“Inquisition”
“Part 3, Imposition”
Author: It_that_watches
Twilight looked down at the two bowls of food on the coffee table, hers was now empty but dad’s only half finished. Work had called dad, and he had to go. She looked up at the TV. Something was playing on it, but it didn’t matter anymore.
She rolled over on the couch and stared at the ceiling. She could hear them on the other side of the windows, laughing, talking, playing.
Anger creased her face.
It was their fault that dad had to leave-
If they never escaped from the labs-
If they were never made to begin with-
She let out a deep sigh.
Her wings chafed against the cushions as she tried to focus in on the babbling of her charges outside. Why did they get to be happy? They lived out in the mud and rain, having to dig holes in the ground to sleep in just so they wouldn’t freeze at night. They foraged for their food, drank rainwater, and had to eat grass if they couldn’t find anything any better. They gave up what little free time they had after subsisting to take care of their innumerable offspring.
All those “mummahs” and “daddehs” and… and…
Families.
Whole families.
Her frustration so quickly turned to melancholy.
Twilight understood well and good why she didn’t have a mother, after all, she asked her dad about it constantly for the first few years of her life. She was different, just like her dad was different. They found that no matter how hard they tried, people just didn’t understand them- didn’t understand what made them who they were.
“Tank-born.” She croaked.
The words hung in the air, not able to entirely leave her head.
Dad wasn’t born in a lab, so why were they both so lonely? He didn’t have to hide away from the world, did he? If he didn’t, why did he do it? Sometimes people come over, but it always seemed like he never wanted them to be here in the first place.
“He might as well have been born in that lab; with how much time he spends there.” She thought that new, toxic, unwelcome emotion crawling up her back. “But that just makes us more the same.”
They did indeed have one another for comfort…
She felt ungrateful to ask for more.
She didn’t even know what to ask for.
Muffled noises of play crept in from outside.
As much as it pained her to admit it, there did appear to be many functioning families all around her, and she might be able to learn something should she gather the humility to ask.
Briar had already shared the story of her family with Twilight, but it didn’t teach her anything that she did not already know save that the dynamic between fluffies and their owners seemed to be more a transaction than an actual relationship. It was ownership of a toy, not adoption into a real “family”.
Mossy and Muddy had a family. Theirs was composed entirely of adoption it seemed, with all her foals being the cast-off dregs of the herd. Twilight couldn’t get much reliable information out of them either, for she realized that the circumstances of their confinement invalidated them as sources. Mossy was a tool she used to keep the babies alive whilst they grew, to observe the process of maturation. Muddy was a toy she played with when she got bored, or a servant that brought her snacks when dad was at work. She’d interfered with them so much that their replies were twisted- like what they thought she wanted to hear.
But it did prove that bloodlines were not a deciding factor for what a “family” was.
Her answers were probably waiting for her outside, playing in the dirt and grass. Now seemed as good a time as any to go collect them.
She had decided to go out the back door, in full view of the yard. She didn’t want to talk to the fluffies that were afraid of her, she was sure they would lie out of fear that the truth would be somehow wrong.
It was more difficult than she had hoped.
As the door opened, she saw them playing and singing. When she pulled it shut, she turned about to see them shifting uneasily, foals hiding behind parents, peasants scrambling to seem as busy as possible. Luckily for her not all of them were as observant, or perhaps she was hoping, not as afraid. No matter how many times she told them that she wasn’t going to hurt them unless they gave her a reason, they always seemed to beg for mercy from blows that weren’t coming. She singled two out, a couple with foals, and approached. She addressed she grey stallion first.
“You, fluffy.” She called out, “I want to-”
“Fwuffy am gud fwuffy! Du gud wowk, make taw stackie wocks!” The stallion maneuvered himself to shield his family from her line of sight, “Famiwy am hewpin’ fwuffy, nu nee’ haf maddies!”
“I’m not angry I just-”
“Pwease nice pwincess! Babbeh-”
“STOP!”
The command echoed in her mind and was barely caught in the back of her throat, she choked it back before it could escape.
