Chapter 5
Indigo
By Alaborn
Standard disclaimer: This is a not for profit fan work. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is copyright Hasbro, Inc. I make no claim to any copyrighted material mentioned herein.
Chapter 5
“As far as we can determine, your foal is healthy, despite his different appearance. We will want to schedule regular appointments to establish a baseline for any traits that change over time,” the doctor told Ruby Glimmer and Blue Twilight.
“Your checkups will be conducted in a private room, and your privacy will be maintained,” a nurse added.
“What about all the specialists? The research?” Blue Twilight asked.
“We will continue to research your unique foal, but no identifying data will be attached to any communication,” the first doctor said. “We take medical privacy very seriously. Not even the princesses can look into your case without your express permission.”
“I think it’s time for the parents to be alone,” another nurse said. “Ring the call button if you need assistance.”
“We will,” Ruby Glimmer said.
Ponies like to say that there is no purer example of Harmony than the love of a mother and a father for their newborn foal. Comedians joke that only harmony magic is powerful enough to make parents want to endure all the crying, late night feedings, and dirty diapers.
Regardless of the influence of harmony, the young couple positively glowed with pride upon seeing their son. With hugs, nuzzles, and the comfort of his mother’s magic, little Shooting Star settled in for a nap.
But there is a limit to this newborn magic. For Blue Twilight, it came the next morning, watching Ruby Glimmer feed their son. She lay on her side in the hospital bed, Shooting Star cradled in her magic as he suckled at her teat. Her horn glowed with magic as she kept adjusting their son’s position.
“Now I’m seeing why human women are described as having prominent teats,” Ruby Glimmer commented. “It’s hard to keep him from burying his nose into my belly.”
Blue Twilight shook his head as he started thinking about the situation. “Why? How? Why is our son a fictional creature?”
“Magic,” Ruby Glimmer said. “Magic is almost always the answer when something happens that we can’t explain.”
“This goes way beyond magic!”
“It does. But one of the first lessons we learned at Celestia’s School was that there is magic beyond pony magic. The cosmic magic of the alicorns. The chaos magic of Discord. And the harmony magic of Equestria itself. We learned that when ponies attempt to use magic beyond pony magic, the best case scenario is some monster of the kind that Star Swirl or the Elements of Harmony defeated.” She brushed the little tuft of hair atop Shooting Star’s head. “And this little miracle is no monster.”
“Yes, he’s a miracle. And he’s a human. Why didn’t the doctors say something? I mean, there were like five stallions there at the birth. One of them must have known, right? Why didn’t somepony say something?”
“They are doctors. They learned in school that the offspring of a pony and any race is a pony. That’s the way our magic works. So our son has to be a pony.”
“But he’s not!”
Ruby Glimmer lifted Shooting Star in her magic, levitating him to Blue Twilight. At that moment, the infant opened his eyes. He placed his tiny hand on Blue Twilight’s muzzle.
“Does it matter?” Ruby Glimmer said.
Three days later, Ruby Glimmer and Shooting Star were cleared to return home. Their child was carefully bundled and secured in a carrier, his features hidden from notice, for the trip home, and they made it back to their apartment building without being disturbed.
Blue Twilight hurried up the stairs and opened the door for Ruby Glimmer and Shooting Star. “Welcome home, Shooting Star,” he said as his son entered.
The child, fast asleep, didn’t appreciate the momentous occasion.
“Let’s get him into his crib,” Blue Twilight said.
“No, we need to take a family picture first,” Ruby Glimmer said. “Here.” She passed Shooting Star to him with her magic, and then dashed off.
Blue Twilight took hold of the child. “Where are you going?”
“I’m getting the outfit Mom sent us,” she replied.
Ruby Glimmer returned with a one-piece outfit of yellow fabric, and put Shooting Star into it. The outfit covered everything but the foal’s head and tail, with cute padded socks for his hooves. His human hands and feet fit well into them, but the outfit had one problem, as Ruby Glimmer noticed when she saw a patch of white on his rump.
“Hold on a second,” she said, as a quick mending spell closed the tail hole of the outfit.
