//------------------------------// // Ch 1. Why is there a time portal in the back yard? // Story: Our girl Scootaloo 1 of 3 // by Cozy Mark IV //------------------------------// Our Girl Scootaloo by Cozy Mark IV & Jan. McNeville Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-made work of prose. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the property of Hasbro. Please support the official release Chapter One: Why is There a Time Portal in the Backyard? "Well, I have the first chapter done," the lavender alicorn pony sighed. "I'm still not sure why you picked me to write this, Scoot." "You're the best writer I know, you're good at research and you're unbiased. I trust you to tell people the real story, not the sugar-sweet censored-up thing everyone in two different worlds expects." The orange pegasus smiled. "Also, you write faster than anyone else I know and the advance from the publishing company is enough to live on while you wait for your fellowship to start. Even guest professors need to publish something." "Publish or perish, yes. It's partly what left Starswirl the Bearded to languish in obscurity for so many years. If he had just thought to hire a proofreader…" "And that's what my Papa and Melissa and David will help you with. They were all there at different times and can double-check the research, plus they're good at punctuation and explaining human stuff. You also have the cell-phone with everyone's numbers, so if you need to know what happened when I wasn't around for something, you can just call people. Daddy even made you a copy of my digital baby book." "Yeah, about that…" Twilight Sparkle, Ph.D and Guest Professor of Equestrian Studies at a major American university raised an eyebrow at her friend. "Who keeps footage of protests and sequenced DNA research in a baby book? Your Dad makes Rainbow Dash's father look like a casual Wonderbolts fan." "Dad is an engineer. They like records. And petabyte hard-drives are cheap these days. He started with just a little three-terabyte job that cost a hundred bucks back then." "You do know that everything Starswirl the Bearded ever did fit into less than that?" "Did Starswirl have parents with cameras?" "Good point." "And you're a great writer, plus we've established that books about famous Equestrians sell really well in the human world. I mean, Pinkie Pie's Party Cookbook has topped the New York Times bestseller list for weeks, and her bartending guide broke J.K. Rowling's pre-sale record on Amazon. People are camped out for it as we speak." "Speaking of horrifying pony media, what IS the deal with 'Rarity: The Musical'?" "…Between six-year-old girls and the kind of gay men who love musicals, how would there not be a musical in planing about Rarity by now? The costumes alone are probably going to be nominated for a Tony Award, and you know she's enjoying every second of it." "That's what worries me," Twilight groused. "That night you explained what a gay icon was, her eyes just lit up with an unholy fire. It was like the time we took Fluttershy to the National Zoo, but worse. Even Trixie didn't look like such a bad case of ambition poisoning." "Uh…Rarity is Rarity. Wanting to be a gay icon for her is like wanting to be orange for me," Scootaloo grinned. "And somebody has to record Christmas albums, appear in parades and wear outrageous outfits now that Bette Midler's retired. Plus, think of all those nice backup dancers who will have good steady jobs thanks to her. The sequin industry alone…" "I also don't understand Rainbow Dash and Gatorade. Shouldn't Pinkie and Gummy be handling that?" "It's…it's a sports thing," Scootaloo knew trying to explain Human marketing to a two-legged academic was hard enough. Explaining it to Twilight…why even try? "And the prospects for Applejack's cider franchise are looking good." "I thought she was going to knock those two…what were they called?" "Venture capitalists?" "Yeah, I thought that after the Flim-Flam brothers, she'd rear up and buck them silly. I'm glad your accountant friend was able to explain they weren't trying to put one over on her." "It'll have the best quality-control of any cider in North America, and the new hard ciders are wonderful. Did she send you a bottle of the Special Reserve?" "She did. I haven't opened it yet." "Well…save that for a night when you don't have to go anywhere…or the next day, either. A.J. seems to have farm-girl toughness all the way down to her liver." Scootaloo winced at the memory. "And just set the coffee-maker up to start automatically the next morning. Trust me." "I do appreciate the automatic one you and David gave me for Hearth's Warming –Christmas…whichever we celebrate." "The coffee maker was for Christmas. The eight little mugs and saucers to go with it were for Hanukkah. And the Coffee-of-the-Month subscription, that was Hearth's Warming Eve." "Yeah, the Human and Equestrian calendars' combining was not good for Pinkie Pie." "She's happy as I've ever seen her." "Okay, maybe I meant the worlds around Pinkie Pie." "Fair point." Scootaloo looked at the page open on Twilight Sparkle's computer. "So, may I read the first chapter?" "Sure. You aren't in it for several pages, but I've tried to get across what your Dad and Papa told me about how it was." "Worst-case scenario, just put in excerpts from Dad's diary." "…I already have." "Then it can't possibly be that bad. I bet you're doing a super job." Scootaloo sat down in the specially-designed ergonomic office chair for Equestrians and adjusted the height. Twilight, nervous as to whether the book was really going to be any good at all, backed away. "I'm…I'm going to check on Spike." "Mmkay," Scootaloo mumbled, already engrossed in the official biography of herself. It wasn't ego that made her keep reading, but nostalgia, remembering how it had all been so long ago… Our story begins with an unlikely couple. David Jayne Martin had grown up in a God-fearing family, attended church and even at a young age, wanted to know all about how things worked. When he worked on machines and computers things worked out well, and at a young age he earned the