Greg could see that she clearly ached from their absence. He could understand that; last year one of his coworker’s kids was kidnapped by her ex-husband; while the child was safely returned four days later, the look on that woman’s eyes was the same anguish he saw in Faust’s.
“But in the meantime,” she said, forcing herself to continue, “I have lived here for thousands of years, watching over mankind and staying mostly in the shadows out of respect for powers far greater than I. Are you familiar with that song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ by the Rolling Stones?”
He nodded. “Oh, hell yeah – it’s a classic. How could anyone not be?”
Faust smiled. “What if I told you that the song’s about me and not the Devil, per se?” He looked at her oddly and she laughed. “Jagger was a cad back then, and we’d gotten drunk and stoned in his flat in London that day and I got stupid and told him about my life. He was completely floored and wrote the whole thing down. Meanwhile, Keith was higher than I could ever fly and probably didn’t remember a thing.”
“Then why isn’t the song 'Sympathy for Faust'?”
“Well, after one particular night of tantric se—” She blushed furiously; Greg didn’t need to know about that part of her life. “Anyway, a few nights later we ran into Marianne Faithful and she gave him a copy of Baudelaire’s book The Master and Margarita. He promptly took cues from the book and the rest is history. As for my history with him, we split a couple of years later when I caught him flirting with Bianca, and then I changed identities and moved to Argentina for a couple of years.” She smiled fondly as she added, “I ran into him a decade ago, but he didn’t recognize me. All for the best, I guess.”
“Uh, you don’t have to tell me, but who else were….”
She recited from memory: “Hecate. Joan of Arc. Betsy Ross. Amelia Earhart. Mary MacGregor. Mostly I’ve led boring, pedestrian lives, but sometimes I got thrust into the limelight. I’d rather not, to be honest. I’ve had to adjust to being just human in appearance most of the time and that’s tough in and of itself at times, not to mention the identity I’m using at the time. But every time I do, I’m reminded that I have to live in lies, and not of my choice. It was something I’d never have stood for when I was a queen, and then I recall the duties, responsibility and honor I had…and of those beautiful little fillies who were my world….” Faust started to break down into sobs, and Greg immediately pulled her into an embrace. Whoever she was, whatever she was, she was still someone hurting and someone he loved.
The two sat there for the longest time, just holding each other. Finally, she said, “You know what? We skipped lunch in all this. What do you want to do about dinner?”
“Um, what about Chinese?” he said. She had a soft spot for the stuff, and he couldn’t count the number of nights when she was feeling down that he’d taken her to their favorite restaurant, the Jade Palace. “We can go to Jade’s, if you want.”
“Chinese sounds wonderful. I’ll cook.”
“Sure that’d be grea….” His words trailed off as he realized what she just said. “I…when did you learn to cook? You can’t cook anything!”
She blushed. “Well…yeah, that’s true. But I can just conjure up food.” She grinned as she added, “Next time Kuzu’s in town, ask her about the restaurant in China that we owned in the 13th century. She’d never let me cook, lest I irritate some imperial official passing through.”
His eyes went wide. “Wait…Kuzu’s an immortal pony, too? How many of you are there?”
Faust shook her head. “No, Kuzunoha’s a kyūbi, the fox equivalent to the alicorn. But she’s been here slightly longer than me and it doesn’t change the fact that she’s just a normal person otherwise. As for how many other immortals, I don’t know. Some are much better at hiding than others, both the good…and the bad.”
“The bad?”
“I….” She paused. “I’d rather not talk about that right now.” A thought suddenly came to mind and she said, “Do you have to be at work for the next couple of days?”
“No, I can do my work from remote,” he commented. “Why do y—”
“—ou ask?” he inquired as the flash finished. He found himself laying on a couch now, in a tastefully decorated home far different – and opulent – than his apartment.
“Bienvenue à Nouméa!” Faust said, sitting next to him in a light shirt and capri pants.
“Noumea?”
“Capital of New Caledonia, a French overseas department – basically it’s to France what Honolulu is to the US.”
He got off the couch, looking around. The couch looked expensive. Everything looked expensive – the kind of expensive he couldn’t afford even on a year of his salary. “I thought you lived on the other side of town.”
“Not really – I have an apartment on the other side of town, just in case you ever came over. But it’s not home.” She gestured out with her arms, a smile on her face. “Welcome to my real home.”
“Home” turned out to be a sizable manse in the most expensive part of the city. A view of the oceans and pristine beaches could be seen from the living room balcony, and the main part of the town was just to the right. He walked out there in a sweater and jeans, feeling very much out of place all of a sudden. But it was beautiful.