“I guess we’re going to have to get used to doing that,” Blue Twilight said.
Ruby Glimmer placed a matching knitted cap on Shooting Star’s head. “We’re ready,” she said.
The couple took a seat on their couch, placing their son between them. Blue Twilight took their camera in his aura, aimed it, and took a picture.
The camera’s magic quickly transferred the image to the specially treated photograph paper. Blue Twilight snatched the photograph in his aura and brought it to them.
“It’s beautiful,” Ruby Glimmer said.
“It is, but we can’t really show off this picture,” he replied. “I mean, what are we going to do? We can’t just keep him wrapped up all the time.”
“There is something,” Ruby Glimmer said. Her horn illuminated, and she scrunched her muzzle as she concentrated on a complicated spell. After a moment, magic washed over Shooting Star, and when it faded, he appeared to be an earth pony colt, with a violet coat that blended the colors of his parents, and a blue mane similar to Ruby Glimmer’s mother, with streaks of silver like Blue Twilight had.
“An illusion spell?” Blue Twilight asked.
“It’s Shadow Song’s Illusory Cloak, which conceals and changes the visual, the tactile, and the olfactory,” Ruby Glimmer explained.
“Olfactory? You want to change our child’s smell?”
“The Swift Current books never mentioned what humans smell like, but I doubt it’s like ponies.” She picked up the camera. “Now smile!”
Blue Twilight smiled, and they took a second family portrait.
“Something for your desk?” Ruby Glimmer inquired as they examined the second picture.
“Yeah. But we can’t use this picture for our parents. They know our foal isn’t supposed to look normal. So we can’t show them a normal foal.”
“They’ll see when they come to visit,” Ruby Glimmer said.
“Yes, we’ll explain it then. Is there anypony else who knows our foal was supposed to look different?”
“”I shared it with Aurora Glow and Emerald Heart,” she replied. “Did you tell anypony?”
“No, just my parents. Oh, and Tall Tree.”
“Tall Tree? I thought you haven’t seen him since graduation?”
“I haven’t,” Blue Twilight said. “But there were some nights when I couldn’t sleep, worried about our foal. I didn’t want to disturb you, so I went into the computer room.”
“Nursery,” Ruby Glimmer interrupted.
“Computer and nursery room. I would go online, and most of the time, Tall Tree was online too. I needed somepony to talk to, and he was willing to listen to my fears. I think I told him everything about what was happening.”
“That was nice of him,” she said. “Did he ask if we were having a human baby?”
Blue Twilight frowned. “He may be the biggest Swift Current fancolt I’ve ever met, but he has more tact than that,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if he was thinking that.”
Three months later, on one of his occasional visits to Swiftfiction, Blue Twilight saw a story that immediately caught his attention. At the top of the featured story box was one called My Foal, the Human. And when he saw the author was OakTree, Tall Tree’s screen name, he immediately recalled that conversation he had with his wife as they took their first family portrait.
“He couldn’t possibly know, could he?” he whispered.
Blue Twilight clicked on the story. It started with the happy young couple—both unicorns, he noted—decorating the nursery for their coming foal. Then the mare got a new craving, for fish.
The stallion was then shown running through the streets of Canterlot, in the middle of winter, desperately looking for somepony selling fish. After several amusing mishaps involving some griffons and a barrel of fish, he eventually returned home, a herd of cats following him. He then tried to cook the fish, only to find his wife had already consumed them raw.
They logically assumed their foal was going to be a pegasus, due to that craving, but then their doctor said their foal was not going to be a pony at all. At that moment, the foal’s name came to the mother... Swift Current.
The second chapter, the last one written so far, covered the foal’s birth, and the couple’s failed attempt to corral an active infant. True to his namesake, Swift Current proved to be an inventive foal, and was shown defeating numerous “foalproof” devices with his fingers and clever mind. The chapter ended with a brief scene of another expecting couple, with the mother coming up with the name Strong Arm for their foal.
He called Ruby Glimmer over to the computer, and let her read the story. “What do you think?” he asked her.