reputation as the go to kid for any and all computer problems. When he asked questions about how other things worked though, things like where animals came from, how creation worked, why do we hate those two men down the street, or why do the altar boys and their families keep leaving the church, then people said he was a troublemaker, or that he was asking 'bad questions.' When he was 12, his parents shipped David, (Jayne to his friends,) off to a suitable boarding school. He made good grades and excelled in the sciences, but as he grew older it became clear he wasn't like the other boys. It wasn't easy coming of age as a gay teen in a religious boarding school, but the internet provided dissenting opinion, and while he toed the line in public, privately he worked to understand what it meant to be gay. As years past he found the school’s unyielding dogma on homosexuality, repeated as gospel within the school walls, was decried as hate speech in many circles on the internet. Learning to tell the difference led to a true study of religion, faith, and origins that fundamentally changed his outlook on the world. It took several years and much study of religion, science and the origins of Christianity, and though it caused him pain, by the time he graduated, he found he had found he could no longer hold the same religious convictions as his family. He knew them well enough though to keep his views to himself though. While he still considered himself a good Christian, his new understanding of his faith was one of the many denominations that his parents had thought would burn in hell for disagreeing with the southern fundamentalist orthodoxy. He soon earned admission to the state college on an engineering track, and though his parents did grumble about the 'godless institution,' with some work he managed to keep the peace. The freedom of college life was amazing after the rigidity of boarding school, and while he studied math, physics and science, he also explored who he was. There were countless crushes that first year, but ultimately no long-term commitments and as the course schedule got harder in the second and third year, Jayne nearly gave up dating to focus on his studies. It was just after the holidays during his junior year he met Kevin Wilkes, a senior working on Fashion Design and Marketing with aspirations of becoming a well-known designer. They met at the school cafeteria and wound up sharing a table with mutual friends Mary and Stephanie, whom they hit it off with immediately. They were dating inside of a week and things rapidly became serious as they fell for each other. Kevin had been kicked out of his home at age fifteen, and had spent the last years of high school with his adoptive foster parents, Mary Claire Bridget Scott and Ibrahim ben-Salim Ayhan-Scott, who generally went by ‘Claire and Ben.’ The couple had fostered many children over the years, and they welcomed Kevin with open arms. The Irish-Catholic/Turkish-Muslim family1 had earned a sterling reputation of patience and understanding among the social workers and after his previous home life, Kevin soon gratefully accepted them as his parents and they as one of their many sons and daughters, the ‘foster’ being a prefix that tended to just sort of fall off along the way. This sounded improbable, until anyone met the Scotts and realized that these were hyper-tolerant Unitarian Universalist hippies whose loyalty to the traditions and values of Tolkien ranked higher than their original religious or ethnic affiliations. They cared more about whether a new kid appreciated the Beatles than his or her sexual orientation, past record or any of what social workers called ‘problems’ and took great pride in having gotten no less than nine ‘difficult’ kids not only through their teenage years, but the higher education that suited them and well on their way to a happy life. Somewhere between their immigrant parents, liberal-arts educations and the successful small business they’d founded in the Eighties, the Scotts had developed an almost Confucian blend of ‘chill’ and ‘discipline-by-example’ that made them uniquely suited to dealing with young people. That, and they also had a classic-rock cover band, so it was nice to have foster-kids around in case there was a need for a bass player. Kevin had always been a hard worker, and the trauma of being thrown out of his home gave him plenty of incentive to dive into his school work so he had less time to think about the past, though Claire and Ben did encourage him to participate in activities. By the time he was a senior in high school, he was spending four days a week at the community college taking any classes he could. When Jayne met him nearly four years later, Kevin had grown strong, smart and confident, and though the loss of his family still pained him, it no longer kept him awake at night. Kevin was gregarious, brimming with interesting stories, and he found Jayne's quiet, thoughtful personality and snide wit to be a welcome change. Jayne was glad to have finally found someone willing to learn new things, and as Kevin rapidly expanded Jayne's circle of friends on campus, Jayne taught Kevin how to work on his car, fix broken appliances, and helped him learn all about engineering and science. Soon they had developed an easy, natural rapport, where the simplest of ideas, like ‘I’m running out of shelf space again. Do you think we could find cheap bookshelves somewhere?’ would lead first Jayne to suggest building them, then Kevin to co-design them, then ergonomics, then collapsibility, then next thing you knew their respective dorm rooms had beautiful, unique sets of mortise-and-tenon custom bookshelves that packed flat for moving, cost only $50 apiece and the happy couple was busily drawing plans for their next project. Jayne was good at substance, efficiency and making something function well. Kevin was good at beauty, getting the most from very simple, often recycled materials and making the function harmonious with the design of a given piece. Together, every day was a whirl of on-the-cheap creativity, and anything from ‘what shall we have for lunch?’ to ‘are those jeans torn?’ went from problems to wonderful opportunities for adventure, just because they were together. That spring they both spent as much time together as they possibly could, touring each other’s campus, seeing favorite restaurants and bars, and meeting mutual friends. Between school, work and love, the days flew by in a blissful haze, and more than one of their friends kidded them about becoming 'that couple'– the snuggly, adorable pair who were always holding hands, always at each other’s side; the couple everyone else envies. One of the side effects of pairing a designer and an engineer was that terminology and ideas from their respective disciplines began to bleed across from one to the other. Kevin referred to the Scotts as his superior ‘aftermarket’ parents and thought of his old ones as crummy ‘OEM’ ones that ‘the manufacturer should have recalled,’ while Jayne once managed to impress the CEO of a company where he interned during undergrad by comparing one of their products to the Bauhaus design school and commenting that the simplicity of form was really quite timeless and attractive in addition to being more efficient and ergonomic than the competitor’s. (The item was, incidentally, a lug wrench.) Designers and engineers make for an adorable but occasionally downright strange pairing. The end of the school year came all too soon, and neither was sure where they were going, or what they would be doing. Over only a few short months, they had developed strong feelings for each other, but if Kevin found work across the country, how would they cope? On the day of graduation, Jayne got to meet Kevin's ‘aftermarket’ parents2 for the first time, but the cloud of uncertainty hung over the two of them despite the festive atmosphere of the event. As Kevin walked the stage, Jayne sat with his parents and two of their children in the audience and cheered with the rest of them, but his expression betrayed him. "Don't look so worried, Jayne." Claire admonished him with a warm smile, "From what I can see, our boy really loves you. You may have to write each other letters for a while, but don't lose hope. If you love him too, this will work out." She was right, of course. That summer was long and hard for both of them; for Kevin it meant endless job hunting and frustration, while for Jayne, summer meant a return to his parents, and the daily struggle to fit in while concealing his true thoughts and identity. Most evenings they would lay in bed, chatting on their computers, and fall asleep thinking of each other. In the tiny town he was from, Kevin found it nearly impossible to find even service jobs, and his degree was beginning to look like a very expensive mistake as one company after another turned him down. With the beginning of the fall term Kevin and Jayne made the arrangements and moved in together to a run-down apartment not far from campus where Kevin could find temporary work while he job-hunted online in the evenings. Despite the continued gloom on the job front, that fall was one of happiest times either of them could remember. After a hard day of work or study they would come home to each other, and once a week, they got to enjoy the warmest, most peaceful time of all. Every Saturday morning they slept in, woke up to an easy breakfast of scrambled eggs (the only thing Jayne could cook besides baking mixes or frozen pizza,) or Kevin’s delicious French toast (made from scratch, Mama Claire’s recipe,) and watched 'My Little Pony:, Friendship is Magic' together. A friend had turned them on to the show, and it soon became their special place -, a place where discrimination, hate and violence were rare, and made manageable, even comical by the serene landscape of Equestria. The ponies had their problems, but they always looked out and cared for each other. The school year passed once more in a flurry of tests and papers, Christmas came, and for the first time, Jayne made his excuses and got to spend it with someone who loved him unconditionally. As winter warmed into spring, they talked it over, and decided they were ready. The ceremony was a modest affair, with only a handful of friends and Kevin’s parents able to make the long drive with them to a state where the marriage was even possible, but it was worth it to stand at the altar with the one they loved. Also, given that the Martins were no longer speaking to Jayne and Kevin hadn’t heard from ‘his OEM family’ in nearly a decade, they decided to take advantage of the name-change option on marriage licenses and, with the proud permission of Claire and Ben, changed their last name to Scott. {excerpt from Jayne's memoirs} I am fortunate, in the place and the time I live, I am blessed to have the life I have, to have a husband who loves me, a job to pay down the student loans, the car loan, the home loan… Every day for the last five years when I wake up and feel him laying beside me, his arms holding me close, I feel so safe and loved. Of course none of this matter to my parents. Kevin had suggested we not tell them, but they were my parents, and I could hardly keep the news of my own wedding from them. I still remember the sting in my cheek where my mother slapped me after I told them. The yelling and the rage "No son of mine is marrying another man! I won't have it! Get out, both of you! And don't you dare come back! GET OUT YOU FILTHY FAGGOT AND DON'T YOU DARE SHOW YOUR FACE HERE AGAIN!" We continued to live out of our run-down apartment as I finished my degree, but despite his diligent job searching, Kevin found that without 'knowing people', a degree in fashion design and marketing was worth only slightly more than the paper it was printed on. Kevin continued to work his job in a retail store, and another in a call center to make ends meet. He would come home late to find me working through some math or engineering textbook and say "Put that away, dear, we have a new one tonight." My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It became our safe place, a place of simple happiness where no families separated or disowned their foals. In time I graduated as