An Apple Studded Diamond

Chapters

The Parties Involved
Shall In Accordance
With Their Traditions
Endeavour To
Beget A Foal.
To be Raised
With Love
And Kindness
That They May Grow
Proud
And Strong.
It is Hereby Agreed
By Them

The Parties Involved

The Parties Involved

Apple Bloom paced the longest diagonal across the floor of the Cutie Mark Crusaders clubhouse. She’d kept up a feverish pace at it as well. Her two fellow Ponyville crusaders, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were in attendance and showing due concern for their friends plight. They’d arrived by the usual schedule for an afternoon meet-up to find their friend shaking, unsettled from some great shock.

After determining that Granny Smith was still among the living, and that the farm was not about to be lost on some mad scheme, the two other fillies had managed to coax the shocking truth from their earth pony companion. Their reactions to the news had been well, expected. Sweetie Belle’s near glass crackingly high exclamation of ‘WHAT!’ could probably be heard in Canterlot, and had sent snapping and crackling streamers of green magic popping across the room from the young unicorn’s horn. Since then she had just sat silently on her haunches and tracked Apple Bloom’s pacing the room by eye movement alone.

Scootaloo’s wings, like most shocked pegasi, were standing stiff, and had been since Apple Bloom had dropped her revelation and it had gone off like the burst of a sonic rainboom in the orange filly’s mind. Beyond that the only reaction that Scootaloo had voiced was a rather emphatic ‘EEWWW’ every time Apple Bloom mentioned what had gone on earlier between Granny Smith, Big Mac, Applejack, Mr. Rich, and herself.

“Your going to …” Scootaloo began only to be cut off by Sweetie Belle.

“Married?” The little off white-silver unicorn’s voice cracked high before the purple maned pegasus cut her off in turn.

“… and live with …” Scootaloo’s muzzle was beginning to look slightly green.

“Diamond Tiara would be …” Sweetie chimed.

“… and have foals …” gurgled the pegasus.

“Because of a piece of paper?” came Sweetie again.

“ … that …” the little pegasus couldn’t hold it any more and thrust her head out one of the club house windows, “EEWWW!”

Apple Bloom stopped her pacing and looked at the floor, dejectedly scuffing her hoof against some long dried tree sap. “I mean don’t you have to love somepony in order to, y’know … , have foals?”

“Actually, once a filly comes into season her vulva swells and she begins to emit pheromones that a colt or stallion will be receptive to in her urine. When the mare is ready to mate her vulva will begin to open and close of its own volition and her clitoris will begin to twitch in a display called ‘winking.’ At this point she may allow the colt or stallion, whom she is preferably married to, to insert his penis which will have become stiff and swollen with blood, through her vulva into her vagina. He will then thrust vigorously several times before pressing the tip of his penis up close to the filly’s cervix, which is the muscular juncture between the vagina and the uterus. At this point the colt or stallion will deposit a generous quantity of special fluid called ‘semen’ inside the vagina in a process called ejaculation, and if your really lucky, the colt or stallion won’t fall asleep immediately afterwards.”

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo could only stare dumbfounded as Sweetie Belle proceeded on.

“Anyway, the semen contains the special seeds called ‘sperm’ which then travel into the filly’s uterus and up one of the horns where, hopefully, one of the sperm seeds will join with a tiny microscopic egg from the filly’s ovaries and form a foal, that is born eleven months later by passing back out of the broodmare’s body through the vagina.”

There was dead silence in the clubhouse as both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo stared gawking at Sweetie Belle who blushed fiercely under her friends accusing gaze. Even a passing cloud seemed to blot the gleaming rays of the sun at that moment as if Princess Celestia herself was face-hoofing after hearing what the silver-white filly had jut said.

Head still half- out the clubhouse window after her last vibrantly empathic ‘EEWWW’, the tom-colt pegasus was the first to respond. “What are you, a medical textbook? And eeww and a half, Sweetie. I couldn’t imagine letting some colt shove something that he pees out of into my vuljana-thing and squirt in it. Besides, I thought you were a singer not a doctor?”

Apple Bloom canted her head quizzically to check her unicorn companion’s flank just to verify that Sweetie Belle’s Cutie mark hadn’t gone from ‘musical’ to ‘medical’ by some twist of destiny caused by HRH Princess Twilight ‘Spell-error’ Sparkle, but the mark remained as when it first appeared before adding, “So where did ya get all that from?”

Sweetie Belle blushed even harder as she seemed to realize what she’d said, her coat’s tint threatening to give Big McIntosh’s a rival.

“I kind of got the ‘big talk’ from mom a couple of days ago … when I accidentally walked in on her and dad while they were in the middle of doing … ‘It’.” The silver-white unicorn admitted.

Apple bloom knew what the ‘big talk’ was. She’d gotten hers from Applejack a while back when her older sister had explained the basics after discovering her younger sister ‘coming into season.’ It was just then she realized what Sweetie Belle had just admitted to having witnessed, but Scootaloo beat her to the response.

“You saw your parents …” the purple maned pegasus practically choked unable to bring her self to finish the statement, her orange complexion once more getting green in the gills.

Sweetie Bell nodded meekly as the three friends exchanged horrified glances. For once, Apple Bloom was remotely grateful that she didn’t have parents. If only so she might not accidentally ‘catch them in the act.’

The collective ‘EEWWW’ that followed most certainly would have reached the ears of Princess Cadence it the Crystal Empire.

* * * * *

The house had gone quiet. Filthy Rich had left. Granny had cleaned up lunch and wandered off to her rocking chair for her after noon nap, and Big McIntosh had headed back out to the field to finish up what he’d been working on. That’s when Applejack had finally snapped out of her state of shock and headed out to find her brother … looking for blood.

“BIG MCINTOSH HOW COULD YOU!?”

She could see the big stallion flinch as she approached.

“How could you? Our little sister despises Mr. Rich’s daughter Diamond Tiara something awful. Ever since that little pink prissy upstart and her venomous snaky silver shadow took to teasing AB, Scoots, and Sweetie about not having their cutie marks. Even after the girls got their marks, those two little trolls still caused them no end of grief, and now your doin’ this?”

