Victory for the Dark Horse

by Ice Star

Part 2, Side B

Ivory Scroll would always wake up well before the dawn was brought to the world now. Lying with blankets pulled past her new muzzle and resting just under her eyes made her feel safe. Their warmth brought her the same sense of safety she had as a little girl, back in the days when she thought the aliens in her science fiction magazines (the ones her mother insisted rotted her brain like candy ruined teeth) would crawl out from her closet and take her away. Here, in a world where science fiction was little more than a dozen titles produced over the last few centuries, that feeling was real and right. The sun was like an eye, and each cold morning a goddess greater than it threw the fiery orb across the horizon. This was a world where the heavens were inferior, for they had owners. It was why Ivory liked to lay in bed with the covers pulled up, otherwise who knew what kind of magic could see her?

She needed to feel safe. What she had left behind was a world full of monsters for one that made that word all too literal. And Equestria was just one nation on a planet that wasn’t fully mapped, where real gods ruled for longer than she could dream, and one of Ivory’s greatest problems was that a town resident kept eating her tulips. On the very edge of an outright murder-forest (the records of the town hall were very adamant about the dangers and deaths in the forsaken god-space) and in a village with a history of monster attacks, the most that Ivory had to worry about was the flower-eater caper... in a world of ponies.

The darkness brought on by the night goddess made her itch without her blankets. It was why she kept herself close to mummified with how she rolled and pulled them around. Ivory had a sinking, cold-claws-tearing-her-tummy-from-within kind of feeling that the stars were hungry jaws aiming to sear away any liars who dared stretch so much as a hoof out from their blankets. The way that the night and all its sights absolutely lived in this world was an awe-inducing gut punch that had yet to go away, unlike the mad, rattling howl of wolves that Ivory could name. (Those beasts drove her under the blankets too. She could hear them from the forest.)

She didn’t know why she always woke up so early; even if she had long since made a habit of it what willed her to do so was primal and nameless. There was nothing she missed of where she came from, except maybe some odd conveniences, the kind of soda pop her grandmother didn’t have, and a way to numb the maddening gallop in her head that was left where television ought to be. But this world didn’t have television. Even its predecessors, like telegrams, Morse code, and radio, had not been created or even left to whispers and dreams yet. Other than mail, not a single cross-country or international communication standard existed. Ordinary ponies like herself were stuck with hoping the speediest pegasus was fast enough, or the typical form of long-distance delivery: any wingless pony pulling a cart across the winding dirt roads of the nation. Only the town's highest official, one Miss-Princess Twilight Sparkle, had anything better. Her dragon servant was filled with magical flame that whipped communications directly to the greatest light: one sun goddess on a mountain throne higher than any other.

(Even a television set couldn’t keep away this night, or any other on this world. Magic could practically be breathed through the air once the soft stage of dusk was done, such was how palpable the sensation was made by the other goddess of Equestria.)

Ivory just knew how she hated lying in the dark and the way that it crept past the skin to pare away every thought that kept her from herself. All mornings in Equestria did was renew that feeling until the shock of dawn was over. In her home world, Ivory had only been a morning person because she had to be. Now mornings were made up of how she would have to lie there and take the empty feelings, assessing the weight that they shouldn't have and the shadow of how much of an imposter she was. Only when the moon was coming, high, or going did the cold dread of honesty seek to peel all she was away. She would just bask in everything that made her too much of Ivory Scroll in the imperfect ways that politics could only mask.

That was the kind of kingdom Equestria was. One where even the oldest and grayest of mares huddled under blankets from stars and themselves. Then, when the first light of morning was but a faded, pleasant brightness, the same old gray mares could skip along to the market with the young mothers who swarmed across the local commons in chatty hordes. The latter ladies would have their produce baskets slung across each side, awaiting flowers and fruits, while their ears would not heed the hoofsteps of their foals stumbling after them as their bellies swelled with another little one who would be lucky to be thought of just as absently. Across both worlds, mothers had more appetite for gossip than they did an ear or eye to spare for the most vulnerable among them, like youngsters. Yet, country ponies had a deeper simplicity to them than country people, something that made their commitment to a herd and crown stronger than chains.