“It’s an interesting premise, showing the cast of the Swift Current series being born in Equestria,” Ruby Glimmer began. “I’d like to have a better idea where the author is going with the story once the humans all appear; right now, it could be anything from slice of life comedy to humans and ponies working together to prevent the catastrophic joining of their worlds. And in stories like these, I always want to know if Swift Current exists as a work of fiction.”
“No. I mean, what about us? Do you think he somehow knows about what happened to us?”
Ruby Glimmer laughed. “He’s obviously never seen a foal, let alone our foal, if he thinks Swift Current could do that in the first month after birth.” She picked up their sleeping son in her magic.
“We don’t even know what normal is supposed to be.”
“If the description in the books is accurate, a human child takes longer to walk, but otherwise develops similar to a foal,” Ruby Glimmer said.
Blue Twilight shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re relying on a work of fiction for foal-rearing advice.”
She rocked Shooting Star in her magic. “Maybe it’s not fiction after all.”
Maybe it’s not fiction after all. Those words weighed on Blue Twilight’s mind every time he tended to Shooting Star. With plenty of time to kill while feeding or holding the infant, Blue Twilight decided to read the books Ruby Glimmer was using as her references. The primary resource she used was the ninth book in the series, Swift Current and his Go-Cart. The main plot concerned Swift Current racing a machine called a Go-Cart, which was a miniature version of an automobile, sized for one pony, or person in this case. But the story started with Swift Current helping River Wind as she foalsat (the book called it babysitting) for a group of children, including one infant.
Swift Current tried to build a machine to change diapers. It was an uncharacteristic failure for the young inventor, and Blue Twilight laughed at the resulting mess he made.
After he finished the book, Ruby Glimmer suggested he look at the fifteenth book, specifically one chapter in it. This time, the child was Strong Arm’s nephew, and the book included rather specific details about how a human child of two years acted.
It looked about as bad as a pony foal.
The terrible twos were still a distant worry as Blue Twilight and Ruby Glimmer cared for their growing child. He was crawling now, and they were trying to get Shooting Star to eat solid food. But he was proving to be as stubborn as any foal that age.
So far, the illusion spell Ruby Glimmer used had kept their foal’s appearance a secret from everypony not already in the know. Blue Twilight was even able to learn a simpler illusion spell, one that only changed appearance, as an emergency backup. As he learned during his time at college studying computer science, having a redundant system was important to keeping things running smoothly.
And being new parents, Blue Twilight and Ruby Glimmer ended up spending much of their free time at home. Visitors from their college days were few and far between, and they weren’t sure if meeting other new parents was a good idea. Once Shooting Star was older, that would have to change, but for now, they enjoyed their quiet days with their child.
After keeping to themselves, they were surprised one day when somepony knocked on their door. It was a chilly day early in December, and they certainly weren’t expecting any visitors.
“Get the door. I’ll deal with Shooting Star,” Ruby Glimmer said. Blue Twilight headed to the door, holding off on opening it until he saw the illusion put back in place.
Blue Twilight thought the mystery visitor might be a neighbor, or the landlord. He was certainly not expecting to see a Royal Guard unicorn standing there, with an official writ held in her magic.
“You are Blue Twilight?” the guard said.
“Yes,” Blue Twilight replied.
“I’m here to interview you and Ruby Glimmer about an important matter. Is she here as well?”
It was a silly thing for the guard to say, given that she could see Ruby Glimmer. “I am,” Ruby Glimmer said.
Blue Twilight peered at the writ. It mentioned an interview, but it didn’t specify the subject matter. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Let me see that,” Ruby Glimmer said, grabbing the writ in her aura. “Wait, why does this have the seal of Princess Twilight Sparkle?”
The guard stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. “I’ve come to talk to you about your child.”
Ruby Glimmer stepped in front of Shooting Star, calling magic to her horn. “Just what are you trying to do?”
The guard raised a hoof. “Please, I mean you and your child no harm. I’m here because you deserve answers. While I have the authority to order you to speak, I would prefer to talk to you as friends.
Blue Twilight felt a tickle in his horn as the guard dismissed a spell. Immediately thereafter, he felt a powerful wave of magic, and he instinctively closed his eyes against it.
