Rarity gave a little snort of annoyance as she opened her saddlebags to check she had everything she needed and a small ruby failed to float out of it. "Half way to the Canterlot Jewel Emporium, and now I have to go all the way back home. I can't get the exact type of jewel I want if I don't have the right type to show them, after all." With a sigh, she turned and trotted back home, a home she shared with her son, a colt named Blue Agate, or just Blue as she only used his full name when she was angry with him about something. Sadly, her relationship with his father, a handsome blue stallion named Probity, had fallen apart after he had become jealous of her and unpleasant to her colt because Blue was not “coltish” enough for his tastes and disliked playing sports. After he bit her son recently after he refused an offered game of hoofball, the Canterlot Police had been called and as a result Probity got a night in jail and a restraining order served on him.
She let herself in and noticed Blue Agate was somewhere upstairs, most likely in his room asleep. He seemed as much a night owl as Princess Luna and as a result was rarely awake before noon. When she pushed the door to her studio open, her mouth dropped in surprise. Sitting at her table, dressed in a very fine dress of red silk embroidered at the hems and edges with tiny white seed pearls, was Blue, and he was trying to use his unicorn power of telekinesis to apply lipstick to his lips. He had not made a very good job of it; nopony could the first time. The effect was that his lips looked like somepony had thumped them hard with a hoof. On his neck, the bite wound his sire had given him was also red, this time with pony blood, and vibrated from time to time, a sign that clearly it itched and was being scratched with telekinesis and scratched often. She stared at Blue for a while and then snapped “Blue Agate, what in Celestia’s name are you doing?”
Blue jumped and blushed and the lipstick dropped to the ground. He looked back at his mother and began to cry softly. “
Now you’ll reject me just like my father did…Mummy…I’m…I may have the body of a colt, but I’m a filly inside.” Rarity stared at him.
“Blue…are you sure you really mean that? And why…how…did you come to think of yourself as a filly for? How long have you felt this way?” Many ponies would have been shocked and disgusted by their colt saying what Blue did, but Rarity wanted to understand Blue, so she spoke softly so as not to make him feel even more embarrassed and humiliated then he already felt. She wondered if it was just a phase he was going through or if it was something more than that.
“Since I was a five year old colt I knew I was a filly inside. I would look at the fillies I knew and envy them, pretty much all of them, for their fillyness. Fillies and mares are so beautiful….on special occasions like Hearts and Hooves Night and the Grand Galloping Gala they wear such pretty clothes and jewels, they have sweet, soft voices, they get to look so beautiful and to be seduced by the colts and stallions…”
“You know, it’s not quite as good as you think to be a mare,” Rarity warned him. “We have periods for a start, a real pain even with modern sanitary towels. We are physically weaker then stallions…other then the two Princesses that is. And whilst most colts and stallions are perfectly nice, some are not. There are plenty of thuggish ponies and even a few rapists out there, and whilst the Princesses have banned any overt sexism being mares themselves, there are tendrils of it out there that mares have to worry about. In some countries beyond Equestria’s borders that have male rulers, sexism is rife or even legally allowed and females in general are chattels. Our clothes for special occasions tend to cost more than those of males, not because of sexism but just because things like silks and jewels cost a lot more bits to get and prepare.”
She paused. “Lastly, your body is that of a colt, soon to be that of a stallion in a few years, and some ponies are bigoted and will always think of you as a stallion, and if they find you disguised as a mare will tease you, maybe hurt you, perhaps even kill you. It has happened at least twice in the past thirty years that a transsexual pony was found murdered. Are you sure you think you are a filly inside?”
“Yes, I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life.”
“Well, let’s see what I can do then.” With some difficulty she used her telekinesis to wipe the lipstick from his face and then reapply it properly with care. A small amount of eye-shadow was added to his eyes. “With make-up, less is more.” She washed off the blood from the bite that his father had given him, and it vibrated again as Blue used his telekinesis to scratch, chasing the itch away for a few seconds. “Stop scratching, that’s not marelike. If you go on scratching, you’ll get a deep scar if it ever heals. Plus colts won’t want to date a mare who is constantly scratching like she has fleas.” She gently applied some anti-itch cream to the spot. “It will stop itching as long as you are a good filly and don’t scratch it.”
