STAR TREK: EQUESTRIA

by Alicorne

Chapter Five- Meeting the Parent

CHAPTER FIVE

MEETING THE PARENT

When I came to Earth I never intended to spend my entire Shore Leave there. Sunny changed all that, though. We spent twenty one days flitting around the planet seeing sights I’d only seen referenced in databases before. North and South Neighmerica, Horsetrailia, Zebrica, Mexicolt, Great Bitan, Prance, Bitaly, Roam, it all passed in a whirlwind tour that made my head swim. We climbed pyramids (Ok, Sunny got carried while I climbed, but let’s not quibble over details!) toured Incolt ruins, dabbled our hooves in canals on two continents, and even took a mane-raising white water river raft trip that left me weak in the knees for half a day afterwards.(Augments. Don’t. Float.) The days were full of wonders and the nights burned in Sunny’s arms…

By the time Sunny suggested spending the last week of leave at her home in Byreland it occurred to me that I would like to make our…arrangement…permanent. It wasn’t unheard of even on Equestris. Homosexuality is as old as the Pony Race and, even though the Colony needed to increase its population, exceptions were always made. …With the unspoken proviso that same-sex couples would have to work harder for the privilege. I did some covert research on the subject at odd moments when Sunny was snoring on my arm the morning after a strenuous night! The term for such a bonding, on Earth as it is on Equestris, was a ‘Civil Union’ and it conferred all the legal rights that are granted to married couples. Before we left Earth, I was going to propose. There was just one thing I wanted to do first. Oh, I’d already arranged for a ring. I had to take out a loan but I saw an absolutely beautiful specimen while we were in Roam. It was carved and polished gold with a two caret sparkler surrounded by gorgeous little topazes amounting to another caret. Back home it would have been a LOT less expensive (We’re a mineral-rich place even if we don’t have much topsoil!) but since Starfleet was paying my room and board I figured I could justify the expense. Besides, it was for Sunny!

It took a little fancy hoof work to pick up the purchase (I’d covertly gotten her ring size from one of her other pieces of jewelry.) but by the time we caught a flight to Byreland it was safely cached away in my growing accumulation of luggage. There was just one more thing I needed to do before I popped the question.

Sunny had, on a few occasions, rather playfully brought up the idea that we elope. Usually she’d follow up the idea with some improbable suggestion of going to New Pegasus for the ceremony (The place, I gather, is rather famous… or infamous… for its wedding industry.) followed by a night at the casinos and shows. I always deferred for two reasons. The first being that I had to work too hard for my credits to just gamble them away like that! The second reason …has its roots in the reason for the first, actually.

I’m an Earth Pony, damnit! An Augmented one, granted, but an Earth Pony first and foremost. My ancestors literally built Equestrian civilization with hooves, teeth, and heads… if you believe the old stories. We value hard work and maintain to this day that nothing of value is done without it. Magic is fine and dandy but is, by its nature, erratic and unreliable. Hell, the entire reason for Augmentation in the first place was to make Ponies more capable of coping with a difficult world …or plurality of worlds. We’re a no-nonsense bunch. We’re seen as stubborn and willful and sometimes even narrow-minded by the more Supernaturally inclined Ponies. Well …it takes all kind of spices to make an apple pie. The point I’m rather circuitously making is that we’re more conservative, in our own ways, than Unicorns, Pegasai and especially Alicorns! We’re proud and honest and value our integrity. It is this very sense of integrity that kept me from Sunny’s bed (For one night, anyway. …Kinda.) and it was the reason that I didn’t feel right to just run away with her. I wanted us to be together honorably, or at least in a way I considered to be honorable. Elopement just didn’t feel right! I wanted to propose. But before I did …I wanted to get her family’s permission. Sunny mentioned somewhere along the way that her Mother was dead so I wanted to get her Father’s permission before I asked. I’m not the best Earth Pony I can be sometimes, but I wanted to do this. Going to Byreland dovetailed nicely into my plans. (Although, in hindsight, …did Sunny suggest going Home to maybe set this in motion? Hmm…)

Near the city of Elphinstone is a mountain and on the slopes of that mountain stands a castle of white and yellow granite built, they tell me, sometime in the Thirteenth Century. The castle is called Alicorne Keep as has been remodeled and added to throughout the ages. This is Sunny’s ancestral home. The Keep, the mountain, and bits of the adjoining valleys it borders have been in her Family for time out of mind. Well, I knew she was rich but… wow!