well. As I walked the stage, I looked up into the stands of proud parents, knowing I wouldn't see my own. But Kevin was; his boss gave him hell but he made it to my graduation anyway and was there cheering me on. When I found a job in my field we both rejoiced; even in this economy there was still a need for engineers. Our friends helped us pack the moving van and we said our tearful goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. Our new place was small but without the leaking pipes and sagging floors of our old apartment. I dove into my work, but the town was tiny and Kevin had a hard time finding any job that paid better than minimum wage, and even when he bit the bullet and took a crummy retail job at a store that treated its’ workers horribly, they kept his hours very low to avoid paying benefits. This was only made worse as many people took a dim view of us and we soon learned not to hold hands in public. I came home in tears one evening after someone vandalized our old Civic with spray paint and rocks. "It's okay, Jayne," he said as I sobbed in his arms "You're safe with me. If this town doesn't want us here, well, we're only renting." We cut our spending down to next to nothing by eating ramen and spending Christmas with the kind and accepting teenage staff of a fast-food place, saving us enough to put a down payment on a small house out in the woods between my work and a larger city where Kevin could find employment. With no neighbors for a half mile down our little dirt road we had no one to bother us, but it made for a lonely life. By now, several years after graduation, most of our friends from school had children of their own, and their lives revolved around the new additions to the family. They posted adorable pictures and heartwarming stories of the little ones playing, learning, growing. We both wanted children so, but due to state law, it just wasn't possible. Kevin took up gardening in an ever-expanding patch of the backyard, and I kept the two old cars running as best I could – he liked to kid me that I looked good with a bit of engine grease. I enjoyed my office job, but it wasn't easy being the only one who didn't watch football and NASCAR, the odd one out on any team. Our student debt and home loan meant we had very little left over each week, but through it all we would come home every night and watch the ponies in their world without hate, without debt and dream; if only. ... A nervous sense of anticipation I could not explain woke me in the wee hours of morning. Slipping out of bed I glanced out the window overlooking the dead end road – nothing to see at first but… why was the car casting two shadows? The moon was full tonight, but we didn't have any lights on… I pulled on slippers and my bathrobe over my pajamas (a silly habit I learned in boarding school) and grabbed the bat we keep by the bedroom door. Stepping out onto the porch I could see the light was coming from the backyard, and it seemed to have gotten ever so slightly brighter. I looked around the corner and nearly shrieked when Kevin put a hand on my shoulder. "I heard you get up and the bat was gone" he whispered "what is it?" I gestured at the dim glow around the corner and we cautiously made our way around the house to the fence separating the garden from the surrounding woods. There was an ill-defined area of dimly glowing light several feet around and about 6 feet off the ground out in the woods a few paces past the fence. No one else was around. I stepped closer for a better look when Kevin grabbed my hand. "Jayne, weren't those trees the same height as the rest of the woods yesterday?" I followed his gaze to the forest – it looked like a normal enough sight, but now that I was looking for it I saw it too. "The trees around the light are shorter!" Then looking down and closer to us – "and look, the fence we put in is gone!" The fence that separated the garden had a six-foot section missing, the bare wires hanging limp on either side, and the grass in a circle around the light got progressively shorter as it got closer to the light, with a patch of bare dirt directly underneath the light that seemed to have gotten bigger in the several minutes we had been watching. "Jayne, what the hell is going on?" I stared blankly at the dim light; it almost looked like storm clouds in the very center, like someone had taken a flash photo of a hurricane and… "Find me a stone," I said. He gave me a confused look but brought me an egg size rock which I tossed as close to the light as I could. The stone arced up, but as it got closer to the light it flew slower and slower until it almost hovered in mid-air, hitting the ground several minutes later. "What the hell? How can it…" And then it clicked. "Wait here," he said. "I have my old spade in the shed.” It was silly of him, but even though the garden tool was past use, he’d hung onto it when we moved because it’d been a present from Claire and Ben when he first came to live with them. He came back moments later with the rusty shovel and with a glance at me threw it at the dimly-lit circle. The shovel spun slower and slower as it got deeper in, but it also changed. As we watched, the rust faded away, the old bend from being run over by a car un-bent, and in an hour the shiny new spade seemed to pass though the circle and disappear. "Okay. We have a time portal in our back yard." The silence stretched on. "Jayne, why do we have a time portal in our backyard?" I gave him a 'who me?' look; "I have no idea." More minutes passed. "But I think I will worry about it in the morning when I am properly awake" He looked at me like I was nuts. "But we can't just…" and trailed off as he worked it out. "Exactly. Who would we call? Who in their right mind would even believe us?" I thought for a moment "That camera we have can record for several hours right? Let's set it up out here and leave it running overnight. We can check the results in the morning." The next morning I woke to see Kevin sitting on the edge of the bed fawning over something wrapped in a blanket. He turned and showed me the sleeping form of an orange and fuchsia