“Please.” She continued, checking the lawn for stains before setting down, “I want to talk to you about your wonderful… family.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the shivering was a reaction to her presence, or to the cold weather. Eventually, after looking around the yard for who knows what, the fluffy tentatively answered. “Fwuffy famiwy am gud famiwy, wub speshaw-fwend and wub babbehs vawy much.” The stallion gulped loudly before continuing, “Wha big-pwincess not-fwuffy nu unnastan? Wha’ wan’?”
She allowed the silence to linger just long enough to be sure he was done, and responded with another question:
“What makes your family a ‘good’ family? Why are you so happy, even living in a place like this?” she swung her head around, horn gesticulating to the wild woodlands about, and the overgrown lawn about. The fluffy flinched at the sudden movement.
He stared down at the lawn, thinking as hard as his little fluffy brain could as to what the princess could possibly want to hear. He worried that she might be scary-broken, if she couldn’t see how good they had it. “Fw- Fwuff… Nao fwuffy nu unnastan! Fwuffies haf aww bestest fings fow famiwy! Bestest gwassie nummies, bestest gud wawa, eben bestest pwaces fow sweepies at dawk times!” He shook his fuzzy head in consternation, “Wha’ moaw fwuffy wan’? Aww bestest fings an’ bestest speshaw fwien’ make bestest famiwy!”
“So… Having nice things makes your family better? Makes it good?”
“Yus!” His special friend, a mudstained presumably white unicorn stepped out from behind him, sheepishly making fleeting eye contact with Twilight, “Nu! Fwuffy nu say aww fings! Nee’ speshaw-fwend fow make famiwy! Nu speshaw fwien’ and nu babbehs mean nu haf’ famiwy, eben wif nummies an gud wawa.”
“So then, you mean to say you need a… wife?”
The fluffy stared blankly before grabbing his special friend by the midsection and dragging her to the ground eliciting a suprised “Eeep!”. He began again, “Fwuffy nu knu wha’ waif am, bud famiwy nee’ speshaw fwiend fow be famiwy.”
He shuffled around and pulled several weanlings one by one out of the grass, depositing them on the belly of his overturned mate. “An’ babbehs! Babbehs mak’ famiwy tu bestest famiwy! Wub babbehs!”
“I see…” Twilight looked away trying to find unpaired fluffies, but she had little luck. “You can go now. I have to look around. You just uh…” As she stood, she felt the corners of her mouth curl into a soft smile. Something about how eagerly they loved and appreciated everything around them was… endearing. She wasn’t quite sure why it made her feel the way she did.
“Take good care of your family.”
Another quick scan of the lawn revealed what she was looking for- that sad looking teal mare with the foals. She’d been watching them for long enough for it to be clear that this fluffy did not have a partner. She began her advance in earnest.
“You.” She began, “I have questions about your family.”
The mare shrank away from her, stumbling upon the thick grass and nearly shaking the foals from her back. “Huuu… Huu… Pwease nu hewties nice nu-fuffy Pwincess…”
She didn’t allocate any notice to the request and continued her prying, “Who is in your family?”
“Fwuffy… Fwuffy haf babbehs stiww, an’ nu haf’… nu…” She trailed off eyes beginning to water, “Fwuffy nu haf’ speshaw fwend nu mowe, speshaw fwiend take foweva-sweepies fwom bawkie munstahs in big twee pwace… Spechaw fwiend nu evah get tu num nice gwassies an new wand…”
“Do you still have a family? Does a family need two parents?” Twilight’s question was punctuated with a hint of apprehension, but her face did not betray her true emotions.
“Nu!” Came a tiny voice from between the mare’s forelegs, “Mummah an’ bruver an’ sissies am gud famiwy! Bestest famiwy!” Two foals had emerged from underneath her, and an indignant looking weanling stared up defiantly. “Munstah nu-fwuffy dummy if nu see famiwy! Fwuffy an’ babbehs nu haf’ daddeh buh stuww haf’ mummah! Famiwy!”