The ever-present Cedar (Who had gone from being Sunny’s personal valet to being our personal valet.) drove us along the valley and along winding roads through the forests that garbed the mountain. (Called, not surprisingly, Alicorne Hill. Would you believe that the administrative district it sat in is called Alicorne County? Sunny may be a Sybarite, but she never exhibited this kind of ego! Again, Alicorns!) Personally, I was fascinated by the forest. The tallest plant we have on Equestris is a sort of club moss that barely comes to my knees, and I’m considered a borderline midget back Home! Trees are something we look at wistfully in the databases. It is nowhere close to being in the presence of the real things!. We arrived in June and the deciduous trees, many of them ancient things older than my Colony, were in full leaf and we drove through a living green tunnel for miles, the road climbing in and out of countless dells each seeming to shelter its own quaint flora and fauna. Sunny noted my rapt expression and turned off the environmental settings and lowered the windows as we passed into the realm of the evergreens higher up. Wow! As good as they looked, the smelled even better! I hung my head out the window and let my mane stream in the slipstream all the way to the Keep.

‘Keep’ is something of a misnomer. All castles were built primarily as fortresses and strongholds. The term ‘Keep’ denotes a small castle and the core of Alicorne Keep still contains the original structure at its very heart. But the thing expanded as the lands it protected grew more prosperous, adding more towers, a wall, and finally a moat in its final incarnation.

For some reason I was expecting to see the place sitting by itself maybe on a hill commanding the lands around it, an elegant, old grey collection of museum-quality architecture. A sort of lovingly tended relic of times past. I blinked several times as the chariot curved out of the forest and into agricultural country.

Alicorne Keep did indeed sit on a hill, but that hill was the mere outer rampart of a massive mountain that reared up behind it to the north. It sat in quiet splendor shrouded in a soft coat of green colors and considered the lands around it benevolently. A moat it certainly had, wide and blue with patches of reeds and some sort of floating plant life here and there along the edges. Ducks were swimming in it as well as several Ponies. There was a wall, too. Fifty feet tall if it was an inch and made of the same stuff as the Keep itself, a pale yellow granite polished smooth and catching the light of the morning sun. Two massive gates pierced it, one on the mountain side and the other on the opposite position. Battlements lined its length and a round tower stood on each corner, a banner rose from the roof of each tower showing a yellow sun disk on a field of white. All the rooftops of the Keep were covered in what looked like white stone or ceramic tiles that gleamed in the light. I remember that the Ponies nearby must all have to wear sunglasses!

Beyond the moat an entire village encircled the Keep. The largest and most prestigious homes lay, of course, nearest the Keep with the shopping district and humbler dwellings arranged beyond. Around it all were fields and orchards that filled the gap between the Mountain and the Wood. I could see Ponies of all palettes going about their business. Foals played, Mares shopped or strolled sporting their favorite fashions, Stallions walked arm-in-arm with them or maybe made their way to their favorite pub after the day’s labor. A thriving and pleasant place was Alicorne Keep. From the highest tower of the old central Keep itself a garrison-sized flag was raised each day at dawn. The flag bore the sign of the winged cross superimposed on a blazing sun all of gold on a field of bright white edged with gold, the ancient and venerable sign of Celestia of the Sun who still watched over, at least in proxy, this corner of Ponydom. Well, whatever keeps them happy…

I pondered the flag as we made our way toward the gate. On Equestris neither Celestia nor Luna had ever tread. It was a world never intended for Ponies, a young (Astronomically speaking.) place of heavy gravity, rock, very saline water, simple plants and even simpler insects, and some very bloody-minded sea life that ultimately proved little more than challenging raw material for Earth Pony ingenuity and perseverance. Even in the days just prior to the Eugenics Wars the Goddesses were something out of the distant past. All that was left of Them were stories and tradition of a harmonious and peaceful past paradise. On Earth they lived on as a memory and became the foundation of a Faith that still binds all Pony-Folk together. …But, to we Augments they seem a quaint curiosity, one of the things that seemed to keep Ponies from realizing their full potential. Magic is all very well and good but there’s never enough of it to go around when it comes to building a progressive, expanding civilization. Besides, technology is reliable. Hard work with ones hooves and brains made Earth the place it is today, right? …But when I looked at that banner I had to wonder if there wasn’t something more. In the end whether my ancestors were right or wrong is moot. All our kinds survived the Wars, some more intact than others, and we nearly lost our Homeworld in the process. Were both sides right? Wrong?