Ivory could not tell whether that deeper-than-blood quality of ponies was something she could never possess or a siren song that would pull her below the waters of this social machine in time.

Just like the day before, Ivory Scroll would wait for the height of dawn to pass into a mindless, bright mellowness. By then, she would be wearing the same kind smile as every other pony.

And they would never think not to love her for it.

...

Ivory Scroll hadn’t said goodbye to her other self. Not in any way that mattered. After their minor outing, the two of them had debated briefly in Ivory's car (with her equine counterpart having to be kept from trying to eat the Little Tree) whether it would be worth returning to her home. All it had taken was the weight of all the trinkets of her foreign self pressed into her palm to convince her otherwise. Her home was as austere as the rest of the life that she had, something between a manor and a cottage, but the home of her mare-self was one that held itself at a distance from the label of a home. The inside was decorated with popular, unremarkable prints of museum art in tidy wood frames. Small religious trinkets from amulets to statuettes of creatures called Alicorns were neatly arranged on shelves and above painstakingly cleaned cobblestone fireplaces.

High-end, luxuriously comfortable furniture in oddly depressing earthy hues dominated every photograph. Vases filled with flowers that looked tasteful for a funeral had been placed here and there as if they had a mind of their own and were reluctant to cause clutter. Many of them had obvious twins and triplets that could be spotted between pictures. An office looked like it was the only room that had been lived in, with enough scrolls, quills, and battered volumes existing in a wave about the pull a twin-sized bed into the sea of parchment.

None of them had ever married, or thought about wanting another around, even just as a special someone. Ivory had never met another human being who wanted as little to do with anyone when it came to intimacy before.

Her pony-self had made a remark about getting her quills and many of her sofas at the same store when they were in the car. Ivory had still been looking at the pictures, a mix of photos, sketches, and other proofs of an unknown world when she said that. There was so much to take in about just how little there was in this house, how utterly her it was, how it looked like a model rental property and someone's very traditional grandmother mixed their wares together as sparingly as possible. She asked her mare-self how long she had lived in the house.

What she was told was that Mayor-Mare felt like she had been living there her whole life...

...which was hardly an answer at all.

...

In Equestria, there was a rarely spoken of and totally strangling stigma against showing anything less than kind, happy herdship — even if that meant being an utter fraud with a sweet front. Adhering to this strict need to mingle pleasantly among ponykind kept Ivory on the toes she no longer had. Politicking across both worlds always required the development of personas and to say exactly what you did not mean in order to ensure that people (and ponies) would continue to listen — and to do so happily. For ponies, this need for kindness in excess was something that grew to the point of addiction.

Back on Earth, Ivory had a second cousin who had worked for the local news channel. She had known him about as well as she knew all the characters to Neighponese kanji, but they were good at pretending as the years went on. During family reunions, once the subjects of weather and traffic were done away with, the pleasantry subject of work would always emerge to disguise that family reunions were time loops straight out of Tartarus where you put your best acting forward. How else was one to repeat the same twelve conversation steps with people who never stopped being strangers? When speaking of careers, one thing that Ivory and her cousin could both agree on was the importance of the human interest story across any kind of communication. Of everyone in the Scroll family, they were the two who knew that reality could be marketed as skillfully as much as any sorcery and swords novel for the tweens these days.

It was the human interest story that acted as the easily digestible tale for all ages, one that sold the most impossible fiction to an audience who would keep coming back for more as long as they never knew better. People and ponies were eternally starving, and the human interest story was a feast of fattening cake that brought nothing but sleepy bodies. Meanwhile, that oozing, oversaturated benevolence was nothing more than cement-thick layers of the most artificial frosting, something that was borderline suffocating when once tasted, and it made the mind sleepier than any amount of cake could be once the short buzz of a sugar rush came crashing down.