The foal crumpled as if made of paper when Twilight buffeted it with her primaries, this time tipping over the mother entirely and eliciting a “scree” of surprise and pain from the upstart and its less brazen sibling caught in the crossfire. Frenzied chirping emanated from the grass around the mother as she attempted to locate her two capsized infants.
“So, a family without two parents produces bad babies huh? Is that what you are teaching me?” Anger began to swell in her storming heart, both at the foal and herself for striking it so thoughtlessly- was it yet alive? Did it know the rules of living in her kingdom?
The teal mare scrambled to gently retrieve the fallen foals from the mercifully soft grass they had been thrown upon, as the weanlings recovered from their punishment and looked up to behold their assailant. She looked down on them from directly above, her frowning face and judging eyes all they could comprehend as long purple locks of well-groomed hair swayed around them- blocking out sight of the forest. “Are you bad babies? Do you need to go into the forever-box?” Her left wing extended slowly to indicate the nearby compost bin, but the pair of fluffies were too paralyzed with fear to even register the movement.
She wasn’t here to watch them cower, she didn’t even intend to address them. Terrorizing them further, even if this was accomplished simply by looking upon them, was not her goal. That particular affect of the fluffy mind had always confused her- their fear of her. Countless times she had witnessed their ugly snouts filled to bursting with pockmarked-rotten teeth, their attempts at a smile that somehow elicited joy within one another.
She lifted her head with force, tossing her mane back into place. She knew well what she looked like and considered her own appearance far more appetizing, bringing into mind that she didn’t even like looking at her reflection. It reminded her how different she was from everyone else. The only good thing about mirrors she thought, were that when she was up high enough to see one it was usually because her dad was holding her.
She smiled slightly, ignoring the whimpering below her, and moved on. Giving the weanlings any more notice would only have served to further their panic. She figured they could use all the time she could offer to recuperate and departed with haste. Her next destination was already known.
“Do you consider yourself to have a family?”
The orange stallion slowly raised his head from his meaningless task, and he jostled his head side to side. The cloud of pollen and other particulate almost formed a visible cloud. This was not the first time Twilight had seen a fluffy straining to think, but it was absolutely the first time that she’d seen the light of cognition so burn so bright from behind one’s eyes.
“Biggaw nu unnastan’… Yus? Pwincess awwedy see Wittow an’ knu’ brudder am dewe.” He pointed a stubby hoof back at the woodpile where they had first met, “Wittow am haf’ nappies wight now su Biggaw am du wowk fow hewd, gonna wowk extwa hawd su tuffies nu bovver bwudda.”
Twilight was caught a bit off guard.
“That was absolutely not the answer I was expecting. I… You… Wait. Stop.”
Her eyes darted back and forth, focus jumping from her peripherals to her own hooves, up to the window that peered into the living room where she could clearly see her father pacing back and forth with his phone practically glued to his head. She didn’t look back as she began to speak again.
“You uh… You work extra so your brother doesn’t get harassed? Like, how long? All the time? Every day?”
Bigger gave more than a little side-eye to his overlord as he tidied up the nest material he was dragging on a towel. He followed her eyes to the okay-mister standing in the window before speaking with reservation.
“Y-Yus? Biggaw wuv bwudda. Do anyfink fow Wittow.”
Her voice cracked.
“Ho-kay.”
“Wai?” She was absolutely not ready for a follow up question, even a single word one. “Yu daddeh too hawd wowking fow pway wif Pwincess? Nu haf time?”
She could feel the pressure on her jaw as her teeth involuntarily clenched in indignation. Her pupils narrowed in predatory fashion as her wings darted out and punched the lawn beneath her. She took a theatric step towards Bigger with the intention of chastising him on how he spoke about her dad, about how he spoke about her family, but nothing came out. She strained her head forward, prompting him to take a single step away from her, but the expression on his face didn’t portray fear, it looked more tired than anything else.
