The Siren

by McPoodle

Chapter 9

Ponyville Marketplace.

July 21, the day after “Feeling Pinkie Keen”. Wednesday.

“I don’t get it! I just don’t get it!” Twilight screamed in frustration. “The only place Pinkie could have come from was the mirror! Ponies can’t step out of mirrors!”

“Calm down,” Spike urged her, picking up a forehoof in his claws and massaging it. “Remember your promise to Princess Celestia.”

Twilight looked off into the distance. “Stop obsessing about things I can’t explain. Stop obsessing about things I can’t explain.” Her voice calmed with each repetition, and by the fourth she was back to normal.

Hovering a hand mirror into sight, Twilight smoothed down her mane, and then resumed her position at the front of her “Pony Preservation Pact” booth. “And now I’m ready for more members!”

“Twilight, do you think it’s alright staying away from the library so long during office hours?”

“I left clear instructions by the entrance, so I don’t see anything going wrong.”

“Yeah, but will they be able to find a book?”

“My personally devised filing system is perfect! Ponies can’t help but find whatever book they want!”

Spike shook his head sadly from behind Twilight’s back. “If you say so.”

“I do say so! And look, we have a visitor. Hello, Applejack!”

“Howdy, Twilight,” the cowpony said, leaning against the entrance. “How’s business?”

“Oh, I’m sure it will pick up any day now,” Twilight said with complete confidence.

“Uh-huh,” Applejack said doubtfully. “Twilight, I want you to meet my friend, Ferdinand. Ferdinand here would like to see how the market works, and well, I’ve plum run out of fancy explanations. He just won’t stop asking me questions about economics.”

“Ferdinand?” Twilight asked, opening a little door in the side of the booth in order to meet Applejack’s friend. “That’s a funny name for a…you’re a cow!”

“A bull, actually,” said Ferdinand, who indeed was a full-grown brown bull.

Spike raced out to join Twilight.

“I, um…” Twilight hemmed. “It’s nice to meet you, Ferdinand. You’re very well spoken.”

“Oh, you can thank Applejack for that. She was very patient with my questions, teaching me all about pony customs. Oh! Speaking of which…” He bowed his head. “It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, Countess.”

Twilight waved a panicked hoof, looking around her to see who might have heard that part. “It’s a meaningless title, actually. No land to speak of, and the honors are frankly a pain in the flank. Just ‘Twilight’, or ‘Miss Sparkle’ if you want to be extra polite.”

“Alright, Miss Sparkle.”

“TWILIGHT!” Spike screamed. He had wandered behind Ferdinand to speak with Applejack and was pointing in awe at the bull’s flank.

Twilight shook her head in exasperation. “I’m sorry about my assistant, Ferdinand. He has a bad habit of…BY CELESTIA’S AMPLE FLANK, THAT’S A CUTIE MARK!”

Ferdinand looked back at his symbol of bits being weighed on an assayer’s scale. “Mmm yes, it is. Another gift for which I have Applejack to thank.”

Twilight looked again at that impossible mark, and saw a pony superimposed over that bull with nearly the same mark. Celestia’s first treasurer, Tight Bit. She remembered how Tight would spread lies about her bringing nightmares to the dreams of innocent fillies and colts. How he invented the name of “Nightmare Moon” to mock her behind her back. She remembered the look on his face when the corrupted Twilight Sparkle cornered him in an alley one dark night in his dreams and…

Twilight violently shook herself back to reality. Not me, she told herself. Not my memory. Throw it away!

He never woke up.

Twilight screamed. She looked wildly around her as she recalled where she was and what she was doing. And she looked back at that impossible mark. Twilight teleported a body-length to appear in Applejack’s face. “That’s a cutie mark!” she cried. “A genuine cutie mark, complete with the correct magical signature!” By devoting all of her mental energies to this current mystery, she had managed to banish the unwanted thoughts of Luna from her mind.

“A-yup,” Applejack said with pride, and some degree of confusion. She had seen the emotions washing over Twilight, and they really didn’t make any sense to her.

Twilight took Applejack aside. “Cows don’t get cutie marks!”

“…And how do you know that?” Applejack said with a raised eyebrow.

“Because…because it’s common knowledge! Only ponies have cutie marks.”

“Yup, that’s right,” Applejack said with a nod. “And Ferdinand here is now a pony.”

Spike cautiously inserted himself into the conversation. “He looks like a bull to me.”

“Spike, Twilight! A ‘pony’ is not the same thing as a caballus!” Applejack said with complete certainty.

"What’s a caba… what she said?” asked Spike.

“Equus magicus caballus is the scientific name of a pony,” Twilight explained.

“Of a biological pony,” Applejack emphasized. “While ‘pony’ itself refers to the culture and civilization created by the caballi.”

