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Starlight Glimmer loved Her Town.
She loved the way every building stood straight and equal against the flat, unchanging landscape. She loved the way the town was situated nicely in two identical rows—no buildings here to stand out from the others and make the occupants of any other building feel lesser or left out!
Except her own house, of course… but as the leader of town, she was awarded a few certain privileges, after all. And besides, her house was still the same as any other building in town, just set so that everypony could see it. This, of course, was perfectly acceptable, because if anypony in town needed to know where to go for help, they wouldn’t have to look far.
After all, it was Her Town.
Starlight stood right outside her own separate-but-still-equal domicile and gazed proudly upon her municipal experiment, one that was coming along quite nicely. The village now boasted a population of thirty-two earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi who had all become aware of the horrific dividing power of cutie marks. It was still only a small pocket of Equestria, to be sure, but Starlight’s message could only grow from there.
A flash of movement disrupted the still serenity of the early morning scene. Starlight cocked her head towards the right, where the disturbance was.
Moving up the street in a quick trot was the earth pony couple Snickerdoodle and Bubble Bounce, with their young daughter Glistening Sea between them. As the adults’ eyes met Starlight’s, they trotted quicker, the corners of their wide smiles twitching awkwardly.
“Good morning, friends!” Starlight called out, temporarily pushing aside her suspicion at their demeanor. “You’re up a little earlier than usual, aren’t you?”
Snickerdoodle shook a bit, his smile waving for a brief second as his bright blue eyes blinked rapidly. “Good morning, Starlight! Yes, it is a bit early, but we have a… slight problem.”
“Not a huge problem!” Bubble Bounce added, her light pink braids bouncing against the pale gray fur on her neck.
Between them, Glistening Sea was most decidedly not smiling. The little filly’s aquamarine eyes were wide with fear and quickly-pooling tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“Didn’t mean to what?” Starlight asked.
Snickerdoodle glanced at Bubble Bounce. Bubble Bounce glanced back. Her smile broke first, with his quick to follow.
“We should probably go inside,” Bubble Bounce said to Starlight.
Starlight stepped aside and motioned towards her open door. “By all means.” She let the family in before herself, noting that Glistening Sea was covered in a long, heavy cloak, not a usual vestment for the filly.
Once she followed them inside and closed the door with her unicorn magic, the family’s composure and forced smiles vanished like the air out of a popped balloon. “We don’t know how it happened—” Snickerdoodle began.
“All we did was ask her to water the plants in the windowsill flowerbox,” Bubble Bounce insisted.
Glistening Sea was now sniffling, unable to hold back the tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad.”
“Just tell me what exactly happened,” Starlight interrupted curtly.
Snickerdoodle and Bubble Bounce exchanged another glance before, slowly and guiltily, removing the cloak from Glistening Sea.
Starlight inhaled sharply. There, plain as day on the young filly’s flank, was an image of an ocean wave.
A cutie mark that hadn’t been there yesterday.
Inwardly, Starlight swore. This was absolutely not part of her plan. She’d had her reservations at letting in a couple with a child into the village; she should have listened to them!
After taking a moment to collect herself, she turned to the filly’s parents. “Tell me again, how old is she?”
“She’s only five,” said Bubble Bounce.
“We weren’t expecting this for at least a few years,” Snickerdoodle added, “or we would have been more on guard. We’ve never heard of anypony so young getting their cutie mark…”
“It’s rare, but it’s not unheard of,” Starlight said. Another reason why she was inwardly kicking herself; after all the research into cutie marks she’d undertaken, she should have known that a situation like this, while unlikely, was not impossible. But Snickerdoodle and Bubble Bounce were both so amenable to her anti-cutie marks, pro-equality manifesto that Starlight would have been a fool to turn them away. Furthermore, their daughter provided an ample opportunity to test her theory that, in a life of true sameness and equality, she could influence any foals who grew up there that equality was their destiny just like it was for every other citizen, and naturally bring about the corresponding cutie mark to match.
Clearly, that experiment had failed. Or at the very least, it had proved that a foal needed more time than just a few months in Her Town in order to rewrite destiny’s cruel fate for them.
“Has anypony else seen her like this?” Starlight asked Snickerdoodle and Bubble Bounce.
The parents shook their heads.
Starlight finally smiled again. She had to make herself smile, true, but the smile came regardless. “Well, that’s certainly a relief! And this accident is very easily corrected. I’ll go retrieve the Staff of Sameness and then we can all go to the cavern.” She trotted towards her storage closet.
And then, just as she was levitating the staff towards her, the little filly’s dissenting “Um…” sliced through the air like a cleaver.
Starlight abruptly turned her head back towards the earth ponies. Snickerdoodle and Bubble Bounce looked panicked. And Glistening Sea still had tears lining her face. “I… I wanna keep it,” she whimpered. “Can I keep it? It’s pretty. I wasn’t being naughty! I should get to keep it!”