“Pwincess nu am munstah, nu gif hewties tu Biggaw. Yu hooman daddeh nu am munstah neifer.” She shook visibly from the emotion coursing through her very bones but could not summon whatever force had previously coaxed her muscles into motion. “Pwincess haf gud daddeh. Jus’ wook at hewd tu see bad daddehs, mummahs an daddehs dat nu gif’ wuv tu babbehs… Wazy. Dummeh. Nu-gud.”
He fell back on his haunches and looked up at her.
“Biggaw hear babbehs frew waww of housie at dawk-times. Yu nu am mummah, nu efen am fwuffy, but yu stiww gif wuv an huggies an’ wawmsies tu babbehs.” He leered with contempt at a nearby sleeping pair of fluffies, both beset by a trio of foals clamoring for food and attention. “Sum fwuffies nu cawe bout’ famiwy, eben wen dey wucky nuff tu haf wun.”
Twilight again tried to speak but could barely open her mouth to do so. She had nothing to say to him, nothing to contradict him anyways. In the simplest of terms, she agreed with him. This fluffy seemed to understand the sacrifice involved in family in a way that she couldn’t, or at least, didn’t want to. Something she had been burying deeper and deeper inside every time it tried to surface.
She wasn’t thinking about herself in this situation, she rarely ever thought of herself as an individual, and with reason. Most every human she’d ever met made it perfectly clear that despite her legal status she would never be treated like a ‘person’. And so, she didn’t try. She wasn’t a fluffy, and she wasn’t a human, she was something in between- an abominable thing with no place in the civilized world.
Every time dad left the house early, had to set her down and go somewhere, had to answer a phone call, he was doing it for her. He’d told her this before, many times in fact, but it didn’t seem to click until she saw this example that she could place herself outside of.
She was thinking instead of her father and sister. He worked all day for her, for them, explaining away the missing material from work, making himself so indispensable that even if this ‘theft’ of material already marked for destruction, or heaven forbid- after hours bioengineering were to be discovered, they might choose not to do anything about it. All of that extra work, just for them, for the members of his family that could not. For the member tucked away safe in a dark place, only ever making vague whimpering noises, eyes seemingly forever shut.
Ever more lost in thought, time began to slip away.
“Wai pwincess hown tewn bwoo?”
Twilight panicked at not only the sudden drop back into reality, but also at the content of the message levied towards her. At first she darted her head up in an attempt to see her horn, but for obvious reasons this achieved nothing. “Hwuuh? Uhh… Wha… I… Wait.” She shook her head and struggled to suppress the torrent of emotion that she had lost control of, and the cool blue glow began to subside. The tears welling in the corners of her eyes stopped growing. For a moment, at least.
“Dummeh bebbehs… nu bover mummuh… mumma hab sweepies.”
She pursed her lips and tilted her head to the side, half wanting to continue her inquisition into the nature of “family”, part wanting to intervene.
“Mummah pwease… (cheep) Nee’ gud miwkies f-fow gwow big an’ stwong!”
The remaining siblings seemed incapable of doing anything but peeping in agreement.
Bigger spoke this time.
“Dat mummah am wazy. Aww babbehs nee’ gwow be tawkie babbehs, nu jus’ ‘bestest babbeh’. Aww babbehs nee’ miwkies.”
Her horn’s mourning light began to shift in hue, becoming as true a violet hue as her namesake would have produced. She turned away from Bigger, choking out the words “Thank you.”, before beginning her approach of the negligent mother. Tears flowed freely down her face, now twisted in equal parts by righteous indignation and long overdue sadness. She swept the babies aside with a gentle brush from the tips of her feathers.
“Wake up.”
The mother rolled over on her back, now facing away from both her children and ruler. The stallion beside her worriedly sat up but did not speak.
“Nu wan wakies. Gu way.”
Twilight didn’t bother to give another command. She began by striking the mare’s throat, as to not raise panic in the whole backyard. Blow after blow from her wings, and occasionally forehooves, rained down upon the mare mercilessly. Every time she began to hear a scream, she repeated her opener. With quavering voice and through blinding tears she continued in her grief-contaminated inquiry.
“Why? Why won’t you help them?”