Being surrounded by ponies taught Ivory that her skills wouldn't be wasted here, not when there was something simultaneously challenging and easy living among these colorful equines. On one hoof, Ivory's endurance in keeping her muzzle facing upward to the sun and trying to be everypony's friend would be challenged. As for the other... Ivory had spent her whole life being the walking, talking advertisement for the kind of foolish fiction that ponies would probably damn near throw a temper tantrum for if they went without it. Why, if horses had television, they would want nothing more than twenty-four-seven channels of hu-horse interest stories, each more dripping with unbearable, unreal saccharinity than the last. Talking to ponies was like trying to feed a child that would eat nothing that could leave them diabetes-free before middle school. No wonder her other self could not stand it here; all that happened was a sleepy town's humdrum wrapped around a world beyond any Earthly fantasy writer's wildest dreams. And crowding every happy little cottage were giddy creatures in a world with the mentality of the manchildren of Ivory's old world, not realizing that they couldn't be happy all the time and trust everypony forever, that Ivory was not Mayor-Mare so much as she was the Mayor of Fools, or the sheer hypocrisy that such an ignorant attitude had in a world with real rebel goddesses and nefarious powers—

Everything was so special and horrible all at once and Ivory needed just as much of it, if not more, of what her ponies had spent their whole lives submerged in.

"Well, how do you do this fine afternoon, Madam Mayor?"

The familiar voice of a stallion pulled Ivory from her thoughts, and though she had no wings, the sensation was not dissimilar from plummeting. A smile had graced her muzzle long before she turned to face him, her voice free from the faint gentlestallion's drawl he possessed. "I am doing ever so fine. Our goddess has brought an especially lovely day to us all. Though, when has she ever shown us anything less?"

She almost wanted to point out that this word still had storms, droughts, famine, and other weather-related catastrophes which negated the idea that the sun goddess was what he thought, but she did not admit the heresy. Who was she to pull the wool from both of their eyes about this new world?

The bubbling brook below the bridge did absolutely nothing to reflect how hearing those two words grated on her when he said her title. A talon worked its way inside her, clawing tallies in all her ribs each time she had to hear them and be reminded of a world where she had been outside of the sacred bounds of normalcy, and that even among the insanity that ruled Florida she had been made out as an oddity with every passing reference to her station. It was in this world that she never had to stand out. Her duties could consist of the usual feigned passion in speeches or tying the bright bows bearing her re-election buttons in a world so simple its average citizen still believed heroes could win.

Men and stallions only wore different skins.

That was the only thought that could squirm through Ivory's mind as she released the blue and pink ribbon she had tied with her teeth. In her long-gone world, Ivory had always been a stickler about only working with the former out of need. While she had no liking for women and mares, her utter neutrality to them was nothing compared to all the ways that she had an honest dislike that she held for the males of either species. It was a heaping helping of their manner, ambitions, and idiosyncracies that led to her conclusion.

"She sure doesn't bring the rain to Ponyville as the pegasi do, Mayor Scroll. I'll tell ya that." He chuckled. "Why, just last week my lil' Diamond Tiara has been poutin' up and down the halls just because Ponyville needed some pourin' over all her farms and meadows. Diamond had wanted to go outside with one of her little friends, playin' window shoppin' games with her in the town square of this gorgeous little village." The laugh lines under Mister Rich's eyes creased, and he tutted at the memory the way only a parent could. "Great gods, I swear that only foals and grown ponies with the minds they think foals have are the ones thinkin' that everything ought to be endless sunshine. You don't need to know the Apples to know that just ain't right; Ponyville needs her showers and cloudy skies."

Ivory offered a friendly nod, never slipping into anything as inauthentic as a laugh would have been then.

The posters rolled up and jostled in his well-tailored saddlebags. Such smartly-made attire stuck out like a sore hoof in a place like Ponyville, especially considering Rarity primarily drew in mares as clients. Well... mares and certain kinds of males, the ones that Ivory's grandmother would call 'friends of Ruby Slipper' and Ivory herself dared not label in any way that came across as partisan.

"I'm having an absolutely lovely time. Cloudsdale's goggled cumulus-kickers sure have been given the campaigning weeks some of the finest weather we've had all year."