AJ watched as her big brother dropped the harness he was buckling and walked back to meet her eye to eye over the fence. This was where the orange mare would normally have expected a firm ‘Eeyup’ or ‘Nnope’ out of her brother. He said nothing. He simply stood there staring her down, face as impassive and unflinching as Applejack had ever seen Princess Celestia.

“Well? Aren’t you gonna say somethin’?” she barked at her brother, puffing herself up as hard as she could.

“Ah reckon, once you calm down, I might.”

Applejack just looked balefully at her older brother, before returning, “An’ when I do? What’r’ you gonna say.”

“I think I might remind you of just how much that prissy pink upstart’s father did to help us keep this farm after what happened to Ma ‘n’ Pa.”

Applejack flinched inside, she knew what her brother meant about the deaths of their parents, and she knew it haunted him in a way she could only have nightmares of as her brother continued his explanation.

“If he hadn’t helped me an’ Granny get the farm’s financing straightened out, there wouldn’t be a Sweet Apple Acres for you t’ run. You remember tryin’ t’ applebuck y’r way through the whole of the farm y’rself once. Didn’t go quite so well as I recall.”

Applejack hated being reminded of that incident, especially the knock her reputations as a baker had taken because of the, as Pinkie Pie called them, ‘baked bads’.

“I had to do that an’ all of the other farm chores m’self with only Granny’s help so you could go t’ school an’ follow your dreams to Manehatten, and it wasn’t for just one applebuck season either.”

Applejack let herself deflate, as much as she wanted to keep her hackles up, her brother had become quite adept at letting the wind out of her sails. It was some time before her move to Manehatten and Rainbow Dash’s providential sonic rainboom that lead to her realizing how much Sweet Apple Acres, and her family, meant to her. She looked back to her flank where the trio of red apples still rode with pride.

“But what about Apple Bloom?” Applejack calmly offered her concern of their younger sister to her brother.

“Apple Bloom’s not the same little pony she was not long ago. She’s almost a mare-grown. She’s found her special talents and is leaning to use them. She’s a smart pony with a good heart. She’ll adapt AJ. I hope you will too, you’re the ‘big’ sister here.”

“A’right.” Was the only answer Applejack gave her brother, bowing her head slightly to his practical wisdom.

“Good. Now don’t you have to be tending the stall in the market th’safternoon?” the big red stallion asked as he began to detach himself from the conversation and reattach himself to the plow.

“Eeyup.” AJ quipped back casually taunting her brother with his own turn-of-phrase as she headed off to collect the cart for market.

“A’right,” McIntosh called after her, “I’ll see ya in town later. I’ve got t’ pick up some things before I head to Uncle Fil’s f’r dinner and settle the last details of the agreement.”

* * * * *

Diamond Dazzle Tiara sat in her fathers study wiping the stamp ink off her freshly done hooficure. She loved the spa. So wonderful to get ponies to service you head to hoof at your whim. Of course it was better if Silver Spoon was there, but that purple trollicorn, Princess Twilight Sparkle, had sent Silver on a diplomatic assignment to the Crystal Empire. Still, it meant she had Lotus and Aloe’s undivided attention on her for over an hour, and the juicy court gossip that Silver would return with was worth her friend's absence now.

Finishing wiping her hoof, Diamond admired the spa ponies fine work a moment before putting her hoof back down and looking at her parents from across her father’s desk. Really, paper work and hoof-stamping she preferred to do in the morning, before the spa. It was easier to remove the ink that way.

It was painfully obvious to her that her parents had had another colossal argument earlier, most probably due to her ejection from her most recent executive apprenticeship in Canterlot. She could smell the distilled red willow tea her mother was drinking out of a soup cup sitting on her father’s desk. That and she could see the Canterlot Crystal decanter also present on the desk was nearly empty, way to lose an argument mom.

Still it wasn’t a total loss, hopefully this next one worked out better. She’d asked her father after he’d stopped fuming over her last rejection, to get her a placement with Silver Spoon on Princess Sparkle’s diplomatic detail.

Despite the fact she loathed the young princess stationed in Ponyville for her friendship with those ‘blank-flanks’, or ‘former blank-flanks’ as the case was, power was power, and a princess was power ponified. The mere thought of the potential of entering the halls of Equestrian power was getting her hot in the plot. The possibilities that came with courtly intrigues, the wealth, the power, that could be amassed in one’s hooves by manipulating nobles, diplomats, and high-level entrepreneurs was rapturous. Not to mention the potential to marry into a wealthy house with a weak head and wrap the whole around her own hoof …

The pink pony power monger reigned herself in for fear of leaving a plot mark on the seating cushion under her. Still the sheer elation of making ponies do things for her benefit was intoxicating. Not that it had to be manipulative, unquestioning willing compliance from the outset was preferable, but there was a certain … erotic … thrill that she had become aware of as she’d gotten older. It came from the sensation of having another pony squirming under your metaphorical hoof while you used them until they gave in and complied.

She even had her parents, more or less, wrapped around her hoof. Sure they had disciplined her occasionally, mostly her father for those odd misbehaviours she couldn’t pass off on others. Singing to water cans phu-lease, leave the weird goings on to the eccentric hicks. All she wanted was the money that could be made from them just like her father did.

The firm thud thud thud of the knocker on the front door prompted Tiara’s mother to take one last pull of tea before rising and walking to greet their arriving dinner guest, some long time associate of her father’s who would be covering her for her next apprenticeship she was told.

So even if she, occasionally, had been punished is was reassuring to know that as her father’s precious sole heir to the Rich legacy, she knew her father would never do anything against her.

“So daddy, how well off is this business associate of yours?” Diamond Tiara cranked up the innocent sugar sweetness of her voice to match the candyfloss and taffy colors of her coat and mane. “I mean what kind of business is he in, shipping? Real estate?”

“If you must know Diamond, he’s well landed with sizable holdings in real estate and commodities. He also has, you’ll be pleased to know, close associates working with the royal court. I couldn’t be more pleased he’s chosen to cover you for this.”

The coral pink pony spread her sweetest practiced smile at her father while giving her lavender and frost mane a flick with her un-ink-touched hoof. “I’m so happy daddy, I promise I’ll make this one work out.”