“Let’s see, you will need a dress…not that one, this one of purple silk with quartz at the edges would look very good on you and cover your male bits very nicely. And I think I could place this on your horn, don’t worry, it won’t block your magic…it’s not just a ring, but a voice changer, an experimental model, illegal for most ponies to have as they might use it for crime. Being one of the Elements of Harmony enables me to possess many things that would get almost anypony into trouble. How does your voice sound now?”
“It sounds…great.” His voice was now that of a young filly. There was a sudden flash on his flank, and a cutie mark appeared of a pink circle with a cross coming out of it. Rarity smiled. “Congratulations, Blue, you just earned your cutie mark. The Cutie Mark Crusaders would be so jealous of you right now. It’s a symbol that means “mare”. You deserve a cute-cennara, but for now, would you like to come to the Grand Galloping Gala with me tonight? Oh, I think Amber would be a much better name for you, much more fillyish.”
Rarity smiled at her new daughter, hiding the worry that she felt inside. This seems very strange to me, maybe I should ask Twilight about it. I've never heard of a colt who wants to be a filly before. Is it my fault...did I somehow bring him up so that he wanted to be a filly? I want him, or her, if her brain truely is female, to be happy and make the most out of his or her life, but if she makes a mistake she could get hurt, badly hurt. And not just mentally either. Most ponies think that colts should be colts and fillies should be fillies, and if she was to try and...try and get a coltfriend and the colt found out the truth she could get bucked to death, or at least badly hurt. "When we go to the Gala...take care, Amber...don't let anybody know who you really are, I don't want you to get hurt.You may think you are a filly, maybe you are a filly inside, but your body is that of a colt. And don't whatever you do try to get a coltfriend. I doubt anypony would use violence at the Gala, but anypony can snap in certain cases. And finding their marefriend is a colt in disguise could be one of them. Lastly, be polite, remember where you are and that you are amongst the nobility."
When Rarity and Amber left for the train station both were surprized by the number of ponies who looked at Rarity's *daughter*. She even had a wolf whistle or two aimed in her direction. Rarity rolled her eyes in disgust. "Some ponies have no class and no sense of decorum at all. Amber, ignore those idiots." Some ponies looked dissaprovingly at Rarity and Amber when it turned out that they had their own luxury carridge hitched to the back of the train for them. As a rich pony who was one of the wielders of the Elements of Harmony and a friend of the Princesses, Rarity did not have to share a carridge with the pony masses. Pinkie Pie and Applejack didn't mind travelling on public transport with other ponies but Rarity felt it to be beneath her. When they reached Cantalot and the Royal Palace a guard who knew Rarity let them in through a side door so they didn't get stuck in the queue and searched for weapons, which could lead to Amber's "weapon" being uncovered in front of the great and the good of Equestrian society, which was something that Rarity could very well do without.
After a final warning to Amber to be careful, Rarity left her to meet with the nobles and maybe, if she was lucky, Celestia or Luna. It took her a while, but she was finally able to meet with Princess Luna. Celestia was still busy talking to a Duke and Duchess. She bowed low for a few seconds to obey protocol, then asked Luna "Princess, could you and I talk in private somewhere?"
"Yes, come to my private quarters," Luna replied.
A couple of bat-winged Night Guards let them through and Luna led Rarity to her bedroom. It had a big blue bed, thick curtans to keep the sunlight out when Luna was sleeping and a map of the solar system and the stars on one wall. "So what do you want to talk about?" Luna asked.
Rarity blushed. "It's about my son, Blue. He....he thinks of himself as a mare inside a colt's body. He...I found him trying to put make-up on so I dressed him as a girl and he loves it...and passes very well. If this is not just a phase...is there a way to change him magically into a mare so he can be fully happy?"
"Well, there are body-changing spells but they are dangerous, so dangerous that they are generally only used in an emergency. There are two dangers, first that they may cause cancers to spread through the whole body, the second is that they can affect the mind, causing the pony to either become really stupid, think they are someone else and forget about their family and friends, or start thinking he or she is an immortal alicorn. There are spells to make someone look and sound like they are someone different but they need a lot of magical energy to keep up. You should ask him how much he really wants to be a she. Now, I need to go back to my subjects."
"Of course, your Majesty, I thank you for your time."
When Rarity walked back to the Gala she stared at the sight before her. Her son's pretty dress had been ripped and torn, although it still managed to cover him where it really mattered, and he now had a black eye on his left side.
"What happened to you?! Who did this to you?"