Pegasus who squirmed in her sleep and yawned adorably. I had no idea what was going on, but my heart just melted in my chest. "I setup the camera last night, but when I came back to check on it a few hours later, this little girl was coming out of the light. It took an hour, but I caught her before she fell, and she's been asleep ever since." "Kevin. That is a foal-sized Scootaloo. From the cartoon. How…?" "I don't know either, but the light thing started to shrink right after she came through and was gone before sunrise. Aside from a hole in the fence and trees, there's no sign it was ever there." "Then…" I reached out and stroked her mane and she snuggled deeper into the blanket. I couldn't help it, my heart melted again. "She is ours," he said, with tears in his eyes, "our little one to take care of, just like we wanted for so long." I couldn't help it, I was crying too. "Okay," I sniffed, "I can live with that." The next few days were a wonderful whirlwind blur as we got to know each other. Scootaloo, as we named her, was momentarily worried by her strange surroundings, but seemed to be too young to talk or care for long. She was soon bounding about the house, getting into everything and looking for things to play with. I drove out to the larger city and bought tools to child-proof the house, vegetables and horse feed, as well as a bag of kids' toys, including an adorable stuffed lion from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ that looked at least as old as I was, but still in good shape, and a child-size bed from the Goodwill. Amy, a clerk with Down’s syndrome who knew us well since we shopped there a lot was there when I came up to the register with the ticket for the large items in back and the bag of toys I’d picked out for Scootaloo. She looked very happy as she rung me up. “Are you and your sweetheart going to be Daddies now?” she asked. It was so strange, but of all the places and people in town, sweet girls like Amy and places like Goodwill were the most understanding. Still, if word got around that we had a child staying at our place, alone with two gay men, well… people would not only ask questions, but it’d attract a lot of attention we really did not want. “Oh, no, erm –my, my niece is coming to visit for the week with her parents, and we need an extra spare-room bed and some toys for her,” I improvised a lie. “That’s wonderful!” Amy smiled broadly. “You picked perfect toys for a little girl! You and Kevin must be the best uncles ever!” She reached beside the counter and brought up a shoebox of children’s books, specifically ‘Charlotte’s Web,’ ‘The Mouse and the Motorcycle’ and several others by authors like Lloyd Alexander and Roald Dahl. “These books are a quarter each, do you think she would like some of them?” Amy asked. I looked at the gently-worn secondhand books, and did a little math in my head. Three-fifty for the lot. “These are perfect, Amy!” I praised the cashier. “I’ll take them all!” “Wonderful!” Amy cried, clapping her hands and carefully counting the books, then punching the quantity into the register. “These are the ones I’ve read. I pick out the best books and I read them when there are no customers.” “Oh, no! I can’t take your books, Amy!” “No, you should! I have read these books many times and have them at home. My work friends got me a Kindle for Christmas and whenever I find a book I want to read again, I ask my friend Sarah to help me put it on my Kindle so I have it forever. Then I try new books from stock, and when I find someone who needs a good book, I suggest they try some of these.” She pointed to the side of the shoebox, which was marked ‘Staff Recommendations: Amy’ in what looked like Sharpie marker. “All my work friends read books from stock and put the ones they like into boxes now for good customers. I have books you and Kevin might like, too!” And with that, she took a box marked ‘Staff Recommendations: Adam’ from the same shelf by the register. “Adam is your age and really smart. He is working here while he gets used to his special arm.” I remembered a young man with a prosthetic and a half-grown-out military haircut, patiently training a coworker with Down’s on the register. “You’re smart like him, so you might like the same books as him.” Couldn’t fault that logic! I picked out a cool-looking sci-fi one for myself and one of the medieval fantasy kind that Kevin enjoyed. At a quarter apiece, there was no better deal in town, and it was nice to have someone think of me as not only smart, but the social equal of a combat veteran. As I paid the shockingly modest sum Amy totaled up for me, she smiled again. “You and Kevin will be great Daddies someday soon.” And with that ringing endorsement in my ears, I thanked Amy and headed to the store’s loading dock to get Scootaloo’s new bed. Funny, but somehow the opinion of a lady like Amy, who still loved ‘Charlotte’s Web’ in her early thirties and was the nicest and most thoughtful cashier in town despite the Down’s, meant more to me and gave me more hope than anything else our friends and Kevin’s foster-parents had ever said about us starting a family. Who better than a children’s book expert to know what good Daddies should be like? The twin-size mattress and simple bed fit surprisingly easily into our eight-year-old Toyota minivan. We'd bought it only two weeks before as a $1700 Craigslist bargain in an attempt to have something Kevin and I could use for larger items and Home Depot runs. We’d worried that it might be too much car for us, but our old Civic was aging badly since the vandalism and a van would let us make bigger junkyard runs to keep it and whatever would ultimately replace it going for less money, to say nothing of how much we’d save on pickup-truck rentals now that we were homeowners and sometimes needed to bring home bulky supplies for our humble fixer-upper abode. Now, with a little girl of our own at home, it looked like one of the best investments I’d ever made. Kevin called just as I was heading from the Goodwill to the farm-supply store and added fence wire for the backyard and pet doors to the list. "She went