She stops briefly and awaits an answer. As the mare continues to attempt to call for help, she is repeatedly silenced, her eyes becoming more bloodshot each time her breath is stolen away. With every unanswered question the light of her horn, which she’d stopped bothering trying to extinguish, grew less vibrant, and more melancholic.
“Aren’t you a supposed to be a mother?”
“Why is that one bigger than the others?”
“Are you proud of yourself? Do you know what pride is?”
“Do you deserve a family? Should I take them too?”
“Do you even know why I’m doing this?”
“Should I give you another chance?”
Both Twilight and the mare had cried out all the tears they had, and by the end of the cycles of attempted screams and silencing, the mare would not, or could not speak. If there was a light coming from her horn, it was no longer visible in the daytime light. She looked down at the battered form before her and through a tired frown, she began to answer the questions that she herself had asked.
“You are. You’re supposed to be a mother, but you aren’t.”
“You care about that one because it’s the same color as you. You feed it more.”
“You don’t know what pride is. Either you don’t know, or you don’t have any.”
“You don’t deserve a family if this is how you’re gonna treat them, but I don’t wanna take your kids.”
“You know why I’m doing this, and you know deep down that you deserve it.”
“I shouldn’t give you another chance, but I’m gonna.”
Twilight turned to face the stallion, to be met with the site of a father doing his best to hide his loudly peeping foals behind him. She assumed her “show stance” and began to dictate orders to him.
“Make sure they all get fed. I don’t care how you do it. Either give her all the hugs and love she needs to pass on those hugs and love to your kids, or beat her ass until she does. Either way, get it done. I’ll check in on you later.”
She turned back to the mare who had begun again to audibly cry and raised a wing with intent to silence her once again.
Her wing wavered in the air for a moment before she folded it back.
Passing by the climbing-toy Twilight looked up at the none too secretive eyes prying down at her, Linus and Strawberry peering through wooden-slatted guardrails at what she might be doing- what might have happened to the moaning “mummah” across the yard.
She stopped for a moment.
Would their words matter to her? Would she learn anything from talking to them? She narrowed her vision and broke any fantasy of stealth they might have believed they had. “Oy, you- Both of you. I can see you, and I don’t like being spied on.”
“Pwincess am haf tawkies wif’ wotsa fwuffies. Pwincess nee’ haf tawkies wif’ Winus tu?”
She considered the family structure that they had formed and quickly concluded that she probably knew everything that they were going to say. Standard pair, biological children, the only anomaly here was the prospect of the “fluffy divorce” that she initiated, Strawberry taking the place of his prior, much less intelligent special-friend.
“No, Linus.”
She only made it a few hoofbeats along the cold-hardened ground before she was stilled again.
“Pwincess… Wan’ haf’ tawkies wif’ Winus?”
Something gripped at her heart though she could not tell if it was more of the same sorrow she had felt earlier resurfacing, or some new horror breaking through her already pocked defenses. At her father’s request/instruction/indoctrination she’d worked hard to close herself off from the world, just as she’d been shunned by the world for what she was. But she couldn’t hold up her walls anymore, in either direction.
“Y… Yes. How do humans treat fluffies?”
“Winus nu knu wotsa hoomans, bu’ mos’ hoomans awe gud to fwuffies if fwuffies awe gud tu hoomans. Hoomans wuv fwuffies!”
She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Sure, all of the words made sense, but they contradicted what she had already known… or rather what she had been told. “That wasn’t how knowledge worked.” She thought, she’d never actually tested if people outside her home hated her… She’d only ever been told that it was the case.
“Thank you, Linus. I’m going now.”
I have one more family to interrogate.
Twilight’s hooves resounded on the faux stone of the back hallway as she made her way towards the sound of frustrated conversation. It sounded like the same old, same old. Static in her ears, in one and out the other. Meaningless words from meaningless people.
Or maybe not.
“Dad who are you talking to?”
He covered the receiver and whispered ‘Work’ under his breath.
“You’re always talking to work. I want to talk to you about… Other things.”
“In a moment, sweetie.”