She walked out there shortly after, leaning on the rail. “Kuzu and Emmé – yes, she’s immortal, too – keep telling me that having just one real home is dangerous, but…there’s much to be said about just coming and relaxing whenever. Plus, they borrow the place whenever they want to go on vacation, so they don’t have much room to complain,” she said with a soft smile.
He started sweating; the climate was clearly tropical, and if he remembered anything about world geography, New Caledonia was in the southern hemisphere, which meant it was summer here. “I…uh….”
“There’s some clothes for you in the closet in the bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the right. Afterwards, then we can see about getting some food.” He hesitated and she kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll still be here.”
As he walked down the hall, the smile fell from her face. Don’t be stupid, she told herself. He’ll leave the first chance you get. They all do. Who can deal with an immortal horse for a girlfriend, after all? She sighed, fighting to keep the tears away. This time would go just as badly as the others, and why shouldn’t it? For all her power, for all her ageless life on this Earth, she was probably damned for some hubris-filled stunt she’d committed on the other and to this day she had still to find out why. The only things she’d ever discovered in the thousands of years she’d lived here on Human-Earth was that loneliness for an eternal sucked hard, and that true love – that very intangible, powerful emotion every being wished for – was far too rare for humans…and almost impossible for her.
If asked, she’d readily admit that she’d had lovers a plenty over the millennia; and each relationship she handled differently, from the chaste to the…not so chaste. But although her life was filled with lovers, there was none that she truly loved, because it always ended the same: whether a Spanish conquistador, a WWI doughboy or a hippie at Altamont, once they found out who she was, what she was, they ran away and either they went to lengths to forget her – in some cases, through death – or went mad from the revelation. The Rules at work, or just her own cursed luck?
She thought things had changed a quarter-century ago when the Lost Foal arrived on this world. Faust had known the magic storm that had hit that tiny little town back in 2012 was special, but she never imagined that it would bring one of her kind here. Out of respect for the courage of the foal’s adopted parents, Faust only watched from afar, breaking her own heart as she watched the first of her kind that she’d seen in millennia work her way through a strange world. And when Celestia’s ponies finally found the way to break through the dimensional veil and establish relations with the nations of this world, Faust dared to hope that her curse had been lifted.
But the last ten years had only served to drive the knife in further. She’d found that the Nightmare she’d fought so long ago survived and had consumed little Luna, forcing Celestia to exile her sister for a thousand years until she’d been freed by Celestia’s protégé. She’d discovered that her dearest friend, Discord, had somehow become the mortal enemy of her daughters and now lay imprisoned in stone with his soul chained in the Dreamlands. But it had been the numerous times of attempting to contact them directly that had hurt the most: each time she tried, the curse hit her hard, sending her spinning and placing her in a random location. The first time, she’d been lucky and found herself transported across the planet to Beijing, but not learning her lesson, she tried again a second time…and found herself sent into the heart of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. That had been agony managing to escape and she spent days recovering, most of it emotional pain rather than physical as she realized that her daughters were still lost to her.
Faust went over to an antique writing desk, opening a drawer and pulling out a small jeweled case. Opening it, she looked at the only real treasure she owned, the one priceless thing amongst the antiques, relics and objects of incalculable value. In the case, sitting on a bed of silk, were two locks of hair from two manes, one as pink as the first rays of dawn, the other the baby blue of the skies just as dusk heralded. They were all that was left to her and the only thing that mattered to her.
Until now.
“How do I look?” he asked. T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops – he looked good in them; not quite muscular, but someone who cared enough about his appearance to keep in shape.
“As beautiful as always,” she replied, wiping obvious tears from her eyes.
“Faust, have you…?” She nodded silently, placing the case back in the desk and sealed it with a spell. She then changed back into her true form, looking at him with fearful eyes.
“Greg, this is me. I know what you see on a regular basis, and I’ve gotten so used to it that sometimes being in my real form feels weird and unusual, but at the end of the day…this is me.” She lay down so she could look at him, eye to eye as she continued. “If you want to leave, if you don’t ever want to see me again, I’ll understand.” He didn’t say anything, and she continued. “I…I don’t think you understand how much this frightens me just to say this. I’ve lived for countless years, as a queen, and done things that you can’t even dream of. But I’ve lost so mu—” She was suddenly interrupted as he leaned forward and kissed her. While in her true form. The two remained that way for several minutes.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling away from her. “Whenever you get nervous, you start just downing yourself, you know that?” he said. He reached over to her and caressed her face; in turn, on instinct she nuzzled his hand, sighing in contentment. She immediately changed back into her human form, and the two kissed more passionately. All thoughts of food were forgotten as the two decided to head to the bedroom.
“And wow….Lauren Faust. I mean, she’s on the Top Ten list of creators any artist worth their weight in ink wants to meet!” Greg said, stunned as the pair enjoyed a French-style lunch in downtown Noumea. “And you met her?”