"Blue...blood...Prince Blueblood started talking to me...asked to talk privately, then asked for sex! I said no, I'm not that sort of girl...which was when he used his magic to rip my dress open, then hoofed me in the eye and called me a faggot when he saw who I was.I swear by Celestia Herself that I didn't start the trouble."
The crowd of nobles parted as everypony made way for Princess Celestia, who stared at Amber and flared out her wings in anger. "Prince Blueblood has gone too far this time. I've put up with a lot of boorish behaviour from him, but this goes too far. Guards, arrest him and cast him into the dungeon, and send somepony to find out why on Equestria he did such a thing. A noble he may be, but thuggery and attempted rape goes too far."
Soon enough the guards found Prince Blueblood, and as he was being dragged in chains down to a cell he shouted loudly "Amber is not a mare, she's a colt and a fa...mmmmph!" A guard, angry by his shouting and swearing, had stuffed a bit gag into his mouth and buckled it up. But it was too late to stop everypony from staring at Rarity and Amber, some in shock, some dissapprovingly, and a few in outright disgust. Rarity blushed scarlet. The embarrassment of it, and at the Gala too...I should never have let my new daughter come with me. It does not excuse what happened to her, of course, but if she had stayed at home or by my side she would have been safe.
Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle sat talking together about the Gala. "I guess they're not ready for the firing of a Party Cannon, the guards asked me not to ever bring that in again without Celestia or Luna's OK," Pinkie said.
"It was kind of Celestia to excuse mah damaging of some of her rare garden plants," Applejack added.
Pinky Pie asked "Rarity...since when did she have a daughter? I mean, I'm really sorry for what her daughter went through, but as far as I know she only has a son called Blue Agate, so either she has an illligitimate daughter...very unlikely and if she did she would never agree to take her to so grand an occasion as the Grand Galloping Gala. Or....that filly was not her daughter, but her son! Blue thinks he's a filly!"
Applejack snorted in disgust. "If ah had a son and he acted like that he would get my hoof upside his head. Colts are colts and fillies are fillies and I think that is the way things should stay, and I feel almost everypony would agree with me. Anything else is a travesty, and Rarity was wrong to indulge her son in that way."
Rainbow Dash flared her wings in annoyance. "True, I've never wanted to be a colt except when I was a foal, but I'm a bit tomcoltish to this day and you're not the most mareish mare yourself, Do you think I'm a colt because I'm not mareish enough for you? Not every mare can be as pretty as you, you know."
"ENOUGH!" Twilight Sparkle jumped in between them. "What about love and tolerance? Don't they come into it? Have you forgotten the morals that Celestia founded this nation upon? Within reason, Blue should be seen and treated as the filly she is inside. It would be very different if we found she was faking it to do something horrible, but until such a think happens we should treat her as she wants to be treated. Give her a chance, Applejack, and stop being such a bigoted pony.Isen't it bad enough that she was beaten and an attempt was made to rape her? Nopony deserves that, nopony at all."
"When she recovers I want to throw a party for her to celebrate her becoming a filly, and Applejack, if you're going to be nasty like that, you won't be invited, as I don't want it to be spoiled," Pinkie said.
*** Rarity gently kissed her daughter's forehead and ran a hoof along her back. "Amber, I'm so sorry for what happened to you, if I'd known I would never have taken you to the Gala. Blueblood is under arrest now and I'll talk with the Princess and make sure that he is properly punished. Oh, and Amber...don't cry...if you really consider yourself to be a filly...then I consider you to be one too."
Amber's tears stopped flowing. "Really,Mummy?"
Rarity nodded. "Really. It might be hard for you at times, not all ponies practise love and tolarance, but to me you will allways be my beloved daughter. You'll have to dress well to pass though or everypony who looks closely will see your...thing. I will stay on your side no matter what gender you think you are, darling, so don't do anything stupid like hurting yourself or running away. I'll ask the Princess if I can have royal permission to have you homeschooled so you don't have to face the taunts of ponies like Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon who would love to ridicule you. Did Blueblood...you know?" She didn't want to ask that question but she knew that she had to.
"No...he saw me down there when he ripped my dress and hoofed me in the eye."
Rarity spent the next few hours conforting her daughter until Luna's moon was high in the sky.
*** The next day two guard ponies hauled Prince Blueblood up in front of Princess Celestia who was wearing her full royal regalia. "Prince Blueblood, from what I have heard you have acted like a boor, attacked and attempted to rape a filly without provacation of any sort, hit her in the eye...what do you have to say for yourself?"