Shall In Accordance

Shall in Accordance

“How could you!”

Silken Sash’s head rang like it had been placed between two great brass gongs that were being beaten by a dozen of the Canterlot Royal Guard. The distilled red willow tea she had been drinking, and the dinner catered by Haute Cuisine, had done a little to take the edge off the horrible pounding of her head. That had been until her daughter had finally caught wind of the nature of the contract she’d just unknowingly signed her compliance to.

“How dare either of you!” the young pink mare railed at both parents, her crystal blue eyes darting between them, full of flashing rage at her apparent betrayal by her family. “To think that I would ever agree to let you have this single syllable dunce of a colt-cuddling fudge-packer,” she glared at the big red stallion seated opposite her father at the dining room table, “not only have my virginity, but to actually let him get me pregnant? You two must have more horse-apples packed into your shit-filled heads than he’s packed up his colt-friend’s corn-holes!”

“If you hate me that much,” Silken’s daughter was now staring directly across the table at her, writhing in self-righteous fury, fore-hooves planted on the table, “why don’t you just stuff my marehood full of your own shit and wait for the infection to kill me, not just leave me sterile like you, instead of letting this impoverished drooling idiot rip me open with his filthy shit-prod and being able to wipe your hooves of it!”

“Diamond Dazzle Tiara!” Silken’s husband began rising from his seating cushion, but the rage-stoked filly just fled the dinning room with an abruptness and velocity that would have rivalled Pinkie Pie on a sugar-rush punctuated with the thunderous slam of a bedroom door.

Silken merely raised the front of her fetlock to her forehead, and let out a painful sigh. Less so for her violently throbbing head, than the momentous, all encompassing, failure of a lifetime schooling her daughter in etiquette.

As she lowered her hoof from her head Silken could feel the throbbing in her temples from the hangover, but the ache of her pride was giving it a run for its money.

Silken’s own parents, Cotton Bale and Mint Julep, would have both died of embarrassment if they’d heard their granddaughter’s tirade. Silken had tried to instil all she could into her only foal of the values of etiquette, poise, tact, and grooming. She had tried as much as Diamond Tiara’s father had instructed to show her those of good business practices, financial responsibility, and community values. At this moment Silken just could not think of where they went wrong.

On both sides of her lineage Diamond Tiara was blessed with all that came with it. Her cutie mark had been earned in a summer harvest pageant. She demonstrated charisma, poise, and bearing in motion and form on a daily basis. But Silken had to admit, her daughter had a dark side. Diamond Tiara held herself apart from others, save Silver Spoon, her only close friend.

It pained Silken quietly inside; if she hadn’t contracted that uterine infection after foaling Diamond, she had meant to brood a large family with her husband. Perhaps with other siblings to care for, to be looked up to by, to share in life’s bounties with, her daughter might have been better off.

“How dare she speak like that to us and our guest?” Silken watched as her husband, Filthy Rich, made to move after his daughter, only to be silently called to a halt by the massive scarlet leg and brass coloured hoof of the other stallion at the table.

“Nnope.”

“Big Mac,” Silken’s husband turned to the young stallion they’d agreed to pair with their daughter, “she’s been terribly rude to you, as well as us. She needs to apologize for her impudent behaviour, and I’m going to see that she does. I will completely understand if you want to abandon our agreement after this, it is your option after all. The final signatures aren’t in place yet. There is another option for her, my wife’s cousin in Canterlot would probably take her in.”

Silken winced as her head kept pounding. Taking a sip from her cup of tea, she knew what Filthy meant by offering Big McIntosh a pass. It was the reason in the end she’d agreed with her husband to move forward on the offer to invoke the stud contract that had been drawn up between the two families after Diamond had been foaled.

Her cousin, Velvet Glove, had a lot in common with Diamond Tiara. They both had good looks, poise, grace, a love of wealth, and an abundance of ambition. Velvet Glove in some ways was the perfect mentor for Diamond Tiara, in other ways absolutely not. There were reasons most of Silken’s family had largely disowned the mare.

“Uncle Fil, d’you remember the time you ‘n’ mah Pa, swiped that zap apple pie right from Granny’s oven, but got caught when y’all tried t’ eat it quick fast so y’ wouldn’t get caught?”

Silken cocked her head, this story she may have heard, or not, but she listened to her husband’s reply.

“I remember McIntosh. We burnt our mouths right good, and your Granny Smith came running when she heard us holler. She told us she wouldn’t punish us if we finished eating that piping hot pie right there and then in front of her. We took two more bites and decided to go out to the orchard and cut a pair of switches rather than finish. It was easier sitting down for dinner with a tanned flank than going around with a blistered tongue.” Filthy Rich gave a light chuckle at the end.

“Eeyup,” the big farm pony said nonchalantly as ever, “and right now your little filly’s pie there is hot enough that she’s might to do a lot worse if you try and take a bite out of her right now. So if y’don’t mind me saying, I think we should finish up this fine dinner here that’s cooling off, and give Di a chance to cool a spell before anypony tries to even take a lick at her.”

Silken nodded her head. She remembered the story from her wedding. Big Mac’s reasoning made sense too, as she watched her husband sit back down at the table. Her head was still throbbing from the apple brandy that morning, and she didn’t want to have to face Diamond any sooner than needed. Besides, the glazed carrots with asparagus and pine nuts were quite good. It was a shame to let them go cold.

* * * * *

Filthy Rich had to admit the meal catered by Haute Cuisine was quite good, glazed roast carrots with asparagus and pine nuts, an alfalfa and dandelion greens salad with apple and almond slivers paired with a raspberry vinaigrette, and for dessert, sugared palm hearts. There was a distinct reason Filthy Rich knew he gave Haute Cuisine the bulk of his personal catering business. He gave no slight to the Cakes or Sweet Apple Acres, but both were more suited to larger functions and Filthy had used them both on different occasions. Haute Cuisine though was his go to pony for private business dinners like this.

“That was a mighty fine supper y’all provided.” The big scarlet stallion voiced his approval to his hosts.

