• Published 2nd Sep 2014
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he. she. we. - Shinzakura



A man, empty. A mare, damaged. A life, lived. A life - loved.

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nine. he. sister.

Well, the week went by, and the only thing that came of all that was that Moon wore herself out. By the end of the week, after a short…uh…“disagreement” we had about her suddenly flying out to Chicago – and by that I mean she flew in her alicorn form – all for something that turned out to be a miniature black hole passing through that part of the Earth. Aside from the fact that I didn’t know black holes could do that, she had me absolutely freaked when I got home to find her passed out on the floor, wings ragged and her body coated in sweat.

The argument wasn’t pretty. It was the first time that we’d fought as a couple, notwithstanding the issues that led us to be one. On the bright side, she didn’t act like she did the last time. Unfortunately, that meant I was arguing with a goddess, an individual who had a much better command of well, everything, in comparison to me. Thankfully, even as she continually argued her point, I argued our point – she was risking herself needlessly, I told her. She was doing more damage to herself than to the changeling – and it probably knew that.

And yes, I played that card; that I lost one woman that I loved – how could I face losing a second one?


And that’s why I’m alone here on our bed and she’s sleeping in the guest room tonight. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have pulled that card, but it’s how I felt. I grieve over Rachel every fucking day of my life and I don’t think I could survive burying Moon. Maybe I’m being petty, but if it means keeping her safe, then fucking call me a crybaby and I’ll live with that. But I can’t live to bury the woman I love because she’s been blown up by magic or grayed out by some magical vampire or some shit like that.

I wake up in the morning to the glaring sun poking through the window…and an alicorn lying there, holding a breakfast tray in her mouth and looking at me with sorrowful eyes. Using her magic to unfold the tray’s legs, she set it down and then looked at me as though she had a broken heart.

“I…I didn’t think of it that way,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ve changed so much, and yet…I’m still rushing headlong into battle like a princess leading troops into war. I’d forgotten I’m not a princess anymore.” She moved slightly and lay her head on my hand, the black shape lying in my right hand. “I wanted to protect my people – humanity. I don’t belong with ponies anymore, and this is my world now. All I wanted to do was to protect everyone.” And then she looked up at me. “To protect you.” She then leaned forward and kissed me. “I love you, North. I am yours and yours always. And I’ve been an idiot about things – I never wanted to fight with you about anything. Forgive me?”

I grin slightly. “Of course, hon. And besides, couples fight all the time – it’s the good ones that learn from them.” I then pick up the fork and look at breakfast. She cheated, of course; it’s the best looking eggs benedict I’ve ever seen, and I don’t need to taste them to know that they’ll be, well, heavenly. “Real or magicked?” I ask her.

In fairness, she pouts as if I’d said a minor insult. “It’s real; I learned to make them just for you. Besides, I really can’t magic up what I’ve never had before; it would taste artificial otherwise.” She then gave me a smile and said, “Eat up, you’re going to need your strength.”

“Why’s that?”

The smile turned into a grin. “Because the last issue of Cosmo said that make-up sex is the best part of making up.”

I try not to choke on my bite. “When did you start reading Cosmo?”

“Read one of Venus’ copies while she was on the game system while enroute to Chicago.” I guess I should’ve figured that; Venus, or H3XKiTTEN if you use her screen name, is one of four girls in an “Ishtarine coterie”, which is, according to the website I looked it up on, “a loving quartet groupwed and dedicated to one another in the ways of Ishtar”, which I guess is a formal way of saying “four lesbians fucking each other because they believe in some normally forgotten Sumerian goddess.”

Yeah, I said that and my girlfriend’s a goddess herself. Feel free to call me a hypocrite; I’m sure the guilt will kick in later, anyway.


While I’m eating, the phone suddenly rings. Moon says, “I’ll get that,” and before I can even blink, she’s teleported the phone receiver to her ear. “Yeah…oh, hi, Pumpkin!...yeah, we’re not really doing anything today.…Pacific War? Yeah, team’s not even starting the preps for that until next week, so I’m basically taking it easy….Yeah, sure! C’mon over, we’d love to meet them!...No, it’s not a problem. Sure, okay, see you then!” With a blink, she sends the phone back to the cradle and looks at me with sad eyes. “Well, so much for the fun…Pumpkin just called; she’s bringing her sister over with said sister’s girlfriend.”

“Really? Is she hot?” I ask, teasing Moon. You’d think I’d learn to not push things…but that’s probably never going to happen.

She just gives me a mildly annoyed glance before saying, “I think I’m going to take a shower. It’s going to be about an hour before they get here.” She leans in again and kisses me before saying, “Don’t take too long, okay?” With that, she walks towards the bathroom while transforming into her human form. Watching her body melt and warp like that as it settles into the form of the woman everyone knows? I’m probably never going to get used to that.