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was he wasn’t looking at the guard’s eyes, but her chest. She was no longer in armor, and he saw her light purple coat. He looked up, and saw the impressive stature, long horn, flared wings, and ethereal mane of stars. “P-princess!” He stumbled as he tried to bow quickly.
“Please, rise, both of you,” Princess Twilight Sparkle said. “I have never wanted ponies to bow to me.”
Ruby Glimmer rose. “Why are you here, Princess?” she asked.
“It is as I said. I have come to talk to you about your child, because you deserve answers,” she replied. “May I see him, without the illusion?”
Ruby Glimmer nodded, and dismissed the spell.
Twilight Sparkle smiled. “Human babies are such cute things,” she said.
“You know about humans? You think they’re real?” Ruby Glimmer said.
“Of course.” She knelt, lowering her wing to Shooting Star. The baby reached out, curling his tiny fingers around a feather.
“Wait. Then do you know why our child is human?” Blue Twilight asked.
“I do. The reason is simple, but the explanation will take some time,” she replied. “Your child is human because you both possess human souls.”
“What?” Blue Twilight and Ruby Glimmer said in unison.
“As I said, the explanation will take some time. Shall we sit down with some tea?”
“Uh, we don’t drink tea,” Blue Twilight said. “I can only offer energy drinks or hard cider.”
“No worries, then. I’ll provide the tea.” The princess’s horn flared, and a complete tea service appeared on the kitchen table.
Blue Twilight examined the cup; it appeared to be incredibly fine china, decorated with gold leaf. “Did you summon your personal tea service?”
“Of course not. It would be silly to reach all the way to Ponyville just for tea. No, I’m borrowing Princess Celestia’s personal tea service.”
“That’s not very nice,” Ruby Glimmer observed.
“If I wanted to be not nice, I would have borrowed her cake, too,” Twilight Sparkle responded. “But we’re not here to talk about our little pranks.” The princess took a seat; the chair appeared to magically grow to fit her larger body. She calmly poured tea into three cups.
After a sip of tea, Twilight Sparkle spoke. “The story begins, as most problems in Equestria’s history do, with Discord.”
The two unicorns then heard discordant tones outside the window, as if somepony had shattered a wind chime and reassembled its pieces randomly. The princess heard it as well, but she must have understood something in the tones, as she spoke to it. “Yes, I know you heard that. You were supposed to hear that!”
She shook her head and turned to the couple. “Sorry about that. Some beings should learn not to eavesdrop, especially if they don’t want to hear tales of their failures repeated. Anyway, Discord.” She took another sip of tea. “Centuries ago, he defeated Princess Celestia and Princess Luna for the first time, a very short-lived victory, and one I’m convinced they allowed to happen. But in the short time he ruled, he tried to make his rule permanent.
“Discord wanted chaos to replace harmony. And he did just that, spreading chaos across the globe. But Harmony could not be defeated through brute force. The Tree of Harmony’s roots are deep. Where there is life, there is harmony, and this harmony dispels chaos.
“Seeing that raw power could not win, Discord tried other tactics. One was to trap his power within a shell of life. The result of that was the plundervines, if you remember your history. Another was to pour his power into a place where there is no life, the molten rock deep underneath the planet. And that’s what’s relevant to your case.
“Like most of Discord’s schemes, this plan was ultimately a failure.” They heard the discordant chimes again, but the princess ignored them. “Sure, there may be a seething torrent of chaos far beneath our hooves, but when it breaks free, Harmony will still counter it. But sometimes, this freed chaos will touch a pony before it is eliminated. And that creates problems.
“For any species touched by magic, reproduction has both a biological component and a magical component. For ponies, whose magic comes from the harmony of Equestria itself, the magical component has a very strong influence. Harmony wants ponies to thrive, and it wills it so. The offspring of a pony and a biologically compatible species is a pony because Harmony wills it so. There are three fillies born for every colt because Harmony wills it so.