Sunny chose that particular moment to take my hoof. (Is it a Alicorn trait that seems to tip her off to my moods, or is it just Love? …There’s so much I have to learn about the old Homeworld!) “We’re Home, Starry! I canna wait t’ show ye ‘round!”

Word of our arrival had obviously preceded us. As the chariot slid to a stop in front of the soaring central Keep I saw that a preposterous number of ponies in black and white, the Household Staff I was informed, had turned out in neat rows to welcome us. Beyond them were Alicorns and Unicorns of both sexes in yellow kilts and gleaming white tunics underneath armored battle vests were arrayed, swords on one hip and honest-to-Luna balefire guns on the other! A Guard of Honor!? Wow!

The Welcoming Committee had arranged itself in a double line flanking the stairs that led up to a pair of massive wooden doors bound with bright brass. The doorframe was equally massive and made of white marble. It was crowned with a sculpture of a large Alicorn Mare standing with wings unfurled on a plinth in a wide niche. A huge sword was sheathed at her hip but both her fore hooves were extended palms up from her sides. Her polished golden horn gleamed like Magic in the sunlight. Again …wow.

Below this imposing image, at the head of the stairs, stood a tall, burly Unicorn wearing a yellow-and-black striped kilt and a brilliant white shirt adorned with extravagant cuffs and a frilly front. Amber Rose Alicorne, Laird of Clan Alicorne stood like a benevolent colossus here in the home of his ancestors. Like the Security Troops he wore a sort of open vest over his shirt. His was scarlet red and medals and ribbons adorned the left breast. It occurred to me after a moment that this was part of some outdated military uniform. This was obviously an Old Soldier secure and at ease in his domain. His mane looked like a golden thunderhead and he had incredibly bushy yellow eyebrows above his sparkling violet eyes. Under his chin he sported a double chin-lock of gold that wagged whenever he moved his head. He grinned around a long-stemmed pipe made of some white stone or ceramic and exchanged comments with another Unicorn who stood beside and behind him. This one wore dignified black and white but sported, on special occasions, a yellow silk sash that denoted him as the Head of the Household Staff. Sunny told me that his name was Conn.

Alice was off like a shot the moment Cedar opened the doors like a filly racing to a birthday party! “Dadeeeeee!” She caroled up the short flight with her arms spread wide. In her wake the mares curtsied, the stallions bowed, and the swords flashed out in salute. So much for ceremony. I came up behind as quickly as I could, taking the steps three at a time. Climbing stairs in light gravity is an engraved invitation to have an accident. I smiled nervously at deferential staff nodded at the troops who stared professionally straight ahead until, like troops anywhere, I passed by and gave them a chance to indulge their curiosity.

Amber Rose had already scooped up his daughter and swung her in a squealing circle by the time I arrived. He put her back on her hooves and kissed her cheek before rearing up to his full height to regard me. Horn excluded, he came up about to my collarbone. Yet when he put his hands on his hips and threw his chest out and took me in with wide eyes he somehow seemed so much bigger than life. I suddenly felt like a little filly again meeting a long-lost Uncle.

“Well then! Ah have t’ say that yer pictures dinnae do ye justice! Aye, an’ ye’re an eyeful t’ be sure! So ye’re th’ Lassie that ma little filly’s been a-telling’ me aboot.” He craned his head left and right lightheartedly taking me in, in sections as it were, before stepping back a pace to get the whole picture …the old scoundrel! He tipped me a wink for an instant before stepping up and reaching for my hoof. (Hugging me was topologically out of the question!) He brought it to his lips and kissed it before clasping it in both his own. “Come along inside an’ be welcome among th’ Alicornes, Starry-me-Lass. Welcome t’ Byreland an’ welcome t’ Alicorne Keep!” Hugging Sunny with one arm and guiding me with a hand on my lower back as the huge doors swung open, we came into Alicorne Keep.

Comments

[Verdigris]

I can't help a feeling of foreboding, here. It all seems too perfect.
Achievement: Old Trekker's Disbelief Suspended. You win a large jar filled with Toll House cookies.

[moonlightmare]

Never mind my questions. From the last chapter were answered.

[Organized Chaos]

If Byreland is the alternate version of Ireland, than why do the Byrish ponies have kilts and Irish accents? You could rename it to Shetland or something