Ivory tossed her wavy, silver mane. The warm sunshine had made it so that a faint sweat shone on her coat, but the anxiety of the time wasn't helping either. She just had to get re-elected, and to make sure she started off oh the best hoof possible, Ivory Scroll had used the most bright and pleasant ribbons bits could buy to display her campaign posters to the town. Emblazoned alongside glossy sketched busts was the usual bold calligraphy that was so popular for the printing presses of ponies and obsolete from common use in the human world. Nothing drew the attention of the common pony quite like the assertive, feminine font. Most of the ponies who lingered to look at them the longest were mares, and Ivory always felt warmer than a gator sunbathing at the peak of summer knowing that it was the gossip of mares that acted as the nail between the horseshoe of elevating Ivory closer to the great hoof of the gods residing in Canterlot.

Why, a gaggle of a few local mares was trotting over to some of the flyers that had been tied around town earlier. Their eyes were friendly, and the way they whispered with interest among themselves between their everpresent Ponyvillian smiles. Ivory beamed at them and then returned her focus to Filthy Rich. "Mr. Rich, I can't help but agree. This season is going to keep everypony on their tippy-hooves with your platform and the heat wave all the almanacs have pre-arranged this year."

Out of the corner of her eye, Ivory saw Mr. Rich smile, and smile wider in a need-to-stay-strong way when he heard one of the mayors whispering about how she just couldn't trust Mayor-Stallions as much as Mayor-Mares. Her friends were an uninterrupted, uniform chorus of murmuring agreements on the sentiment. There was such a charm to this world and its hidden treasure trove of reverse sentiments that could turn up here and there — even the prejudices. Though, to Ivory that was such a harsh label — 'sensibilities' was a much better term, one that conveyed the simplicity of knowing women (and mares) were just better at all things relational and requiring leadership than any man (or stallion) could ever hope to be. It was just the natural order of things, one that Filthy Rich's wasteful notions of free school lunches provided to every foal made so laughable — ponies could graze if they were that damn hungry, and they had so many other stupidly easy ways to get food. There was no sense in talking of feeding them what they already had — school-foals were expected to bring lunches anyway — and the talk of getting guild chapters present for bigger towns in a place like Ponyville was not the kind of government overreach worth investing in.

One of the things that she had come to love about Ponyville was how unnecessary she truly was, but how she was beloved as though that were not the case. With a princess living so that the shadow of her castle loomed over them and cast certain cottages and shops in a darker night than others as soon as the sun went down, there was always a sense of eyes being on Ponyville. Ivory had picked up on it almost as quickly as having two left legs. Favor from royalty could mean plentiful rewards, and it could also mean the reward of assurance that all is well. That was the kind of reward that promoted looking away from Ponyville at all the right times. It was why her platform of Twilight Sparkle appreciation, Element Bearer hero reverence, and good ol' Celestian values would resonate so well — the dedication of statues, promotion of tourism, and greater emphasis on Twilight's authority over her would make her victory seem so much more benign. After all, who secures privileges without the want for the full power that came with it too?

Filthy Rich smiled and said something Ivory Scroll didn't catch before he did something so plainly pony-like. He reached into his saddlebags and passed a poster to her with his forehoof. "If you wouldn't mind, I think this here'd be a delightful spot for advertising, and a bit of friendly competition as well. Wouldn't you agree?"

His smile told her he meant it. Even among lower politicians, like elected officials, ponies had a tendency to focus more on the 'friendly' instead of the 'competition' and very few of them were as willing to do something decent and exploit it as a front like Ivory knew that they ought to. This type of camaraderie was a tradition that the books Ivory borrowed made plain enough.

"Of course," she said, forcing the kind of quiet grace that made her think of Princess Celestia, "I'd be more than happy to."

When she accepted his campaign poster, he took that as a sign to grip her hoof in a vigorous hoofshake and heartily wish her farewell before slowly trotting off into the sunshine. Ivory looked at the image on his: a plain font among a smattering of bullet points, one of which listed the date of a speech where catering would be provided to all creatures who showed up, courtesy of Barnyard Bargains. Behind a rather simple geographic background was a glossy photograph — somepony had certainly gone through a lot making these — of Filthy Rich shaking the hoof of somepony Ivory Scroll could only place as one of the shopkeepers.