“Yes it was.” Silken chimed in after taking a moment to drain her teacup. “Now if you gentlecolts would like to retire to the parlour, I’m sure you probably have some business to discuss, while I go get Diamond taken care of. Mac dear, would you prefer tea or coffee?”

The congenial hostess as always. Thought the brown business pony of his wife, her charm and grace were two of the reasons he’d pursued her for years in order to win her hoof. A fine physique and a plot that would raise wood on a corpse had something to do with it as well.

“Actually, Aunt Sil, I think that pint flask I brought would do nicely right now.” McIntosh replied courteously as Filthy Rich cocked an ear to his surrogate nephew’s remark.

“Oh yes, of course Big Mac, it slipped my mind amid all that’s gone on today.” Silken replied.

“Coffee my dearest.” Rich added, and then turned to McIntosh. “Flask McIntosh? I hope your not looking to drown some problem there son, I know your Pa wouldn’t approve of that.”

For a moment the big red colt’s face seemed to give a hint of distress but a deep breath seemed to restore its integrity as Silken began to clear the table.

“Nnope,” the younger pony commented as the two stallions made their way towards the parlour, “I remember well mah Pa telling me ‘bout my great uncle Sour Apple. I ain’t planning on crawling into a keg any time soon. But that flask is part of my reasons for coming tonight.”

“Do tell.” The older stallion offered the lead to the younger.

“Well first I’ll wait f’r the flask b’fore I’ll answer that. Second, we need t’ be lookin’ over those papers if your in agreement.”

“Alright,” Filthy Rich nodded as they reached the parlour and he motioned Big McIntosh to a pair of sitting cushions with a small table between them as he drew the legal papers out of his collar pocket and passing them to the younger pony. “If you’re sure you still want to go through with it. I mean I know how much you want to do right by your folks and repay what you think you owe me, which is precisely nothing, I’ll remind you. Why, after having her insult you like that, would you want to? I’ve had business associates who would have been half way to a lawyer’s office before she’d finished half of what she called you.”

“Well, I can’t rightly blame her for some of it.” The red stallion’s voice and visage were inscrutable in their composure as he spoke as he perused the amended document. “I doubt she’d ever sat down for dinner with a ‘business associate’ of her father’s only to find out through a slip of the tongue that she was basically being given to that associate for the siring of foals without having been asked her opinion on the matter.”

Filthy Rich nodded grimly before admitting the truth. “No McIntosh, I doubt she has, as I know for a fact it hasn’t. But that doesn’t answer why your still willing to got through with this? Most ponies see right trough her grooming and fair filly features to see, I’m sorry to admit, shallow, petty, foal.”

The look McIntosh offered was perplexing, as if asking ‘what, can’t you see it?’ but he offered his words in explanation.

“Uncle Fil, I’m not blind as to what Diamond is, but I can see the potential that’s hidden there. My Pa told me that an apple's seeds contain poison, but a good orchard pony knows to look beyond that and see the bounty that can be gained with work and time. I see that kind of potential in Di, and I would like the chance to see what can be grown from that seed with care and time.”

Just then Silken entered the room, tray in mouth, bearing two steaming cups, one each of coffee and tea, accompanied by a pint flask and empty mug. The brown stallion watched as his wife set the tray down on the main coffee table and took a seat on the nearby couch in proximity to her husband.

“I’m sorry.” The lavender mare apologized sweetly, despite her likely still pounding head, for apparently derailing her husband’s conversation. “Did I interrupt something?”

“Oh no dear, nothing of the sort.” Filthy Rich assured his wife. “We were just discussing the arrangements regarding Diamond Tiara.”

“Oh,” the mare of the house brushed absently at her coral-pink forelock as she took a sip of her tea, “should I put out extra linens for the guest room or Di’s? Not that I’d object to Mac spending the night. It’s just that Di just came out of season a day or so ago and probably won’t be very, well, receptive as you saw.”

The brown business pony watched the green eyes of the younger red shrink at Silken’s comment, darting back and forth across the room for a few heartbeats before Big Mac regained his composure. Sure he, like many ponies in Ponyville probably wouldn’t want to sit opposite Mac and play ‘Longhorn Hold ‘em.’ On the other hoof, Filthy Rich knew some of the things that would crack the bigger pony’s calm, and Silken had just mentioned two of the biggest, mares and making foals.

“Aunt Sil, Uncle Fil, I don’t think it would be right of me to impose on her like that. Just like I don’t think it’s fair what you did to Diamond, by not telling her about this family agreement. Di’s almost a mare-grown, and she deserves at least to be informed of what’s going on and be given the choice, and I think you owe her an apology for that. There were other choices, am I right?”

Filthy Rich let the young stallion’s words sink in, and could see Silken experiencing likewise. There were times the older stallion wondered what Mac spent his spare time doing to hone such disarming wisdom and insight.

“My cousin has offered …” Silken began slowly.

“It’s hardly an offer Sil,” Rich wasn’t willing to entertain that notion, but it was technically on the floor now, “neither is the other option. But if Mac here would like Diamond to have her informed consent, I guess we can put the choice before her.”

“Good,” McIntosh rose from his seat, “I’ll go fetch Diamond, if you’d like to get a quill, and some proper glasses, I’ll sign, pending Di’s approval.”

Filthy Rich just looked at his surrogate nephew, now understanding the purpose of the pint flask.

“Eeyup.”

* * * * *

How could her parent’s be such royal, backstabbing, plot heads?

Diamond Tiara sat on the tasseled cushion in front of her dressing table, her tiara lying where it had fallen in front of the mirror on the table top next to where her head now lay. Sold. She’d been sold like a piece of jewellery. To some dirty, dumb, dolt of a farmer that her father dared call a ‘business associate’.

She’d been fuming ever since she had run from the dinner table after verbally skinning her parents and that destitute dumb-ass plough-pony. How could they just sign over her, their only foal and heir, to some colt cuddling dirt dragger of an idiot without a bit to his name and expect her to let him stick his shit sodden foal pole in her pristine plot and, … the rest of the thought made her ill.

If that trollicorn hadn’t sent Silver Spoon to the Crystal Empire, Diamond would have run to her friend for comfort. But no, she had to seek refuge in her bedroom now, alone, like a foal. And she wasn’t a foal; she was a leader, a princess of the boardroom, heiress to the rich legacy of the Richs’.