But as I get back to eating breakfast, I know that honestly? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

I recall reading somewhere that there’s a rule about twins, especially identical ones: that no matter how intertwined they are, they will always be very, very different. And I don’t know how true that is; I have a pair of fraternal cousins that live somewhere in Indiana, but I was just a kid when I last saw them, and they were already teenagers, so I suppose you can say they really don’t count. Furthermore, if I’ve met anyone who was a twin, I’m not exactly sure: I know quite a few of my friends, as well as my co-workers, have siblings, but how the birth order tied in is not exactly part of your average conversation.

That being said, I’m getting an education right now. Whereas Pumpkin is bubbly and friendly, the best way to describe Vanilla is intense. Though they’re identical twins, from the bright smile that Pumpkin gives everyone to the peering look in Vanilla’s eyes, there’s a clear difference. And frankly, seeing the way that Vanilla – despite her girlfriend sitting right next to her as though the latter wanted to straddle the former – looked at me as though she was undressing me…well, I’ll be honest: it made me feel uncomfortable. I think I can sympathize now with Carrie from all the times she talked about that creep in the apartment next door to hers before she moved.

“So,” Moon says, to break the ice, “What do you do, Vanilla?” It’s not really noticeable by the others, but I know my otherworldly girlfriend enough to see when she’s pissed. If it wasn’t for the fact that Pumpkin’s here, she probably would have thrown Vanilla off the mountain right about now. She gives me the briefest of glances…and that’s more than telling. Man, maybe I shouldn’t have made that joke this morning.

«No, you shouldn’t have,» she says via our mind link, «But I love you and forgive you regardless. This bitch, on the other hand….»

Vanilla smiles. “I’m a studio engineer for KGXY in Albany, Oregon, where sis and I are from. I also co-own the local LGBT bookstore and coffee shop with my gal, here.” She gives the other girl a needlessly long caress and did I mention this is making me feel really uncomfortable? “Carmilla here is bisexual, while I prefer to think of myself as pansexual…and I’m always looking for someone…new…to play with.”

“Sis!” Pumpkin scolded. She looked with embarrassment at me and Moon. “Sorry about that. Nilla’s somewhat…ah…outgoing, you could say.”

“I...see.” If looks could kill, Moon would have vaporized Pumpkin’s sister right about now. “So what brings you to town?”

“Boredom,” she said. “Carmilla and I are…looking for some excitement and we’re always…interested.” She then laughed off the blistering glare that Pumpkin was giving her sister. Have I mentioned that all of this is making me extremely uncomfortable?

Well, dinner was…interesting, and let’s leave it at that. Finally, Vanilla and Carmilla said they were going back to their hotel and took off in their rental car, leaving Pumpkin at our place.

“Bet they don’t even make it that far,” Moon said, the irritation in her voice clear as night.

“You don’t think so?” I ask her.

“Are you kidding? If we’d let them borrow the spare bedroom, they would’ve broken it in an hour.”

Pumpkin blushes. “Look, I’m really sorry about that. I know Nilla can be a…handful, but she is my sister and I do love her. I just wish she wouldn’t be so…well…you know.”

“That bad?” Moon asks.

Pumpkin blushes even more furiously than the last time, I note – yeah, it’s gotta be that bad. “Well, Carmilla said yesterday that when they arrived, she wanted to thank me for letting them stay over by, quote, ‘making me sing like an opera star’, unquote. I went and complained to Nilla about it, and Nilla’s response was that if Nilla got to have all the fun, well, she was obligated to go first because it was the duty of older sisters to initiate younger ones into that kind of thing.”

Moon’s eyes suddenly went wide; I’m guessing she was just as floored about that as I am. “She actually propositioned you?”

Pumpkin nodded. “Lots of times, actually – though she knows I’ll turn it down; believe me, I’m just as squicked as you are. But, things like that don’t bother her that much; heck, her first boyfriend was one of our cousins. They broke up because he already thought it was weird dating his cousin and he was worried about her getting pregnant. She said that turned her on even more, and that was the end of that.”

I’m not surprised when Moon says at the same time as me, “TMI, Pumpkin.”

The look on Pumpkin’s face was frustrated. “Believe me, guys – I know.”

I yawned. “Well, I don’t know about you two, but I gotta get some snooze time. Gotta get up earlier in the morning to catch the train in Anaheim for an interview with Sony down in San Diego. Think you can keep each other out of trouble until I get back?”

Moon rolls her eyes. “Just as long as her sister isn’t trying to proposition everyone in all of SoCal, I think we should be fine, love.” Pumpkin, hearing that, merely rolls her eyes.