Ivory had tape in her saddlebags for when ribbons wouldn't do the trick. She liked to be prepared. And she would have to hang this up. To throw it away or dispose of it in some other fashion was unthinkable. It would out her as a poorer sport faster than Rainbow Dash getting tickets to the newest Wonderbolt show. Her roll of tape was already partially used, and as long as nothing else happened to the other posters Filthy Rich made, everything would be fine. She just wouldn't use exactly the right amount of tape in the right way to secure it to the bridge post. The weather would do its job, and nopony could blame her for being one or two pieces short, not when Filthy Rich had seen her roll was not anywhere close to full. It wasn't too much, nor was it too little. All she was doing was a perfectly healthy private show of playing dirty to get a bit of mud on a poster.

And maybe the election itself didn't have to be so cleanly won either.

...

For Ivory, the books had been a mixed blessing. They had been loaned to her from the library where they had been plucked. They waited for her in a neat pile, each boasting the basics of a new world where unfortunately would have to handle reading just enough fine print. She had to make sure she fit in somehow, unless the actions of her counterpart were to be unmasked and both of their new lives ended up being uprooted. Her mirror-twin had now been unprepared. She told Ivory where she would end up, and showed her the trinket that would save her on the journey's last leg.

It had looked faintly like a wedge one would put under a door, only perfectly sized to fit a standard horseshoe, and built of sturdier, heavier stuff. Otherwise, how else was it supposed to handle the fact that Ivory Scrolls would be a horse clocking in at just over nine-hundred and thirty pounds in her new home? She'd been assured that the crystal would handle the weight and that the number was perfectly healthy for a creature who lamented surrendering her trim one-hundred-and-twenty-pound human form. The horseshoe shape carved into it had just a few specks of dirt on it, but inside, Ivory had spotted what made the cloudy, quartz-like crystal so truly rare: a few runes had been etched into the interior, and their magnetic allure had enraptured Ivory so much she had only half-paid attention to her twin's story about who helped her make the final touches on this essential piece.

The remote teleporter was simple: two uses were all it was potent enough for, and it had to be reunited after the second charge, lest it destabilize. Alternatives to purer magics for those without horns were often clunky, unstable things, especially when hastily made. And, as her pony self had explained, it could not be used to travel too far from the platform her piece connected to, she was already using what was considered a long-distance node, at least for an earth pony. Once she was through the statue and found herself on the other end of the mirror, she was to slip the horseshoe her beloved black heels would turn into right in the groove. The friction from trying to step forward and the grating of her metal would spark the last potency in the runes, while the base had to draw from other magics.

And it had. She had not stumbled, face-first onto the crystalline floor of a castle. Instead, Ivory had vanished in a blink and found herself locked in a rough-hewn crystal platform half-buried in excavated dirt. The node had been half-dead as soon as the first Ivory had left, and the arrival of the second Ivory had drained it, causing the lock-and-key piece to grind into one final place that resisted all movement and left her in an awkward pirouette. The sounds of a forest so overgrown and dim she could not tell if it was daylight had overwhelmed her, and she could not believe that with their sounds or threatening atmosphere and hulking shadows in every corner that she had barely been past the treeline. At least, she hadn't believed it until she stumbled out into a meadow. Only the reminder from her pony-self to have the platform broken to bits as a final precaution and disablement then disposed of somewhere, lingered in her head.

Those thoughts were a shred of a whisper; how could they not be? Here, Ivory found herself spellbound by a night richer in color and starlight than any other, with a moon more perfect, brighter, closer, and bigger than any on earth. The planet she was on was no longer called Earth! The books waiting for her in the home she had waited for her to sneak into told her even more: this world's moon gave off its own light, one essential for the magical strength and health of the world, a foreign thing her Earth would have no equivalent to. There were no pale imitations here, where even the breeze felt as though it were breathing down her neck, heavy with the knowledge that she was a stranger.