The soft knock on her door drew her attention as well as her ire.

“Go away mother, I don’t want to speak to you, or father.”

“Diamond Tiara?”

The young pony started at the firm heavy slow voice came from the other side of the door.

“Go away, I don’t care if my parents gave you permission to rut me raw, they should have tied me up first if that’s what they wanted.”

“I’m sorry y’r folks didn’t tell you. But I’ve talked to them about that, and they’d like for you to come out and join us in the parlour. They’ve agreed to apologize to you for not informing you sooner, and are willing to let you have your say regarding the options you have.”

Diamond Tiara had nearly dismissed the slow talking farm pony out of hoof, until her ears perked up when he had said that her parent’s were willing to apologize to her! That and they were willing to let her pick a way out of this mess.

Apple Bloom’s manure brained brother must be a bigger colt-cuddler than I thought, Diamond lifted her haunches from their pillowed perch and regarded them in the full length mirror nearby, giving her tail a sultry swish as she did, especially if he’d turn down this flank. My plot’s almost nice enough to turn any stallion randy.

“Just a moment.” she turned up the sugar in her voice again, barely able to cover her loathing, but managing all the same. She straightened her appearance retrieved her toppled tiara from the table replacing it atop her frost and lavender mane.

This will be good, Diamond patted herself on the back for her skilful manipulation an good fortune, not only did this fudge-packing dimwit talk my parents into apologizing to me for trying to ruin my life, but I get to give him the piss off after.

The big red colt was still standing outside her door when she opened it after an appropriately timed delay. He gave her a bow and motioned her down the hall with a gesture of his hoof. She simply turned up her nose and trotted arrogantly to the parlour to receive her parents’ act of contrition.

“Well?” she sniffed woundedly as she arrived in the sitting room, noting the big red stallion standing behind her gave her an added sensation of authority, in spite of her dislike of his presence. Maybe I’ll see about getting daddy to hire me a bodyguard later.

“Your mother and I wish to apologize to you Diamond Tiara for not giving your feelings due consideration in all this. We tried to offer you only the best we could, but McIntosh is right, your nearly a mare-grown and we shouldn’t make such decisions about your future without your consent.”

“And well you shouldn’t.” The prissy pink filly gave her disdainful, yet polite, acknowledgment to her parents’ admission.

“Therefore we’ve agreed to let you choose from among the options we’ve been offered.”

“Yes, you should. I’m sure there are better options than getting my flank humped by this bump’s log.” She motioned with her head to the stallion behind her. “So what are they.”

“Well, given the financial damage your disgraceful behaviour has brought to my associates, not to mention your reputation in Manehatten and Fillydelphia, none of my business suppliers is willing to take you on in a executive apprentice position, and some have gone so far as to suggest they would not renew supply contracts if I were to place you with the company. This would place the whole family at financial risk if I did so. In order save the company, and our financial future, I’m prepared to sell the majority of Barnyard Bargains to another stallion with suitable financial experience in order to offset the liabilities. Is that not correct McIntosh?”

“Eeyup,” the red pony nodded, “I’d buy eighty percent of Barnyard Bargains for the agreed price of ten bits, and then hire Diamond as an executive apprentice while you retain day to day operational control under a profit sharing and salary agreement.”

“Unacceptable,” whined Diamond shrilly, “That’s my inheritance your selling out, next option.”

“My cousin, …” Diamond Tiara looked at her mother who seemed most perturbed as she spoke, “Velvet Glove, would probably agree to take you and have you work under her in Canterlot. She expressed interest in taking you on when she found out about your most recent expulsion.”

“Oh why didn’t you say something sooner.” Diamond beamed. Canterlot was the Royal Seat, of course she’d take the offer. “What manner of business, finance? Law?”

“My cousin runs the Lacy Bridle … ” Diamond’s grin widened at the name, it sounded like a lingerie shop, and an expensive one at that, models, glamour, high society. It was the perfect option, and no getting rutted by an applebucking bumpkin, not to mention the chance to meet the young aristocracy and maybe move up in the world.

“Absolutely.” She cut her mother off, only to see the shock bloom on her face before it fell completely.

“It’s a bordello, Diamond dear. Velvet Glove offered to take you on as a … ”

The young pony knew what her mother couldn’t bring her self to say, whore. It would be the end of her life socially, her parents’ would have to disown her to keep off the scandal, and even Silver Spoon would be unable to associate with her without bringing disrepute to herself.

“Not!” Diamond quickly backtracked to cover herself from her seeming initial approval. “Absolutely not! There must be something else.”

“Yes Diamond, there is,” her father’s voice carried the same flat tone as the big red pony that still stood behind her as he tipped his head to where a gold nibbed quill sat in front of a cider flask on the coffee table, “you can come over here, pick up this quill, and ask Big McIntosh to sign your contract.”

Diamond Tiara swallowed hard, she was caught, out of options, … bucked.

With all the grace she could muster she stepped forward and made her choice.

Author's Note

Oh, and for those who are wondering, yes, in the next chapter Diamond's cherry goes pop.

With Their Traditions

With Their Traditions

Outside the closed door a lavender ear strained and twitched at the soft sobbing now emanating from within.

Silken Sash felt her heartstrings ache with the sound. To feel for one’s children was the sign of a good mother. The fact that she was responsible for her daughter’s pain, it gnawed at her deeply. She had to keep reminding herself that Diamond Tiara had brought this on herself in many ways. Yet to hear the whimpers from behind the closed door of her only foal’s bedroom …

Silken wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with the back of a hoof as she stepped lightly away from Diamond Tiara’s bedroom over to the linen closet to retrieve the fresh white sheets required for later.

Laying the white sheets across her back, Silken thought back to her own deflowering. It had been in the 'Princess Suite' of the Lucky Clover Inn right here in Ponyville. She and Filthy had still been slightly tipsy from the reception on fortified cider from Sweet Apple Acres. Her last few cups and Filthy’s had been laced with Andalusian Fly, to ‘heighten the passion’, not that it really was necessary.