This time, Starlight had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from launching into a tirade of angry swears at a five-year-old.
“Glistening Sea,” she finally said, carefully and with forced cheer, “I know this may be hard for a little filly like you to understand, but those unique marks only cause bad things to happen.”
“But… getting it made me feel happy,” Glistening Sea said. “I was watering the flowers and thinking how nice the water was and how nice it would be to—”
“Stop,” Starlight hissed, meaner than she meant to. Glistening Sea jumped back in fear, and taking a deep breath, Starlight continued, back in her “preschool teacher” voice. “Think about how every other pony in town would feel if they saw you with a pretty mark. They’d feel pretty sad that they don’t have pretty marks too, wouldn’t they?”
Glistening Sea gulped and nodded.
“And what if another pony in town had a cutie mark that was even prettier and more special than yours? You’d feel really bad, wouldn’t you? And then you might start to feel angry at that pony who had a more special mark than yours. And then you could never be friends. You want to have friends, don’t you, Glistening Sea?”
The terrified filly nodded again.
“I had a best friend when I was a filly. You know what happened? He got his cutie mark. And because his cutie mark was so special, he had to go away from me forever. And after that, I was never able to have friends again until coming here and bringing equality to everypony who lives here. What happened to me was very sad, and I don’t want the same thing happening to you.”
“Um, Starlight…” Bubble Bounce’s voice squeaked out.
“Yes?” Starlight said, forcing an accommodating smile back on her lips.
“With all due respect…” The mare faltered a bit before gathering her resolve and looking Starlight square in the eyes. “We are very grateful to you. You’ve brought us a way of life that before meeting you, we didn’t think was possible. But while we don’t regret giving up our cutie marks, that was an informed, personal decision that my husband and I came to after lots of thought. I don’t feel comfortable making that kind of decision for my daughter.”
“Well, why not?” Starlight asked with a shrill laugh. “Isn’t that your job as her parents? To make decisions on her behalf?”
“Yes, but—”
“And if it’s a decision that the two of you personally thought was best, certainly you’d want the same thing for your daughter, wouldn’t you?” Starlight stepped up very close to Bubble Bounce, holding her gaze and making the earth pony mare shrink down a bit.
“Umm…”
“That’s enough, Starlight,” Snickerdoodle barked out.
Starlight turned her attention towards the stallion, not bothering to hide the ire in her voice. “Excuse me?”
Snickerdoodle took a step backwards and his pupils dilated, but his voice held mostly steady as he continued. “Bubble’s right. This is a mighty big decision for such a young pony. Can’t we come back to this decision in a few years, when she’s older?”
“Oh yes, let her keep her unique cutie mark in a village where those have been abolished! I can’t see any problems with that plan!” Starlight snarled, and Snickerdoodle finally broke down and cowered in her glare.
“Starlight, please,” Bubble Bounce pleaded. “Don’t force us to make such a big decision for our daughter now.”
“Oh, I’m not,” Starlight said airily. “If you want to let her keep her cutie mark, you have that right. But she can’t stay in the village with a mark so vastly different from the rest of us.”
Bubble Bounce gasped. “You can’t ask us to throw her out. She’s a child!”
“She can’t stay here with that kind of mark on her flank. You know our ideals. And throw her out? I never said anything of the sort. If you would watch her be banished and abandon her to the world… that’s on you.” Starlight looked at Bubble Bounce and Snickerdoodle with a calculated glare. “If you’re willing to throw away the only true sense of community you’ve ever had just because you object to your daughter undergoing the same procedure you previously readily agreed to… well, I can’t stop you from leaving and searching fruitlessly for the kind of belonging you can only find here.”
She siddled up against Bubble Bounce, smiling wickedly. “Or, for a much better option, we nip this problem in the bud right here and now and bring your daughter in line with the rest of our wonderful village.”
She heard Bubble Bounce gulp, but no words came out.
Snickerdoodle was similarly silenced.
Satisfied, Starlight turned towards a still sniffling Glistening Sea.
“Excellent. Now come with me. This won’t hurt a bit.”
…
Starlight was overjoyed to present the good news to the rest of the town a few hours later. Their resident filly had earned her cutie mark—and it was the same equal sign as the rest of them! Clearly the truth of equality and sameness was making itself known as the one and only way!
Bubble Bounce and Snickerdooodle’s smiles were shaky and uneven, but all Starlight had to do was glare at them and the corners of their mouths shot upwards once more.
Glistening Sea, her coat a duller shade of seafoam green than it had been that morning, wouldn’t smile, not even prompted by Starlight’s nudging or her parents’ huge grins. But Starlight grinned, and Glistening Sea’s parents grinned, and the rest of the village grinned, and Starlight didn’t worry about the filly.
This was just a mere stumbling block on her path towards equality.
Soon the filly would understand. Soon everypony would understand.
Starlight beamed at her citizens.
Everything would fall into place, just as she planned it would.