right in the houseplant! Let’s just hope she can learn to go outside, I don't think they make diapers in her size," he explained. I laughed and told him I loved him, then went to see what could be had for a tiny pony. Again, I had to tell a white lie to an inquisitive retail worker, but as white lies go, ‘I’m looking after a pony for my friend Kevin,’ really …wasn’t that untruthful. Kevin is my best friend as well as my husband, and we were definitely looking after a pony. It was really more of a need-to-know-basis gloss-over than a lie. And the associate, whose name I don’t think I ever caught, took the unspoken implication that I’d never looked after so much as a Pekingese in my life (maybe it was my business-casual work attire?) and proceeded to tell me just about everything I’d need to know about babysitting a wee pony. And what she couldn’t tell me herself, she gave me a website address for, helpfully jotting down some of her favorite resources and forums for ponies, fillies and especially new horse-owners on a length of receipt paper. Come to think of it, she reminded me a lot of Applejack from the TV show. I hesitated at first to bring up the need for fencing, but the human-Applejack associate quickly made her own assumptions. “Oh, is your friend re-doin’ his enclosures and barn, then, and that’s why y’all watchin’ the little filly? I hear that! We’ve had a ton of people come in needing temp’rary fencing while they fix up their horses’ homes. Something about a big recall.” See what I mean? She was seriously a human version of Applejack. “But don’t you worry none, our store doesn’t carry the messed-up stuff. I think I can help you find exactly what your little filly needs, let’s just go take a look in Fencing!” And so she did! It even fit in that dear old Toyota van. Scootaloo soon made her favorite foods clear when she got out into the garden we fenced for her. Who knew someone so small could eat so much? And human-Applejack had been completely right when it came to feed suggestions, especially Peppermint Horse Treats. We experimented a little and found out that Scoot loved everything peppermint, but after she and I pretty much split a whole bag of Starlight Mints from the dollar store one happy afternoon while reading, Kevin did insist we buy her a toothbrush. They made a cute kids’ one with Pinkie Pie on it, so I bought that and chalked it up as fulfilling the ‘it is important for adoptive parents to recognize and celebrate their child’s native culture’ requirement in the parenting advice book. We soon settled into a routine – Kevin cut his hours back to just a few on the weekends when I was home, and together we raised our little one, playing with her and trying to teach her to speak. There was no doubt she was smart, and in a few weeks she was already making fumbling attempts at words and gesturing enough to make her wants and needs clear to us. Kevin brought up our mutual hope and worry one evening after we tucked her into bed. "I think she's going to grow up able to speak and think. We can't hide her forever… how will we introduce her to the world?" We had talked about this, and there was good reason to worry – beyond the risk that social services might try to take her, she could also wind up in a laboratory or worse. But if she were to grow up like a normal child we had to find her friends to play with, a school to go to, medical care for when she got sick… "I've been talking with Mary and Stephanie from our college days – Mary's working on her residency at a hospital across state lines not far from here, and Stephanie got her degree and works in a vet's office within driving distance. We have to tell someone, and they have two kids of their own already. I think if we asked them to, they would help us." So we took the risk. We asked them to visit with their little ones, and said simply that we needed their help. While Kevin watched the little ones playing in the backyard, I sat down with Mary and Stephanie and caught up on old times. Eventually they asked what we needed help with, and I told them we had adopted, through circumstances outside our control, and that we needed their help medically for when our little one got sick. "You have a child? Congratulations!" Mary said as she hugged me. "I'm so happy for you! But I thought this state didn't allow… Oh." She finished as the realization sunk in. "But they'll come and take her if you stay here!" I couldn't help a rueful smile "I'm afraid it's not what you think. Why don't you come meet her." I lead them around to the back yard where their son and daughter were romping and playing with our Scootaloo as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Kevin looked up and waved as our two guests stood slack jawed trying to process what they were seeing. "You painted a pony to look like a cartoon character?" Mary finally managed. "That's no breed of pony I ever saw…" Stephanie replied. Scootaloo had seen us by now and ran up, stopped right in front of the two mothers and said the new word she had just mastered: "Hi!" before turning around and running back to the children. After another minute of astonished silence I lamely added "So you see now why our daughter needs your help." Mary looked ready to faint, but it was Stephanie who finally broke the silence. "Ok Jayne, what the fuck? Seriously, whatthefuck!? How can this…?" I handed them each a sheet of paper "It's a lot to take in, so we made a pamphlet. Read that and you will know as much as we do." They looked down at the papers, then back up at me with blank stares. "What's important is that she is our daughter and we need your help." It took most of the afternoon, but the moms were eventually able to accept what their children had without question. Kevin and I had a baby cartoon pony, were raising her as our own, and needed their help to gather medical data so when her story inevitably got out, all the data anyone wanted would already be available, and no one would have any reason to try to steal her away. This soon set the pattern for the next year. Mary and Stephanie would bring their children by to play from time to time, and