Faust shrugged. “I didn’t know who she was; I wasn’t a fan of animation until I met you. And you have to remember this was back in 2010 – you weren’t even born then. We just happened to run into each other while having coffee in the same Starbucks in Manhattan at the time. I was living with an Irish identity at the time, and she just happened to notice that we looked exactly alike. We chatted, she told me about this project that a toy company wanted her to work on but she’d already committed to some superhero project instead. We said our goodbyes after that and that was the last I saw of her. I certainly didn’t know she was one of the most famous animators in the country.”
“I....” Greg paused. “Well, next thing I know I’m going to be blaming you for not getting me an autograph from Charles Schultz.”
She leaned back in her chair, pointing at her hair. “Uh, little red-haired girl?” When he looked at her as if she’d just broken his brain, she smiled. “No, not really – stop looking at me like that. I am a fan of Peanuts. The stories always make me laugh.”
He shook his head. “You’ve seen so many things, and yet it’s just a comic strip that makes you smile.”
She reached over and caressed his face. “Sometimes it’s just the simple things that ground me before I become some sort of mad goddess or whatever. Listening to my favorite music. Watching old romance films from the 1940s. Falling asleep in your arms.”
“So beautiful and so powerful and yet you love me,” he said, taking her hands in his and kissing them.
“All because of that,” she said, love in her eyes.
“So then, shou—” but she placed a finger on his lips again.
“Not the right time,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m ever going away.”
Greg woke up in the middle of the night. She’d placed a spell on him which switched his circadian cycle so that it would match hers for the few days they were here. He’d sent some emails at work telling them that he was feeling under the weather and was going to work from home for the next few; his supervisor was infamous for skipping out whenever he got the chance, so no one was going to begrudge Greg a couple of faked sick days. Besides, even if they didn’t let him, what were they going to do? He was here, in paradise, with his girl, who was paradise in the flesh.
Letting her sleep, he got up to go get something to drink from the fridge. He knew what she was now, and…strangely enough, he didn’t care. Yeah, he knew that there were some folks getting in romantic entanglements with ponies, but he didn’t consider himself one. Faust…she was more than human, more than pony, more than…. He grinned. I really don’t know what she is, other than mine, and that’s more than enough for me.
He continued to think that until he felt something strong grab him in rough hands and throw him against the wall. He crashed against the china cabinet, shattering a set of dinnerware Faust had told him she’d received as a gift from Napoleon in the 19th century. The wind was knocked out of him and he barely had time to recover before a huge man dressed in a pure gray suit pulled him off the ground, staring at him with lifeless gray eyes. He looked like the average overly tall man, save for the iron gray hair and the utterly gray motif he was sporting.
“This is your only chance: tell me where it is and I’ll let you die painlessly,” the man whispered in a raspy, angry voice. “If not, you will wish you had.”
“What are y—” Greg began before the man slammed him against the wall. He felt something break, and his first instinct was to take a swing at the man’s face. The punch connected, and while Greg wasn’t some super street fighter or anything of the sort, the man should have felt it. But instead, Greg felt the bones in his hand crunch as it connected with the man’s head, which didn’t even flinch. Greg screamed in agony as he pulled his mangled hand back.
“Good. Feisty. Now I’m going to kill you and leave your entrails hanging on the walls as a reminder to all who defy me,” he said, pulling his hand back. Greg saw the cock of the fist as angry purple magic began to surround it. He didn’t have time to ponder as to why another man standing there had magic; he only knew that blow was going to kill him.
“YOU DARE?” An explosion of angry red power lashed out and ripped the man away from Greg, literally pulling him through the wall, sending masonry flying. “YOU DARE HARM WHAT IS MINE?” Greg stood up and looked through the hole that had just been an intact wall a few seconds ago. And what he saw made his jaw drop.
Standing there, burning with red fire and eyes blazing like twin stars, Faust stood in her true form, her magic wrapped around the man’s throat – choking him. Her tones low and dangerous, she snarled, “You are a fool, Fear Liath More. I would think that the legendary Gray Man of Ireland would have more sense than to break into my dominion.”
Trying to break free of her spell, the Gray Man rasped, “You are an abomination on this Earth, Queen of Beasts. Because in the end you are nothing more than a gifted horse. And when I seize my rightful power, I will break you to the harness and you will be my steed.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she said, pulling the mystic noose on him closer.
“What, you think I would rut with you like your current toy?” The Gray Man barked out a humorless, guttural laugh. “I prefer my bedmates human – truly human, not some stupid animal pretending to be so. Is that why you do what you do, Queen of Horses? Are you like the Bakeneko, so desperate to become human that you would whore yourself out to any man who feels the need to stick his wick where he desires?” He grinned. “Now give me the object or else I will teach you a brutal lesson, Queen of Pets.”