“But harmony is the eternal foe of chaos, and it will not allow chaos to spread. And that includes a pony touched by chaos. When ponies are unable to conceive, the cause is normally biological, and pony medicine has made great strides to help these couples. But sometimes, two ponies are completely healthy, and still have problems. There is nothing wrong biologically; the problem comes with the spark of the two ponies’ souls. When one is touched by chaos, Harmony says no. And that’s final. It is one of Harmony’s methods to stop the spread of chaos.”
“Is that what happened with our parents?” Blue Twilight asked.
“Exactly.”
“Unless an alicorn gets involved,” Ruby Glimmer said.
Twilight Sparkle nodded.
“But why?” Blue Twilight asked.
“Well, it all started with Rockhoof,” Twilight Sparkle started.
“Rockhoof? The Pillar, Rockhoof?” Ruby Glimmer asked.
“Yes, that Rockhoof. When we rescued Star Swirl and the Pillars from Limbo, we were able to learn so much about these historic figures. One thing we learned was that Rockhoof was in a herd, a large one, yet had no foals. Fortunately, we knew modern Equestrian medicine could fix that, yet doctors identified nothing wrong with the stallion. It was my own research that discovered the corruption of chaos that afflicted Rockhoof. And since I suspected one of my dearest friends was similarly affected, I made it my mission to find a way around the problem.”
“Are you talking about Pinkie Pie?” Blue Twilight asked.
“Yes. After reading everything I could, including tomes I could only access because I was an alicorn, I found a way to bypass Harmony’s failsafe.”
“And what was that?” Blue Twilight asked.
“That’s where the human souls come in,” Ruby Glimmer guessed.
“Correct,” Twilight Sparkle said. “For an animal, sperm meets egg, and that’s all that’s necessary to create new life. For ponies, there needs to be a soul. If it can’t be provided by the parents, then it must be found elsewhere.”
“That sounds... I don’t know....” Blue Twilight said.
“It sounds like something Sombra would do, and it would, if the souls were taken by force. But I searched for souls of those whose lives were tragically cut short, and offered them a second chance. Only if they were willing would they come to be reborn as a pony, and enjoy a full life in Equestria.”
“Why humans? Why not here?” Blue Twilight asked.
“Harmony’s will is too great to give a second chance to a pony, or any other creature of Equestria. I had to look elsewhere, to another world.”
“How did you find humans? I thought the multiverse was too vast to find other worlds,” Ruby Glimmer said.
“I’m sure you have heard of mirror portals,” Twilight Sparkle said. “They were once a relatively well-kept secret, before Star Swirl was rescued from Limbo, and the old coot started blabbing. Anyway, one such portal led to a world parallel to ours, a world where ponies instead took the form of a strange race of bipeds called humans.”
“Did you know about this?” Blue Twilight asked Ruby Glimmer.
She shook her head.
“Imagine this teapot were this mirror universe,” Twilight Sparkle said. She cast a beam of light upon it with her horn. “It is a reflection of Equestria, and a reflection of other world at the same time.”
Ruby Glimmer lit her horn and added a second light to the teapot.
“It’s like that exactly,” Twilight Sparkle continued. “Having visited this world, I knew its combined cosmic magic, and using it and the magic of Equestria as inputs, I only needed to search a tiny sliver of the multiverse. I found the human universe, and shortly thereafter, I was able to give Rockhoof and his new wife a healthy earth pony colt.”
“If I’m remembering my history correctly, that’s around the time the Swift Current books came out,” Blue Twilight observed.
“Right. One of the things I always wanted to do was write stories, to share the lessons I learned about friendship. And knowing that Rockhoof’s colt might have flashes of memory from a different world, I decided to teach these lessons using characters from a fictional human world. That way, any flashes of memory would appear to be a reference to these books.”
“I knew it!” Ruby Glimmer said.
“What?” Blue Twilight said.
“The real identity of Apple Town. I always knew it was the princess!”
“I haven’t been Apple Town for more than a century. But I love how ponies embraced my writing, and have followed every subsequent generation of Swift Current.”
“I see why you wrote the books about humans, but if you wanted to teach friendship lessons, then what was the point of focusing on human technology?” Blue Twilight asked.