once a month we made a "Hosifal trip" as Scootaloo soon termed our late-night off the books visits to the city hospital. We would try to tire Scootaloo out during the day, and usually brought her in sleeping or half asleep. Each month we took blood and other samples, and held her in our arms as we rode through the hospital's MRI scanner. She didn't like the needles, but both Kevin and I got stuck too, so she learned to think of it as a boring family thing that we all had to put up with. We sent off her DNA for sequencing mixed in with legitimate hospital lab work, and when the results came back months latter, Mary added them into a file from a zoo, labeled the file 'Pegasus', and sent the data for analysis to see what the experts made of it. We weren't sure how old Scootaloo was, so we settled on her finding day as her birthday and celebrated her first birthday with a party. Carrot cake, party hats, lots of vegetables; Mary and Stephanie brought their kids and everyone had a good time. The guests rode their bicycles with training wheels up and down the back yard while our Scootaloo raced them on her own four hooves. Scootaloo had learned to talk by now. In fact, that was one of the things she picked up the quickest. Her first word was ‘Da?” followed by ‘Pa?” and we quickly adapted, referring to me as Daddy and Kevin as Papa. She was calling us by these names within the day, learned her own name shortly afterward and by the end of the week, she was managing small sentences, like “Papa drink?” when Kevin, whose turn it was to mow the lawn, paused outside and opened a cold can of Diet Coke. We tended to watch him through the kitchen window, for entirely different reasons. Scootaloo found the mower fascinating. I…well…we’re married. “Yes, Papa is having a drink!” I agreed with her. “That’s exactly right, Scootaloo!” “Scoo’loo drink?” “Oh, you want a drink, too? I can get you some juice.” “…Scoo’loo drink,” she explained, pointing a little hoof at Kevin and the cold can of pop. “..No, sweetie. Scootaloo may not have that drink. It is Papa’s drink and caffeine is not good for baby ponies.” “Scoo’loo no drink?” “That’s right. Scootaloo may not have that specific drink. Scootaloo may have juice, or water, or milk…” I looked around the fridge for an appropriate substitute beverage. “How about…I could make you Kool-Aid! It’s the nice kind that turns green in the pitcher.” She clopped over on her little hooves and put her nose into the cold box of Diet Coke Kevin kept in the fridge. “Scoo’loo get drink,” she explained, her head well into the soda box. “No, Scootaloo.” I took the box off her head, but not before tilting the box so the very last can tipped onto the fridge door’s shelf, well above her eye level. “See? All gone.” “Gone?” She peered into the box again. “All gone. But I can get you a different drink.” She stared sadly at the now-empty box. “…No drink. Scoo’loo no drink.” And with the saddest, most piteous expression I had ever seen, Scootaloo clopped pathetically back to the window and watched Kevin resume mowing the lawn. And then she let out a little sigh. It was unbearable. “Scootaloo, you cannot have Diet Coke,” I explained. “It has caffeine.” “Caffeine.” “Yes.” “What caffeine?” “It…it’s a currently licit drug in the stimulant family.” Blank pony stare. “It…it makes you jiggle and run around.” “Scoo’loo like caffeine?” she asked hopefully. “No, Scootaloo, you may not have caffeine. We don’t know if it might make you sick, or if it might make it so you can’t get to sleep at bedtime.” “Papa like caffeine!” “Papa does like caffeine, because Papa is a horrible influence,” I trailed off under my breath. “Papa is also a grownup. When you are a grownup, then you may have caffeine.” “When Scoo’loo grown up?” she asked, gesturing at my height with her hoof. “Yes. When Scootaloo is grown up, then she may have caffeine.” “Mm’kay,” the little filly replied, before going off to play with her dolls. She seemed busy, so I opened my laptop and got a bit of work done on a CAD drawing for work a few feet away from her. It’s not my favorite program for layout design and takes a lot of concentration, because I didn’t even realize she had wandered back into the kitchen until I heard some soft ‘clop’ sounds and giggling. New parent or not, I knew that giggling meant ‘run!’ so I raced to the kitchen, just as I heard the outside door open as Kevin came in from the lawn. “Hey, sweetie –what the-!” Kevin’s greeting was cut short. We both flinched in horror at the baby pony perched happily, with two dolls, on the kitchen counter. “Scoo’loo grown up now. Scoo’loo drink!” And, to be fair, her head was technically level with ours. I went out and got a small package of Diet Caffeine-Free Coke as well as more regular Diet Coke for Kevin, figuring that determination and cleverness, if nothing else, should be rewarded. We decided that if Scootaloo was a very good pony and put away all her toys, she might be allowed a little straw-topped sippy cup of decaf Coke with her dinner. Root beer, my own preferred soda, was also okay, it being naturally decaffeinated. That experiment went well, except that she absolutely had to have the can visible at all times, otherwise it was clearly not the same wonderful beverage that Papa and Daddy enjoyed, and she objected strenuously to the sippy cup until we finally just gave up and started drinking our Cokes out of sippy cups with straws also, at which point the sippy cup was okay. “I think she is trying to copy us,” Kevin remarked one day as Scootaloo happily ‘poured’ from the empty decaf Coke can held carefully in her teeth for her dolls. She was, at the time, wearing a sock of mine and one of Kevin’s, and had somehow found and put on a hideous, stretched-out old t-shirt of mine from college. “…You think?” “Well, my Miss Manners book says that this is a big part of how children learn. They imitate adults.” Just then, Scootaloo let out a rumbling, resounding belch which actually knocked one of the dollies down. “…I think you may want some more books on manners, then,” I observed, reddening. “Or you can stop drinking the root beer before it’s