At this point, I wasn’t sure of myself.

It could be said that I’d been beaten down by being disappointed over and over again. Let down by magic, let down by the Princess, let down by myself. The days of me scrubbing the fur and skin from my body with a sponge were long gone at this point. Any other person would be thankful for it, but it frustrated me deeply. I didn’t want to let this happen. I didn’t want to sit back and let go of being human.

Intrusive thoughts about the value of being human versus being a pony would fill my mind during the day, and restless dreams about my isolation on my old farm during the night. There was no refuge from it now. Twilight looked at me with eyes I didn’t like to see, the eyes of someone who was stuck.

Don’t pity me, please.

People change. That’s something that I always believed in. I changed, my ex-girlfriend changed, my boss on the farm changed depending on how drunk he was at the time. I never believed in the ship of Theseus. People aren’t made of wood. We shed skin cells like we shed memories and attitudes. What matters is the journey there; that’s what life is.

Celestia is like a natural disaster, or an oncoming train. She blows through like a fucking hurricane. Twilight had told me something like that – Celestia got involved like the sun rose in the morning. Which she was also allegedly responsible for. Celestia was a fixture on the wall. There would be no justice here, no epic battle between me and her. She was above things like that.

Celestia, the natural disaster, the oncoming train – had taken away my choice in the matter. If I’d lost a leg in a tragic car accident. If my wife miscarried through no fault of her own. If a close friend died from a complication during surgery. Are any of those thing truly fair? No. They aren’t. Life is unfair, fundamentally, so like the sun rises in the morning Celestia does things that suck shit.

There was no place for a human in a nation like Equestria. Too gangly and bristly, a bear in a dollhouse. I didn’t know what drove the last human who came through to do such a thing. But it was bad, bad enough for Celestia to deal with me as soon as I arrived. Twilight had put her neck on the line for me. As much as she trusted Celestia before, the kind of person who does something like that doesn’t usually take well to being challenged.

Celestia, for all her pomp and circumstance, viewed everyone else like children to be herded. She was not a mad tyrant locked into her bedchambers while the wheels fell off. She was compassionate in all of the worst ways. People prefer to choose their own misery versus being forced into happiness. That was something that she didn’t get.

Was this a happy accident then? Was all that pain to get here worth it? I could still be angry about it. I was angry about it. I realized what Celestia had done the moment I walked into town the day after my talk with Mac.

I was visiting the market to purchase some personal items, like I did every other week. Bless Granny Smith for her hard work, but I needed something non-apple related every now and then. Out of all the ponies in the market, the stallion who ran the lettuce stall was my least favourite. He was a long-limbed fellow with a sharp, rat-like face. He had a voice like a bag of gravel, and despite his smaller size he was not at all intimidated by me.

God, I wish he were.

“Oh, it’s my number one customer!” He spoke with the excitement of a child on Christmas morning.

“Morning.”

“Will you be purchasing the usual?”

“Yes please.”

He gave me a sideways glance as he bagged two bushels for me. “You seem to like lettuce a lot.” He said, trying desperately to make small talk.

“The family doesn’t make much in the way of variety, so I like to make something for myself every now and then.”

“A cook huh? That’d be great for your own family.”

While his prodding and poking about all of the stereotypical mare things he’d like me to do with myself usually raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels, this time it flowed like water off a duck’s back. I simply nodded and paid the man without another word. I left earshot and nearly bucked a hole in the nearest wall – but I resisted. What the hell was that?

I’d become angry about not being angry.

Had my brain finally surrendered, given into the pressure? No, that isn’t how the mind works, it’s not how identity works. There was something else happening here. I found the nearest bench and sat down to try and cool myself off. I tried to think back on what Twilight said. Celestia had snuck the spell onto me at some point during my arrival.

…Twilight had sent Celestia reports on her progress. She knew everything that Twilight was doing from the moment I arrived. Including the spell that Twilight had adamantly insisted that she would never use, the mind alteration precursor to the body changing magic. If Celestia had seen that and knew how to do it herself she could have casted it on me during the Gala without anyone being the wiser.

Then all she’d have to do was send the book containing the original spell to Twilight. According to her spells are divided when cast at the same time as each other. If an intense spell had already been cast on me like the mind-altering spell, combined with the body changing spell, it’d mean that neither would work, wouldn’t it? They’d starve each other like plants in the same soil.

That’s assuming that the mind spell even needed to be complete. There was a world of difference between altering my brain’s electrical signals versus completely changing my entire body. It didn’t need to work perfectly. All she had to do was implant a single idea in my mind and let it duplicate itself until I didn’t even think of it anymore. At the time, it was all conjuncture. And I say all that with the benefit of hindsight. I was grasping at straws.

I’d wandered to Twilight’s library before I even realized it, opening the door and walking inside in a daze. The titular mare was busy organizing her shelves. Unusually she had some company in the form of one Rainbow Dash, a mare who was often too busy with her day job to run into me. She liked to hang around with Applejack sometimes, but I tended to stay clear of them when they were doing something together.

She lazily floated over to me, “Hey. Twilight’s kinda’ busy.”

“When is she not?”

Twilight looked back at me, “Good morning Toffee.”

Rainbow spun in the air before landing next to me, “I didn’t take you for a big reader.”

“Anything I do is big.”