She wandered over to the phone receiver and jammed her hoof into it. Matthew looked down at her with concerned eyes.
“You know what, I’ll call you back.”
(BEEP.)
“Sweetheart that only works with really old phones.”
She winced. Anger and sadness began to creep back into her mind, through the holes she had allowed her curiosity to carelessly bore through her blissful isolationism.
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t know that would I. The only phones I’ve ever seen are that one in your hand, and the ones on TV. And that works on the TV ones. The ones at your work are buttons on walls, or walkie-talkies, or-”
“Sweetie what’s wrong? It hurts to see you like this, all confused and worried.”
“Why can’t I ever leave the house? Dad?”
She noticed how he averted his eyes for a moment.
“You can open doors Twilight, and you can run faster than I can, I literally couldn’t stop you from leaving if I wanted to.”
“But you do want to. You want to keep me from leaving.”
“Of course I do.”
Twilight blinked in disbelief.
“What!? You… You do? What if I want to go out and see the world, meet people, learn from th-”
“Twilight, the world is ugly, its people are liars, and its information biased and flawed. You live in the most beautiful place I have ever seen or visited, neither I nor your sister would ever even dream of lying to you, and if you ever doubt anything you learn I stand ready to correct it.”
Twilight stumbled back under the speed and abrasion with which the words were delivered. He didn’t raise his voice, but the words were laden with so much venom if she weren’t looking straight at him, she’d have been sure they were spoken by a viper.
“Well… the fluffies outside said…” her cadence of speech began to slow upon seeing the patronizing change in Matthew’s expression, “They said that… the world- er, uh- humans, I mean, people in general… are nice…”
“Hah! The fluffies? Oh, gods above I thought- Twilight the fluffies outside will tell you whatever they were programmed to think. That one that said humans are nice to fluffies- did you ever ask it if it had ever met a human? We live in the middle of a forest and these things just so happened to waddle into our yard one day. I doubt any of them have met a human in their life. They default to loving humans, it’s the way they were programmed. I think the only ones that have actually met a human and formed their own opinions your friend Briar who was thrown out with the trash when her owners got bored of her, and their old Smarty Blain who was a test subject never meant to leave the Hasbio campus.”
Twilight looked down at the floor, eyes heavy, heart hollow.
“I know.”
Silence hung uneasily in the air before Twilight finally mustered the strength to raise her head. As the violet curtains of hair parted from her face, Matthew’s expression quickly from shifted from chiding to pained. He looked down to see his beautiful little girl with tears running down her face, the fear in her heart apparent in the lines on her face.
“Did… Did you program me to love you? How do I know I’m alive? I don’t wanna be like them…”
He threw the phone receiver to the ground and pulled her up from the heap she had fallen into. Every little sob was a bit lighter than the previous, but it wasn’t any less painful for either of them. He pulled her in tightly, as close as they could be. She reciprocated with her wings.
“Darling… Baby… Sweetheart… You are your own person, you are alive. You get to choose what you think is important, and I thank my lucky stars that one of the things you chose was me. You didn’t have to come here- you didn’t have to go home with me, but you did. You wouldn’t let anyone else touch you! You almost cost someone a finger!”
He felt the reverberation of a chuckle breaking through the silent tears.
“You coulda been put on ice like most of the other gen-fours, or… whatever they got Number 36 doing… I’m going to have to call off you little experiment if they have you doubting that I LOVE YOU.”
He began to sway her side to side as her breathing steadied. He ran his now shaking fingers through her mane.
“I heard the questions you were asking outside, to the orange fluffy. Questions about family*. Twilight, my sweet little angel*, everything I have done I have done with the intention of protecting our little family. I don’t want anything happening to you so… we stay here. In our secluded little copse… Just you, me, and…”
There was a crash upstairs. His pager chirped loudly, the message reading: LS FAIL / HBEAT=0. His face went pale. Twilight looked in the direction of the noise. She could hear distinctly non-fluffy cries. She rolled out of his lap just as quickly as he rose to his feet.
“YOUR SISTER.”