“Because it was something that needed to be done.” Twilight Sparkle said. “To elaborate, first let me ask a question. What was the greatest invention in the five centuries following the banishment of Princess Luna?”
“I’d say the printing press,” Ruby Glimmer responded.
“The prin-” Blue Twilight said, too late. “Um, maybe the crossbow?”
“My answer would be the printing press, but the crossbow is a good answer too, as would be the telescope and the mechanical clock. Now, what do all of these inventions have in common?”
Blue Twilight and Ruby Glimmer both shrugged.
“They were not invented by ponies,” Twilight Sparkle stated. “Banishing her sister affected Princess Celestia. She was driven by guilt, the feeling that she could have done something different. In the time after, she became resistant to change. She has never spoken about it, even to me, but I suspect that she wanted the world to stay the same, to help Luna adjust when she returned.
“As the sole ruler of Equestria, Princess Celestia had the power to freeze pony culture, but she could not stop the world from changing. While pony society stagnated, griffons, minotaurs, and other races continued to grow. It made ponies look weak, which led to conflicts and even wars. She couldn’t stop all changes, especially in trade centers like Manehattan and Baltimare, but Canterlot and its nobles remain to this day overly traditional and afraid to change.
“When I first went through the mirror to the parallel human world, I saw a glimpse of what ponies could be, what ponies should be. And that led me to use my power as princess to encourage ponies to look forward, to reach for the stars. It makes my heart soar to see all the things my little ponies have built in my short lifetime.”
“Short?” Ruby Glimmer snorted.
“Relatively speaking.”
Shooting Star started to cry, and Ruby Glimmer picked him up in her magic. That led Blue Twilight to think of another unanswered question. “You haven’t explained how you found us,” he said. “Did someone at the hospital tell you about our son?”
“No, the doctors would never do that. I did receive some queries from doctors about if I knew of any cases of healthy foals being born with unusual forms; I tend to get questions like this, because of my reputation for knowing everything. But they never described what an unusual form meant, and I didn’t even think about them meaning a human child. And then I happened to read a story on Swiftfiction about a pony with a human child, and I decided to see if that might be the ‘unusual form’ the doctors were investigating.”
“Was that OakTree’s story?” Blue Twilight asked.
“It might have been. So I looked up Ruby Glimmer in the public records, saw she married you, and knew exactly what had happened.”
“What do you mean by looking me up?” Ruby Glimmer asked.
“Well, if a human child had been born, it would have to be from two ponies born through my intervention. And one of those ponies would have to be you, since you were the only filly.”
“The only filly? That doesn’t seem possible,” Blue Twilight said.
“It was by design. To avoid just this issue, every foal born through my intervention is supposed to be a colt, since my spell is only supposed to find male souls.”
Ruby Glimmer crossed her forelegs over her chest. “Do I look like a colt to you?”
“I was surprised too when I heard your parents gave birth to a filly. It’s not like I could tell them that they were supposed to have a colt!” Twilight Sparkle said.
“You could have told them the whole truth about what you were doing, but you didn’t,” Blue Twilight said. A thought occurred to him. “Princess Celestia doesn’t know what you’re doing, does she?”
“She knows I’m helping ponies who have been corrupted by Discord’s actions. I haven’t said how. But she knows. I know she knows. But if we’re to be equals as princesses, she won’t say anything. Not directly, at least.”
“Would you do it, even if she didn’t approve?” Ruby Glimmer said.
“Yes. From the first time I saw Pinkie Pie with her colt, I knew the answer would always be yes.” She looked at Shooting Star. “Now, we need to talk about your colt.”
“You don’t want there to be a human running around Canterlot,” Ruby Glimmer said.
“I don’t think it’s in his best interest. While he’s healthy now, we have no way of knowing what will happen over the long term to a human growing up in Equestria.”
“What can you do?” Blue Twilight asked.
“The same magic that was used to bring you into this world. It borrows from the mother and father, and Harmony shapes the foal, but shapes the foal into a pony body, overriding his true nature. Your son will be a pony, but the right pony for him, just like you. You’re happy with your current forms, right?”