“Oh, and don’t game too much, you’ll burn your eyes out or something,” I joke. I think it’s something that my parents told me once or something like that. Or maybe it was about the TV. Does that even really apply in the age of LED TVs, anyway?

I feel Moon’s peck on my cheek as I hear in my mind, «Yes, dear. Besides, I think Pumpkin needs to talk a little more about her sister. There’s something that’s clearly bothering her and I don’t want her to feel like she on this alone.»

«Hon, just because she’s got a sister that’s an ultra slut doesn’t mean that she’s got something to get off her chest…unless it’s Vanilla’s hands.»

«Trust me, love, it’s more than that,» Moon insists even as she’s walking to the game room we built in the basement of the house, holding a vastly different verbal conversation with Pumpkin at the same time. How the hell she can multitask at that level is beyond me. «Call it mare’s intuition if you want, but I think our dear Pumpkin’s holding a secret, and I think I’m going to get to the bottom of it, if only because she’s a friend and I don’t want her to suffer.»

«Okay, just be careful that you don’t expose your own,» I remind her. «Her secret could be something just minor and embarrassing; yours could end up with us being on the run for the rest of our lives.» I don’t get a response to that, but I know she got it. In the meanwhile, I do the usual stuff getting ready for some snoozin’ time. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow and the Amtrak down to San Diego is way uncomfortable to begin with.

Most of the day later, as I’m stepping out of the Sony offices, hoping to catch a taxi back to Union Station, when I see an all-too familiar person step by me. “You know I can find you anywhere on the planet,” Moon said, giving me a kiss in greeting. “Being in a relationship has its advantages.”

And just like that, I know something’s wrong. “What’s wrong, hon?”

“I think I found the changeling,” Moon says, worried. “I think it’s Pumpkin.”

I blink. “What, what?” She merely nods in reply, and I say, “Look, let’s go grab some lunch – I hear some of the places in the Gaslamp Quarter are pretty good – and we can talk over all this. Are you sure about this?”

“I am,” she replies as I flag down a taxi. “I know that this is going to sound funny as hell, but I know that you’re thinking that as an alicorn I should have some sort of sixth sense of what’s a changeling. The truth is, I don’t – or if it I did, it went well…with her, if you know what I mean. And if Celestia ever developed one, I wasn’t exactly privy to that.”


About twenty minutes later, we’re both seated at Barleymash, a brewpub that looked interesting enough. We make our orders and she casts some sort of silencing spell and now we can practically shout everything and no one will hear a single thing if it’s related to the conversation.

“After you went to bed, she and I gamed for a little while – she’s apparently signed up in the FPS category at Pacific War, and she’s actually pretty good with a heavy gunner. So then we stopped after a while and I asked her if there was something wrong. She nodded and she said that there was, but she didn’t want to really talk about it. I prodded her, and she said it had something to do with her family, and I gather that there’s some sort of big family secret that she didn’t want to let out. Finally, she said something subvocally, and had I really been human, I probably would’ve missed it.”

“What was it?” I ask.

“She said, ‘zuul nichestvoh’ , which is Czett’ryn – the changeling language – for deception.”

“Sounds like Russian…or maybe I watched too many of those cheap films from the 80s, I dunno. But I mean, are you sure about this? I mean, Pumpkin is one of your closest friends.”

The look on her face was pained. “I know; I don’t like the idea of assuming that my friends are monsters!” she cried. She then raised her finger to indicate that the waiter was coming; as planned, I briefly changed the discussion to a talk about Pacific War. Moon obliged, talking about how we were going to have to reserve a hotel in Honolulu, and that she’d have to do a lot of preparations for some seriously heavy-duty combat against other international teams. Needless to say, this was the big leagues for her, and approaching a level of superstardom – or at least as much as someone was going to get for her particular career.

Once the waitress departed with our orders, she went over the rest of the evidence. “She felt very closed, closed in a way that I usually don’t get from people. She was acting almost as though she was another person. That’s something changelings do: Even though they can imitate their targets down to a T, they’re still distinct individuals – or as much as you’re going to get in a hivemind – and so they’re not going to be able to able to perfectly imitate a target in front of someone they know. I wish I had a concrete example I could give you, but unfortunately, one doesn’t exactly come to mind.”

I smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve read The Prince and the Pauper, so I’m familiar with the concept. So you’re saying that they wouldn’t know anything that only someone close would know, like for example that my sister likes dipping pickles in mayonnaise?” In turn, Moon looks at me funny, and I try not to laugh. “Hey, it’s true – I have no idea where Carrie picked that up. Suffice to say that it’s weird as shit but hey, family’s family.”