They had been young and in love, totally committed, and willing. Silken remembered how the room had smelled from the field flowers and fresh cut hay stacked about, the teasing care that they had taken in slowly undressing each other. She remembered the touch of his lips as he had used them to pull down her sodden panties before stuffing his nose in her folds and guiding her to the bed.

She, in some ways, hated herself and her husband for imposing the stud contract on Diamond Tiara. Where she’d had love, willingness, and a veritable ocean of passion to drown the discomfort of her husband’s slightly clumsy first mounting, the only thing Diamond had was a parchment that compelled her to yield herself to another.

Silken had known of the traditions of the stud contract when she and her husband had discussed them with Rich’s friends Apple Ridge, his wife Orange Bloom, and Ridge’s mother Granny Smith when the contract was originally drawn up. Back when many earth ponies traveled about in family caravans exploring and settling the new land of Equestria the stud contract had been used as a type of arranged marriage to guard against inbreeding inside the family based caravans.

The contracts were drawn up when two different clans met at some settlement or just at a common camp along the winding cart trails that ran between. The two chosen ponies may not ever know to whom they were promised until the time the contract was to be observed. But back in the day ponies with few choices for partners in a caravan oft made willing bedfellows to those they had. Many strong families had grown out of these practices Granny Smith had explained. The old mare had happily added that her own late husband had been a contract stud, arranged for when she was a small filly, and whom had grown to love dearly, and had missed every day since his passing.

With the growth of earth pony settlements and fewer roving caravans the stud contract had taken a different use. They’d become a traditional option of sorts. Larger communities meant more ponies to possibly pair with and no real need for the traditional contracts. Still, traditions were sort of that, traditional, and families often negotiated the contracts as an in-case-of option.

That’s what Diamond’s contract had been, a tradition made standby. The terms that had been finalized provided an escape clause that allowed the couple to separate after two foals, one per family, had been born. McIntosh had dropped the maintenance annuity by half in compensation, which actually put a bigger strain on the big red pony, but it was his choice.

The contract also included placing Diamond and the foals under his care until the chosen foal reached majority. Then there was still the option of clause thirteen: that by mutual agreement of the sire and dam the contract be laid aside in full union.

Silken Sash sighed. She and Rich had always talked about one day being able to walk their daughter down the aisle and watch her exchange vows of love and hope with the colt of her dreams. She stopped and looked at a picture hanging on the wall, her wedding picture. It was a small group shot of her, her husband, and the young colt who was Rich’s blanket bearer that day, a little gangly red colt that was now about to become the father of her grandfoals.

Diamond Tiara had dashed her parents’ hopes for a romantic wedding when she’d not once, but twice gotten involved in interpersonal manipulations during two separate executive apprenticeships with colleagues of Filthy’s. She’d gotten caught red-hoofed both times. The legal reparations had totaled over 35,000 bits - a significant part of two quarters revenue for Barnyard Bargains - and sullied Diamond’s name in the process.

Thankfully, Silken found, her daughter had not been sexually compromised despite some of the implications of the machinations. Diamond Tiara was a virgin still, though innocent might not be strictly applicable.

In any case, Silken had to agree with her husband, Diamond Tiara was a total liability to the financial well being of the family and its business legacy. Fortunately for Sweet Apple Acres, its collective nature allowed no access to power beyond what she might be granted when required, and Silken knew from her husband that McIntosh kept a tight reign on the farm’s finances.

Linens across her back, Silken trotted down the stairs to the main foyer of the house. Reaching the bottom she spotted her husband in the study with McIntosh.

“Filthy Rich,” she let her Kenbucky aristocratic upbringing come to the fore, “what in Celestia’s name are you and McIntosh doing here? I thought you were going to go fishing with Magnum? The girls will be here soon and you need to be out of here!”

“Well boy,” Filthy said turning to Mac, “I believe we’ve been given our first and final warning on that. Guess we should be heeding it, hmm?”

“Eeyup,” the scarlet stallion nodded his concurrence.

“Good,” Silken breathed, not abating her ire until compliance was had, and the stallions were out of the house.

“Not before I give my little filly one last kiss though.” Filthy grinned as Diamond Tiara slipped up next to her mother.

Silken hadn’t heard Diamond even come down the stairs, but she was there and stretched out her head towards her sire to receive a kiss on each of her cheeks. Diamond then tilted her head, politely offering her left cheek only to McIntosh, who chastely gave it a light peck.

“Good gracious,” A new voice cut in with a gasp, “no, no, No!”

It was Rarity, the town’s resident couturista and society mare entering from the direction of the rear patio.

“Diamond Tiara dear, you simply cannot wear something like that.”

Silken could see that the white with ever-so-subtle silver undertones unicorn mare was speaking of Diamond’s choice of dress saddle, with its short flanchard pleats on the sides and long croupier skirt. The short lace veil under Diamond’s trademark tiara was a nice touch as were the long fore-stockings she wore.

“You need something higher off the dock and we still have to braid the upper part of your tail. Quickly, upstairs my dear, your guests will be arriving soon and you must look magnifique!” the unicorn mare injected her presence between Diamond and the two males as she spoke.

“And you two,” the amethyst maned mare swung her attention to the stallions, “I’m sure my father is waiting by the bait shop for you. This is no place for stallions right now. So off with you.”

The haughty unicorn telekinetically opened the front to allow the chastised pair to vacate before closing with a slam behind them.

* * * * *

Her Royal Highness Princess Twilight Sparkle trotted along in the sunshine on her way across Ponyville. The weather captain had been good enough to keep the clouds to a minimum and the breeze to a pleasant almost coy tease, perfect weather for a garden party.

The young mulberry-purple alicorn gave an involuntary shake under her dress. Over time she’d become more at ease with her royal regalia. Her crown was no longer so much a burden itself as just a physical representation of the true responsibilities she’d come to accept that, unlike the crown, could not be laid aside at the end of a day.

The dress was a Carousel Couture original, short enough for light duty, such as a garden party, but with enough presence to accentuate Twilight’s heightened stature, both socially and physically. The young mare now stood not quite as tall as her pegasister-in-law, Cadence, but she still held almost a hoof at the withers on her closest friends.