“I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a unicorn,” Blue Twilight said.
“I love my body,” Ruby Glimmer said.
“I love your body, too,” Blue Twilight said.
Ruby Glimmer blushed. “Not in front of the princess!” she hissed.
Twilight Sparkle chuckled. “I want you to think it over. If you want your son to grow up a pony, I can make it happen. And when he’s old enough, he can make the choice for himself. In fact, you can all be humans, temporarily or permanently. My power is at your command. It’s the least I can do. And for now, I can answer any questions you have about humans, as best as I can.”
Blue Twilight looked to his wife, who nodded. “We’ll talk about it. But how are we going to contact you?”
“Letters and petitions both take time. If you want to reach me quickly, send a message to BAE on Swiftfiction.”
“You’re on Swiftfiction?” Ruby Glimmer said.
“Of course. Swift Current is my baby, and I want to see how he grows.”
“We know the feeling,” Ruby Glimmer said as she held Shooting Star.
“Let me know when you’ve decided.” Twilight Sparkle rose, and with a flash of her horn, made the tea service disappear. “It was a pleasure to meet the both of you. I still remember the letters your parents sent me about you, and all those cute baby photos!”
Blue Twilight groaned. “Hopefully they didn’t send the one with....”
“You in the ladybug outfit? It was the most adorable thing!”
“I have to see that!” Ruby Glimmer said.
“I’ll bring the letters next time we meet.” Twilight Sparkle took one last look at Shooting Star and smiled, and then she teleported away.
Blue Twilight watched Shooting Star as he crawled on the carpet. “Should we do it?” he asked.
“I think so. It worked for us, right?” Ruby Glimmer responded.
“I think so, too. But when he gets older....”
“Yes?”
“That idea of temporarily becoming a human? That might be nice, to spend some time being a human family.”
“I agree. After all, that’s what we truly are, a human family.”
“The only human family in Equestria,” Blue Twilight said.
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BAE, huh? Nice.
Edit: Sorry about the extra 2 deleted comments, I scrolled back up to reread some and hit spacebar to scroll down, but the "submit" button was still selected somehow.
That was a nice end, though a bit abrupt. Given the rate the story was going I'd would have thought the would have been another few tens of thousands of words but it was still nice.
Definitely worth the read though, and I enjoyed it.
8687018
Well, she is Best Aunt Ever!
"We're not entirely sure why that's the will of Harmony. Even I have trouble talking to crystalline trees. The last time I asked, it said so something like 'colts are icky,' but that can't possibly be right."
I'm not sure what I like more, that Twilight's mellowed enough over the years to have an ongoing prank war with Celestia, that Star Swirl is the bane of all confidential knowledge, or that Twilight has an account on a fan fiction site for the series she started. I wonder if BAE has posted any stories...
Your take on Harmony feels... well, a bit disharmonious, or at least draconian. More Order than Harmony, with its rigid, intractable nature and loopholes that require five or more dimensions to move through. And I'm not sure what's happened to Discord in the intervening years. At least Twilight broke the medieval stasis.
In any case, I suspected something along these lines, but the details come as a fascinating surprise. I am a bit disappointed we won't get to see a human couple push a stroller through Canterlot, but this was still a very fun tale. And there's always the possibility for a sequel. Thank you for it.
8687522
My thought here for Harmony (in this story) is that it had a monolithic focus for ensuring the survival of the pony race as a prey species in a dangerous world. You don't need as many stallions for that. It wasn't looking forward to a pony race that defeated its enemies, secured its position due to its primacy in magic, and created an advanced civilization.
8687522 I wouldn't necessarily say that's "rigid and intractable," though. It's firm, but Harmony can be firm - just look at Fluttershy's Stare, or how the Elements put Discord into stone. Twilight might deem it rigid, but that's just her.
No, this's a more active role for Harmony than most headcanons, but I don't mind. In fact, I sort of like it.
Also, congratulations on a very plausible explanation for Equestria's technological stagnation! And yes, I'm sure Twilight would indeed want to end it - and I also like the hinted-at dynamic between her and Celestia!