“Um, yes, something like that.”

“Any other info?” I ask, trying to change the subject from my sister’s weird dietary habits.

“Yes. There’s Vanilla. She’s acting like a changeling queen, to be honest. Most of the changeling queens that Celestia and…Luna…came across were always, how shall we say, ‘vigorously amorous’? Perpetually in heat, to be honest – it’s an extremely easy method of harvesting very powerful emotions, as ones based around love are some of the biggest ones around.”

“I didn’t know that was even possible with an estrus cycle,” I admit. Wait, do ponies even have estrus cycles? Now that I think of it, Moon’s never gone PMS on me, so there’s not that….

“Changelings, as far as I know, don’t even have one. If anything, they’re more like monotremes, which are extinct on my world, and very rare on this one.” She sighed. “Truthfully, I don’t even know how to react to the fact that Pumpkin is one, assuming that’s the case. I mean, I don’t really have many close friends, and between her and Katie, that’s most of my social interaction. But the truth is that at the same time, she drained the guy who attacked me on stage. In Equestria, that’s a major crime, or at least was when I was there. And we cannot afford to have anything like this happen here on Earth, or else the kind of chaos that will ensue will be nothing unlike anything that has ever happened in your history.”


As the food comes, I digest the thought. I know Moon’s history, but I trust my girlfriend completely and utterly. But I can’t say that about Pumpkin. Granted, she’s a nice girl, but…I don’t have that sort of history that I do with Moon or any of my other friends. And knowing Moon, she’s torn between what she feels is a duty to protect the Earth and her friendship with Pumpkin. Frankly, I’m a little out of my depth with this one. I’ll have to ask her to talk to Katie about it, albeit in a rather roundabout way. Maybe it’s just one of those woman things that I’m never going to figure out.

And I realize I’m seriously fucked if there’s going to be a lot of these in my life. Shit.

Well, at least I’ve got a one-of-a-kind girl to help me deal with it.

The next two weeks are rough, to say the least. Moon’s out of the house at almost all hours now, and she’s watching both Pumpkin and Vanilla full time. The only time she comes back home is when she’s utterly exhausted between flying to Pumpkin’s place and heading to Oregon to spy over Vanilla. She also points out that Vanilla and her girlfriend have a very open relationship, which is something that I really didn’t want to know. I mean, yeah, I probably wouldn’t have minded knowing Vanilla and Carmilla when I was a teen, but now that I’m adult with responsibilities, married once and with a live-in girlfriend, that kinda sorta life isn’t for me anymore. Besides, keeping up with Moon in that regard is fun enough as is.

Meanwhile, I write, work, edit, do all the kinds of stuff that I do when…well, when I felt I was alone again. I know I’m not. But there’s a tension building between and Moon and me right now. She’s obsessed with finding and shutting down that changeling. I know why, Lord Almighty, having that kind of monster running around all over Earth? No way in hell that I can’t approve. But as Moon has proven in our relationship, she’s prone to take shortcuts and not really think things through. So in a way, that kind of makes her like a Greco-Roman deity.

Wow, I don’t even want to think how that would impact my own worldview.

In any case, I finish up my latest story, when I get a call on the home line. I answer; turns out it’s Katie – and she’s crying. “Sorry to bother you,” she sniffs, “but I needed to talk to someone. Is Moon there?”

“No, she’s out of town, taking care of business up north,” I tell her. Hey, it’s the truth. But I’ve known Katie practically since she was in diapers; she knows she can turn to me for help if something goes south. “Katie? Something wrong?”

“I just…I need to talk to someone,” she sobs. “My boyfriend…he and I broke up and I…I have….”

“Say no more – I’ll be right there. Where are you?”

“I’m at my place. You have the address, right?” I check the phone, and yeah, still have it.

“Yeah, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t worry, big bro’s on the way.”

Despite her situation, I can hear her chuckle a bit; that’s an encouraging sign. “Okay, I’ll be waiting for you.”

As I get up and grab my keys, I wonder if I should leave Moon a note. But then I sigh and realize it’s been well over a day since I last saw her, and good or bad, she always knows where I am – wish I could say the same about her.

The minute I get to Katie’s place, there’s something that feels off. Maybe it’s just the fact that Katie’s growing up and going through stuff, or maybe it’s because of my own relationship problems at the moment, but I let it be. Katie needs me to be on game, not giving her a justification why men suck or whatever.

I knock on the door and I hear a muffled, “Almost there!” She then opens the door, and whatever that feeling is? It seems to vanish. All I see right now is Katie.

“Sorry about this,” she says, hugging me tight.

It’s the last thing I feel before I pa—