Twilight was puzzled why Applejack of all ponies was engaged in hair-splitting. “The two are identical.”

“They are not!” Applejack insisted. “The pony culture is available to any creature willing to work to earn it. As for the caballus—the first hooved creatures to walk the plains of this world may have looked like modern ponies, but they weren’t the ponies of today! In fact, they were no better than the monsters we fight on a weekly basis. It was only when these poor creatures learned to commune with the spirit of Harmony from First Mark, to channel that power and work in accord with Her wishes, that they became ponies like she had.”

“I still don’t see the usefulness of the distinction,” Twilight said.

Applejack smiled warmly at the pair. “Look, being a pony’s like joining a religion. The foals don’t understand what they were born into, so they don’t get the symbol. It is only when you accept the yoke of Harmony, and decide to put the needs of the Herd above that of the individual, that you are gifted with a cutie mark, and the special ability that goes with it. Are you following me so far?”

“Well, I guess that’s one way of putting the cutie mark acquisition program. But what about…him?” She looked over at the bull, who was standing patiently beside her booth. “We’ll get back to you in a moment!” she called out.

“Ferdinand?” Applejack asked. “He’s proof that what I’m saying is right. Not the first proof, by a long shot. Any thinking creature can make the same commitment as him, and every one of them will end up with a cutie mark suited to their ability to aid Harmony, and aid the Herd. This mark here,” she added, pointing out her own mark. “Is completely real. Not an illusion in any way. It’s proof that I belong among ponykind. That I am a pony.”

Applejack remembered her shock at seeing those apples on her flank the first time. She was so sure that the other changelings had been lying to her. But she had shifted her form back and forth in front of a mirror. Even spent the night in her changeling form, which she never did. And the mark would not disappear. It was a moment that changed her outlook forever. Before, she was a rebel without a cause, a changeling that saw ponies as her prey, even as a growing pile of evidence and emotions betrayed that cold logic. And after…she was a pony.

Twilight looked at Applejack like she had gone insane. “Of course your mark is legitimate. You’re a pony. And a caballus. While Ferdinand’s mark…” She looked between it and Applejack a couple of times. “Wait, what do you mean ‘not the first’? Are you referring to Zecora? That was a tribal marking.”

“Really? And with those magical senses of yours, what did it feel like?”

“…Exactly like a cutie mark. But the books I read all agreed to call it a ‘tribal marking’, starting with Star Swirl himself!”

Applejack frowned. “Seems to me that they all agreed because none of them dared to contradict that Star Swirl stallion.”

“Perhaps… Star Swirl never visited the Zebra Lands in pony. I have to think about this.”

“I want one,” a tiny voice dared to say.

Twilight looked down at Spike. “What?”

“I want a cutie mark,” he said, his voice trembling like he thought he would be punished for the thought itself. “I want to be part of the Herd.”

Twilight was having trouble even understanding what it was Spike was asking for. “But…but you’re a dragon.”

“Dragons are awful!” Spike exclaimed.

“Yeah, they’re awe-inspiring.”

“No, they’re awful. As in really, really bad.”

“Well maybe we haven’t found the right dragon book yet.”

“No, I think we found enough. You raised me to be a pony, didn’t you?”

“That’s only because I didn’t know how to raise you to be a dragon!”

“No, I like it! I’m happy thinking like a pony!” Spike explained, desperately. “Ponies are happy…sometimes. I don’t think dragons are ever happy. Unless it’s at somepony’s expense. And I don’t want to be happy in that way. I’m your assistant. And when I grow up, I want to do the same thing for Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna, and for all of the other ponies. And I don’t want ponies to be scared because I’m a big scary dragon. Because I’ll have a cutie mark! And ponies will know that I’m one of them!”

Twilight was flabbergasted. “I…I…I have no idea how to help you to do that.”

Spike turned to the other pony in the conversation. “What about you, Applejack? Can you teach me how to get my cutie mark?”

“Well, I don’t know…” Applejack said cautiously. “That sort of thing is a parent’s job, not mine.”

“Well if that is all it takes, I’ll call you ‘Mother’,” Spike said gleefully.

“NO!” Twilight snarled, wrapping a hoof tightly around Spike.

“Can’t…breathe!”

“Mine!” Twilight screamed, before teleporting the two of them away, presumably back to the library.

Ferdinand gently walked up to Applejack. “Am I going to be able to ask Miss Sparkle about the difference between perfectly elastic demand, and perfectly inelastic demand?” he asked.

Applejack put a hoof to her temple. “Why do all of the unicorns have to be so crazy?” she asked herself, before looking up at the bull. “Ferdinand, could you stay here for a moment? I’ll go get Twilight from the library, and then you can ask her yourself.”

Author's Note:

(Notes for this chapter are with Chapter 11.)