even cold!” “It’s good at room-temperature!” “You once burped the entire alphabet with it despite being the designated-driver. Is that ladylike pony behavior for our daughter?” “…Well, if she grows up to play for Rainbow Dash’s team…” “Jayne! Regardless of whether she grows up to date human boys, pony girls or a one-legged transgender kangaroo, burping like a field hand is not proper etiquette!” “Eck-et?” Scootaloo asked suddenly. “Yes, sweetie, etiquette. You and I are going to teach your Daddy etiquette. That means we all can have tea parties!” And with that, Kevin, never one to miss an opportunity to instill a life lesson, sat me right down next to Scootaloo, the dollies and a little plastic tea set, and damned if we didn’t have a lovely and elegant tea party, complete with flawless Emily Post manners. And I only burped the once. Soon, Kevin and I were teaching her reading and writing too. She picked up reading faster than any child I ever heard of, but writing was much more difficult. Without hands she couldn't grip a pencil or use a keyboard effectively, and trying to work with something in her mouth was an exercise in frustration. "I can't do it daddy, I want to write, but it's so hard!" She wailed in frustration after Kevin tried again with the mouth pen. "Its not fair, writing is so easy for you, but all I have are these!" she stomped her hooves on the floor in frustration, tears forming in her eyes. We both held her close while she sniffled, and I said I would figure something out. In a week I had found and ordered a speech recognition program for her computer, and an Emotiv EPOC headset to go with a hobbyist robotic arm. Scootaloo loved the speech recognition tool, and soon caught up on her writing practice, learning spelling along the way, but it was the headset and arm she really liked. I used the software on the headset to drive the high-end toy robotic arm through a cheap laptop, and Kevin sewed together a saddle bag to hold the battery and laptop on her left side, and the arm on her right. The whole thing buckled on and, after a few halting attempts, she was able to move the arm! Inside of a week she was wearing her new prosthetic arm everywhere (getting into places she never did before!) and having a blast being able to manipulate smaller toys like Legos for the first time. Her newfound ability to work human controls soon had her using the computer for educational games, music and video. She was learning fast, so we took the next step and found a few local families with young children who were home schooled. After vetting them and rejecting a few, we had four local families who learned our little orange secret and came by for play dates and lessons. After the initial shock it worked out well. I enjoyed teaching math and science, and the other parents and Kevin filled in each other's academic weak spots. As the kids and our Scootaloo got older, some of them did ask the obvious questions, but we only let in families with kids under 12 so, if they did talk, who would have believed them? Even as our Scootaloo had her second birthday, our world, which had been made so much brighter by her presence, began to change again. The DNA data in the zoo samples had been analyzed and the results were attracting attention. A lot of attention. At first they had thought the Pegasus file was some kind of prank, but it soon became obvious the file was too well put together, and too huge to be a prank – a forgery of this magnitude couldn't have been accomplished without years of work by hundreds of the best PhD's in the field, and if it couldn't be a fake… Inquires were being made around the country and around the world – had anyone ever seen anything like this? The hospital Mary worked at was turned upside down looking for the source. Mary told us about all this in a visit late one evening after we had tucked Scootaloo in for the night. "I don't understand, so she has new DNA, doesn't every animal have different DNA?" "You guys don't understand; normal DNA is evolved, it changes slowly and randomly from generation to generation, but any change that doesn't kill the animal gets passed on to the next generation. There is no larger plan, just 'did it kill the animal?' yes/no If no then it’s in the offspring." She took a breath and looked around conspiratorially. "This DNA is designed!" she hissed. "We are only beginning to understand it, but there is definitely equine and human DNA in there, and its assembled in a coherent, thought out way. There are several extra chromosomes and big sections of code we have never seen in any other plant or animal. We even found something that looks like a goddamn 'read me' file!" Kevin and I shared a worried look. "Okay, what did it say?" "We don't know! We can tell its text of some kind but it not in any known language! This is big guys, this would be like someone in 1890 opening the hood of one of the first automobiles and finding the hybrid electric drive train from a 2014 Toyota. We can only write a few lines of basic DNA, and even then it takes enormous effort to make man made code function properly. This isn't a few lines, this is fucking ‘War and Peace,’ it's the Windows 7 operating system of DNA!" There was silence as we looked at each other. "So…?" She looked miffed that we didn't understand "So we have to come forward with the truth. Someone will soon find the records of blood and other samples, the MRI images, and it would be better to go public now and make all this available to everyone. This information is incredibly valuable – scientist will be able to reverse engineer all kinds of useful tools and cures from what they have, but we have to let them know the whole story." We agreed we had to come forward, but worried about how this would affect our daughter. After she left we looked in on Scootaloo sleeping peacefully in her room, her prosthetic arm in a pile by the foot of the bed… I couldn't help it, I cried; For what we had and for the uncertain future to come, and Kevin held me close as he shut the door. "It'll be okay, we won't let anyone hurt her." I hugged him tightly as I replied. "No, no we won't!"