“… then there is the Crystal Fair at the end of the month. The Prince and Princess would very much like you to attend, along with Princesses Celestia and Luna, as it would be the first opportunity for all five* princesses to be present for a portrait. Then there is the matter of your parents' attendance …”

“Silver,” Twilight spoke with a calming serenity that was modeled on her beloved teacher, Celestia. It still required some work at times, but for now it served to break the silver-grey near-mare-grown filly that was trotting along beside her from her monologue, which had been a near non-stop running agenda that had begun last night with Silver Spoon’s arrival from the train station. “Your best friend is having her bridal shower this afternoon and you haven’t ceased talking about the Crystal Empire’s upcoming social schedule since breakfast. You’ve been up in the Crystal Empire for a full moon’s turn, aren’t you even the slightest bit happy for Diamond Tiara, or at least want to see her?”

The silver maned pony dressed in complimenting darker grey business collar and turquoise beads that matched the frames of her glasses didn’t miss a step, as she pushed those self same glasses back up the bridge of her muzzle slightly before addressing Twilight.

“Your highness, …”

Twilight cut Silver off with a raised wing. “How many times have I told you that we can dispense with the formalities Silver?”

“Including this instance, ninety-seven, your highness. However, I must point out that you are attending an event for which a formal invitation was issued, and therefore are attending in a formal capacity, and protocol should be observed. Also it is a maiden fete, your highness, not a bridal shower, there is a difference.”

“There is?” Twilight cocked her head at Silver Spoon’s revelation. Normally, Twilight would have poured through her books on earth-pony traditions after receiving the invitation, but her royal itinerary had not permitted her the time to do more than cover the little regarding her upcoming role in the ceremony tomorrow, which was thankfully rather small, if central.

“Yes, your highness, there is.” Silver Spoon shifted up her posture as she prepared to brief Twilight on the differences between the two types of events.

It was Silver’s near eidetic memory, love of history, and implacable attention to detail and protocol that had convinced Twilight to accept the young pony into a diplomatic apprenticeship. Silver had been exemplary in her attentions to duty, very much reminding Twilight of another young pony several years ago.

“Hi There!”

Twilight reared back wings flaring in surprise as Pinkie Pie burst into her field of view from nowhere, or maybe she just hadn’t been paying enough attention to the fact that Silver Spoon and herself had arrived at the home of Diamond Tiara’s parents.

“May I ask for your invitation?” The pink party pony was dressed in a tuxedo vest with her normally poufy mane somehow combed nearly straight, ending in a heavy rolled curl that hung to one side just above withers height. Also, Pinkie was missing the disturbed look in her eyes associated with her straight-haired self, as she addressed Twilight and Silver Spoon.

“Pinkie, it’s me Twilight.”

“Hmm,” the pink pony withdrew a list from her vest pocket and gave it a once over, “nope, no Twilight on the list …”

“Ahem,” Silver Spoon spoke up, “Her Royal Highness Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

“Oh, of course your majesty, we cannot be too careful with royalty such as your self in attendance.”

Twilight rolled her eyes in a very un-royal manner. There were times she would swear on her grandmother’s horn that Silver Spoon enlisted Pinkie Pie’s assistance to stage these instances, just to try to test her ‘royal composure’.

Pinkie pie stepped aside and allowed the pair to enter the stately back gardens of the Rich residence. Only to moments later hear the blare of a crystal flugel horn.

“Announcing Her Royal Highness Princess Twilight Sparkle, Element of Harmony, OC**” Pinkie Pie called out from behind her. The gathered ponies in the garden bowed to Twilight, who had to repress the urge to facehoof. Instead she beckoned the gathered mares and fillies to continue as they were with a wave of a gold clad hoof, as she trotted off to locate her other friends and a cup of aged apple cider.

“Your Highness,” Silver Spoon’s voice drew Twilight to a stop.

“Silver Spoon, do you remember what I told you after your first month under my direction? After you’d stayed up nearly every night studying all the royal histories, protocols and diplomatic briefs you could lay your hooves on?”

“Yes, your Highness.”

“And that was …?” Twilight looked at the burgeoning young mare beside her, a stern compassion in her demeanor.

“Silver Spoon, you really must quit reading those dusty old books and make some friends.” Silver replied confidently.

“Exactly, my little pony, now I need to speak to some ponies about tomorrow, and you have a good friend who is having a very special day now, and you should go and be with her and wish her well.”

My little pony, … thought Twilight as Silver Spoon headed off to greet Diamond Tiara who was sitting among of a group of other young fillies and mares on the grass under a large shady tree, when did I start saying stuff like that?

* * * * *

TMI. TMI. TMI.

Apple Bloom stepped out of the kitchen of the Rich home; her head was swimming from the conversation that she had gotten trapped in the middle of as she looked over the garden. There were easily forty or fifty ponies present about the garden green, all mares and some older fillies. Given that it was a maiden fete, younger fillies were not present, due to the nature of the event.

The strawberry maned, olive-blonde pony had been talking alone with her sister Applejack about what was to come later on when Twilight had arrived. Applejack had insisted on giving the purple princess a peek at the post ceremony cake. From the look on Twilight’s face it was obvious that the young alicorn had not expected the apple-jelly-roll-cake to look quite like it had. That was to say, the cake, which was comprised of a line of apple-jelly rolls laid end-to-end and covered in cherry glaze icing, had been made to look like a stallion’s colt-hood.

Applejack had been quite proud of her efforts. The cake even included a heart shaped banana-nut loaf at the base end that was made up to look like, well, the stallions nut-sack. And that’s when Twilight, the Princess-Royale de Naiveté, had asked the question that had started the conversation.

“Ah, Applejack, why is the cake shaped like a penis?”

Well one thing had lead to another and soon the discussion had somehow managed to include the presence of Rarity and Rainbow Dash, in addition to Applejack and Twilight, with Apple Bloom trapped in the middle of the kitchen with them. In the ensuing fifteen-or-so minutes Twilight had learned what an earth pony maiden fete was, as opposed to a bridal shower, and why the event was sometimes referred to as a ‘cherry pop party’.