“Ha!” she exhaled, “You’re right!” She elbowed me a few times, in a friendly way, she wasn’t trying to break my ribs. “I haven’t seen much of you around, which is weird since I’m pretty sure I could see you from space!”

“I keep to myself. What’s Twilight doing?”

“Re-organizing. Again.”

“I already told you Dash; a lot of ponies don’t put their returns in the proper places, and they get dirty. It’s important to clean the shelves now and then.”

“I wanted to talk to you about something but if you’re busy…”

“I can make time. If it’s important, which I assume it is.”

I nodded. Rainbow rolled her eyes, “If this snore fest is going to keep going, I’m outta’ here. Hey Toffee, me and AJ are going out later. You should come with.”

“You sure? I don’t want to intrude.”

“No way! The more ponies the better.”

“If I have time. I’ll tag along.”

Rainbow left, leaving me alone with Twilight. I didn’t want to confront her about her lack of progress on things, that would be mean. I understood perfectly that it shook her confidence to fail the first time. Twilight slumped over, and I could sense that she really didn’t want to have this discussion again, but it needed to be done.

“Twilight.”

She shook her head, “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

“She cast something on me again Twilight.”

“I thought as much.”

There was a sustained silence in the library. The sounds of the market outside leaked in through the windows and doors. What else was there to say? Twilight knew. She’d figured out what was wrong days ago. You don’t become the personal student of the nation’s Princess without talent.

“I don’t want you to do anything.”

Twilight’s eyes snapped upwards and met mine. There was a sense of panic in them. “What do you mean?”

“Well. What can you do now?” Twilight chewed on my words as I spoke them. “It’s not like we can take her to court or replace her.”

“But what if the spell would have worked Gerry!”

“Could it?” I’d cut to the very heart of the problem. And she knew that. She looked ashamed, genuinely. She probably wanted to curl up into a ball on her bed and cry it away. “I’m starting to think that it only worked once. Celestia knew. That’s why the other human died. She couldn’t do anything for them. That isn’t what you should be getting angry about.”

“And what is?”

“She lied to you. Celestia thought she knew better so she kept you in the dark the whole time.”

“That’s nothing compared to what happened to you Gerry.”

“Is it? She means a lot to you, doesn’t she? Why wouldn’t you be upset about it?”

“I can’t be angry with her. I just can’t.”

“I’ll be angry enough for the both of us.”

Twilight was stumped, and not just because she lived in a tree. “Remember when I asked you about the mind alteration magic, you told me that you didn’t want to use it.”

“Yes. I know.”

“But she did it Twilight. I swear to god and all that’s holy she cast that fucking spell on me.” Twilight’s eyes sharpened. She was in what I could only describe as a state of shock. “That motherfucker at the lettuce stand did his usual routine and I didn’t even flinch. This game is over already. She was always a step ahead of us.”

“This isn’t a game! She’s trying to help!”

“I don’t want her fucking help! I never asked for it! She’s fixing a problem that she caused in the first place! The only ponies who’ve helped me are you and AJ.” My voice cracked. I was losing it again. But I tried to hold in my tears for another time. I was sure that I’d need them later. “She didn’t just hurt me, but she hurt you too.”

Twilight didn’t want to admit it. “No she didn’t.”

“Twilight! She lied to you!”

Silence returned to the library once again. The argument had reached its natural conclusion. The only words left to say were Twilight’s. She looked away, breaking eye contact with me as she tried to work out her own feelings. “I am upset. I didn’t know she…”

“…You did though.”

“Maybe I did. But what should I say?”

“You need to talk to her again Twilight. You need to tell her that this wasn’t okay. Because I can’t go up there and get into a fight with her.”

Harsh words, but they needed to be said. The pieces needed to be cleaned away. The house that we built together had been knocked down in mere moments. Celestia’s actions had caused genuine harm. At the end of all this I at least wanted her to know that. I wanted it to burn at the back of her mind for the rest of her existence on this planet. My anger couldn’t be used to fight – I needed to use it to speak.

But I knew that for Twilight it would be even harder. Confronting family for the mistakes they make is the hardest thing in the world. I wouldn’t want to do it. Hell, the thought of confronting Celestia again made my chest tighten in anxiety. I’d find a way to make sure that this would never again, I swore it on my life.

Twilight was in visible turmoil, but I would not offer her an easy way out, I would not offer her any further platitudes. She needed to confront it directly. Her teacher, her second mother, had done something that she found distasteful and remaining silent would only hurt her in the long run. Twilight needed to learn this. Favour with others is not an excuse. We all compromise with each other in many ways but Celestia had crossed one of Twilight’s lines without knowing it. Because she never considered how Twilight felt about the sleepless nights, and hours upon hours of research and preparation she did for my sake.

I wouldn’t let Twilight do it. Not when my own chances seemed to be slipping away by the second.

“Write a letter. Let her know. That’s your right.”

Twilight wiped her eyes and sighed, “I hoped I’d never have to do this.”

“But you can make it so that it never happens again. If she’s as reasonable as you say she is, she’ll learn one way or another.”

Learning by picking through the ashes of my life.

Author's Notes:

A huge thank you to:
Evo
Korenav

For supporting me on patreon.

If you wanted a description from me about this story, it's that a lot of it is a war of words. Words that are sharpened and poke at the things we care about the most. Our identity, our family, our choices. This is not an action story, that much is obvious. But with a power imbalance like what faces Gerry, what is there to be done by one person?