...

The banner promoting her last speech was a welcome one, and felt like a fraction of victory already. Maybe Filthy Rich was still in the race, and sure, not a single vote had been cast. However, Ivory Scroll felt assured in her victory. She had her methods, and they gave her every reason for those feelings to be justified. Right now, she only had to enjoy the first look at three of the nations princesses gathered together. The last speech in an election season was able to be visited by royalty very easily. The window for elections had some variance across Equestria, especially with the different founding dates of every locale big enough for a shire to have a mayor. Thus, a fine tradition was born. Ponyville being so close to Canterlot meant that both goddesses could visit Twilight Sparkle in the lavishly decorated town hall.

Twilight Sparkle hadn't met this Ivory Scroll, and she would never know that. The casualness actually made it easier for her to take in the appearance of the little non-goddess. She was downright scrappy compared to the others, with only a few anatomical hints different from the common equine she was born as. Her longer horn, different stature, and bigger wings were hardly different enough to be of notice compared to the other two. Despite being full-grown, there was something diminutive and childlike about what was otherwise a mature adult, albeit one that was stuck in such a compact form compared to what were supposed to be — but clearly anything but — her peers. She was cutesy, in a rather unripened way, the way of things that would always stay unripe. Upon her head, Princess Twilight Sparkle wore a tiara with pink gems at each point, and Ivory Scroll could not help but feel that the tiara looked almost like a little comb with how it was arranged in Princess Twilight's mane. A bustle of noisy purples couldn't hide that Twilight Sparkle wore her mane and tail with the pin-straight cut of something better suited to a school filly. Her eyes went from happily lit as she spoke to friends to worshipful and lost in the sight of the bigger goddess.

Princess Celestia was the sight of sights. There was one that Ivory Scroll recognized as a peer, somepony not unlike herself. The smile of the goddess was whiteout-bright and pierced the presence of every other creature, regarding them just like the words meant to be blotted out. Such was the power of its blatantly artificial sheen, one Ivory had seen in lesser form upon every human politician but the young ones who had yet to be broken into the real world — those ones might was well be called Twilight Sparkles. She had let this look shared by Celestia claim her after a time; Ivory had to. Princess Celestia carried herself with the radiant, alien smarm that was exclusively bred in the raisin-shriveled hearts of mothers. She had eyes that were soft and unclear like a portrait that had dried in a smudged way, but only around those robbed eyes. They were faintly wet, and the immaculate goddess had an obvious affinity for fake eyelashes. It was her eyes that gave away what her divine form and politically corrected manners never could, especially not in a world drunk on sunshine and sweetness. Those eyes were just as distant, hazy, and tired as a petting zoo beast in Ivory's homeworld. The comparison wasn't helped by how obviously overweight that this princess was compared to the others.

The last one was equally unique, with a one-of-a-kind balance between svelte and curvy's golden mean. Her height soared well above any of the ponies, well above Princess Twilight Sparkle. She had eyes that you didn't want to meet — and in turn, they did not want to meet anyone. They shone from within the one time Ivory Scroll saw them fixed anywhere but the unpopulated background of the event, like there was a secret world that she could not share. Otherwise, this mare who acted simultaneously as both a negative and positive space to the world around her showed undisguised boredom.

Except for the one time that those turquoise eyes met Ivory's own with a cool look that was unreadable except with how they narrowed every so slightly — their suspicion was unspoken, and just a touch above ambiguous that maybe there was a cause for worry.

Comments

[nighters]

luna the dream walker and mentor also luna the dream stalker and warden? some dreams are private stuff hope are lady gonna be ok when luna gets nosy about her!

[FanOfMostEverything]

Wonderful to see more of this, especially hints of the night and its princess threatening Ivory's facade. Also a fascinating portrait of Celestia from an outside perspective. Eagerly looking forward to more on both sides of the mirror.

[Ice Star]

11521562
Thank you so much! I just published the epilogue but I always leave threads for revisiting plots. So don’t rule it out.

[Iron Comet]

Luna knows a fraud when she see's it.