“You do not deserve to live, Gray Man,” she snarled. “You abuse people, think them your playthings. You care not for life, sapient or other. You do not deserve to live in this or any other world. And I will not let my home – either my adopted one or my true one – suffer your presence any longer.”
“What, planning to exile me to that fantasy land you call your homeworld? I will burn it to cinders.”
“No. Your life is now forfeit.” And with a twist of magic, she impaled him with her horn. The Gray Man screamed an inhuman screech of pain before his body burned with ruby fire and turned into sickly-smelling ashes.
Greg looked at his beloved with fright, and a true thought entered his mind: this is who she really is.
Faust scooped him up in a softer rosy glow and in a second he could feel his wounds disappear, could feel her as she nuzzled him, whispering, “I’m so sorry, Greg. I’m so sorry you had to see that. I love you. And I’m sorry.”
Faust looked into his eyes and saw the naked fear in them. Her heart wrenched: she’d dared to let her heart open to someone and once again, it was dashed.
In the end, they always see me as I am, she mused sadly. And that hurts nearly as much as losing my daughters.
With a touch of her magic, she sent him back to his apartment in Cleveland. She didn’t bother to go explain; she knew in that moment that he was lost to her forever. She fell to the ground and by the time she hit it, her human body heaved with tears of loss and sorrow. Once again the powerful queen lay impotent and spent, once again her wounds self-inflicted.
It had been a month since he’d last seen her, and Greg felt empty. Since that day, he’d tried to get some semblance of life back, but he couldn’t, not anymore. He was a man who now knew monsters roamed the Earth, and had done so long before the Alien Girl had arrived on this world. Faust said she’d lived here for thousands of years – how many monsters had come at the same time as her? How many before? And…what about the ones that had always been here to begin with?
He couldn’t answer that. In that way lay madness, and he’d already faced that. But now he was safe from the monsters, he knew that. And he knew he’d be a poorer man for that safety.
Fumbling with the magnetic keylock – she loved using those instead of traditional keys; he never knew why until now – he finally got the two magnets to connect and opened the door to his house. He threw the coat on the rack, shuffling over to the kitchen to get a beer. Maybe someday he’d drink his brains out to forget about everything. Except he never would, never again.
“Greg.” He heard his name called out in that familiar voice, that sweet, soft voice, and he turned his head like a sailor drawn by the siren’s song. There she was, sitting on the couch, looking as beautiful as ever – but now, the chasm of reality between them was so great that even the four feet to the couch may as well be the other side of the Grand Canyon.
“Faust,” he said, standing there. A thought came to him, and he asked, “It is still Faust, right? Or did…?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I couldn’t become someone else without coming back to say goodbye.” She stood up and she was naked; not unclothed, but barren, vulnerable, empty. “I never wanted to lose you. Love is rare for me – and every time I took that chance, it ended in tears and anguish, because in the end you all see me for what I really am. Not an alicorn, but a monster. Remember the old saying about being careful that you don’t become a monster while fighting them? I became one long ago. Maybe that’s why I lost everything and will still lose everything. Because I don’t deserve you. Because Celestia and Luna deserved a better mother than they had. Because Equus deserved a better queen than it had.” Her blue eyes began to moisten again and she said, “But all I can be is me. And I am eternally damned for it.”
“Faust….”
“I love you, Greg. I love you in a way I haven’t loved anyone in hundreds of years. Yes, hundreds. For all my life, believe it or not, I never married. Always wanted the perfect stallion…or the perfect man…to walk down the aisle with. And yet in the end, I push you away, because none of you are the ones lacking. It’s always me. Always.”
“Faust….”
“Is it so wrong that I want someone of my own?” she cried. “I bleed and cry and all the other things living creatures do, why am I denied happiness? I am supposedly a living goddess…but who do I get to turn to when I need salvation from whatever The Rules are doing to me? When do I get to see my foals again? When do I get to have a love of my own? When do I—”
He shut her up, kissing her. She returned the kiss, hungrily, not stopping, her tears of pain becoming tears of joy as she knew a True Thing: he’d accepted her. In his heart of hearts, she was finally accepted and in the back of her mind, she felt something shift. She didn’t know what it was, or what it would portend, but something in the universe had just changed…and she didn’t care.
Still kissing her, he dragged her over to the desk where he kept his art equipment. Opening a drawer, he took the engagement ring out and slipped it on her finger. She offered no argument nor attempted to stop him. Finally breaking away for breath, he said, “Vegas. We can hold a formal one later.”
They were standing in front of the Bellagio before he could even finish his next sentence.