The rest of the conversation had entailed the four older mares exchanging their views on the subjects of sex, stud contracts, and unicorn arranged marriages, which Twilight referred to as ‘sworn betrothals’, and had stated she was glad her parents had never involved her in one. Apple Bloom had also come into the knowledge that unicorns traditionally prized virginity, and that on the wedding night the stallion used his horn to break the mare’s maiden-head, as it was thought to bind his magic to her by the blood.

Rainbow Dash had added to the discussion, stating that while pegasi ponies were not concerned with virginity, and often enjoyed their sexual openness, a pegasi marriage was special. It was a contract signed in ink mixed from the pair’s blood, and the quills used were feathers plucked from the other’s wing at the moment of signing. The vows so sworn were considered to be binding beyond death.

Apple Bloom sucked in a deep breath like her brother had taught her to help calm her nervousness as she glanced at the garden sundial. The time of the ceremony was nearly upon them and Apple Bloom was a nervous as a worm in an apple on cider making day.

A chuckle from a nearby divan drew her attention as she stepped from the laid stone of the raised patio onto the grass of the garden proper. Granny Smith and Diamond Tiara’s mother, Silken Sash, were sitting in the shade of a bank of cedars looking at one of Granny’s photo albums.

“Oh, look at this one,” Silken quietly exclaimed as one picture caught her attention, “McIntosh looks so cute sitting there in the basket sucking his back hoof.”

Apple Bloom knew instantly the picture Diamond Tiara’s mother was likely looking at. It was one of her brother as a skinny little foal only a few months old sitting inside a bushel basket on its side, apparently sucking on his back hoof. McIntosh was eternally embarrassed about that picture for good reason.

“Look again Silky,” the old Apple matriarch chortled mirthfully as if anticipating the punch line to a favorite joke.

“Oh?” Silken puzzled softly, then her voice lifted in surprise as the younger mare blushed heavily as she realized what she was looking at, “oh, … OH!”

Apple Bloom knew the joke as Granny Smith chuckled merrily.

“And those ain’t no pair of red galas ‘twix his hind quarters neither.” The old green farm mare guffawed proudly, patting Diamond’s mother on the withers as the society mare stared wide-eyed and blushing at the photo.

Better hope Diamond Tiara doesn’t see that picture before tomorrow night, Apple Bloom thought to herself.

“Hey there Half-pint,” the matriarch caught sight of her granddaughter, “y’r sister jus’ ‘bout finished? It’s getting’ on time f’r the main event here, an’ then we c’n get this party started.”

Apple Bloom swallowed hard as she nodded to the affirmative.

“Did somepony say party?” Pinkie Pie popped out excitedly from between of the cedars, before looking at the open photo album, “and why is Big Mac sitting in a basket with his pmmph …”

Silken Sash cut off the energetic pony’s sentence with a hoof abruptly placed in the pink pony’s mouth, before getting up and addressing the other three ponies present. “I’ll let Diamond Tiara know. Hard to believe it’s been three weeks already, seems like we just set the contract yesterday.”

Apple Bloom watched as Silken Sash walked with a summoned poise to an open area near the middle of the garden.

“Mares and fillies,” the lavender mare addressed the whole of the gathering as Apple Bloom noticed her sister and her friends trotting out from the house, “it is my pleasure to welcome you all here to celebrate my daughter’s upcoming union with our very close friends the Apple Family by their son, Big McIntosh.”

There was a round of polite applause at the announcement.

“But first,” Silken continued, “in the traditions laid out by our dams before us, we must first remove the final barrier to this relationship. Diamond would you join me please.”

Apple Bloom watched as Diamond Tiara detached herself from a knot of other ponies that included Silver Spoon, Twist, and Fluttershy, and walked up to where her mother stood. The pink pony wore a small dress saddle with long flanchards that tied off under her barrel, and a long croupier skirt, with long white forestockings.

At the same time Rarity and Applejack moved to join them. Rarity laid out a folded white cloth on the ground as Silken directed Diamond Tiara to stand over it. Applejack then placed a white wrapped package on the grass behind Diamond and stepped back.

Rarity and Silken next proceeded to remove the long over-skirt from Diamond’s dress saddle revealing a short dock length ruffle that left Diamond’s flanks and hind bare. Diamond’s tail had been braided from the base to about a third of the way down and secured with a light blue ribbon matching the pink pony’s eyes. A pair of narrow lacy underpants, which were not retained for long, completed the ensemble.

Apple Bloom recognized the style of garment as emulating something Sweetie Belle had shown her from one of Rarity’s fashion magazines. It was something called a ‘baby doll’ or a ‘teddy’, Apple Bloom couldn’t recall which, and considering the way her stomach was turning, it didn’t matter.

“Now,” Applejack’s voice announced, “it is traditional that the dam of the stud-to-be perform the next part of the rite, however since my mother, Orange Bloom, is at rest with my Pa in Elysium, that privilege would normally fall to me. But I’ve chosen not to, and instead allow my mother’s namesake to take up our mother’s duty.”

Apple Bloom moved forward, her stomach twisted and her heart seemed to stop as she did. Rarity and Silken Sash finished positioning Diamond Tiara over the folded white sheet, one rear hoof on each end of the narrow folded fabric in a comfortable straddle. The two older mares then sandwiched the younger, flank-to-shoulder as Applejack unwrapped the parcel on the ground.

It was called a ‘maiden key’, it was a polished, wax sealed, peg of apple-wood about two and-a-half hoof-widths long with a flattened T-handle at one end and a knob on the other shaped like a large egg. Applejack had taken her into the kitchen slightly before Twilight had arrived, shown her the ‘key’ and told Apple Bloom that she was going to let her ‘do the honours’ for Diamond Tiara.

It was only three weeks ago that Filthy Rich had brought the stud contract to Sweet Apple Acres to see if Big Mac would endorse the agreement. Now Apple Bloom was about to pop Diamond Tiara’s cherry so it would be easier for her brother to get Diamond with foal, as the old tradition held.

Applejack smiled warmly at her as Apple Bloom reached down to grip the key by the top of the ‘T’ as Silken Sash gripped her daughter’s tail near the end of the braid and drew it aside, baring Diamond’s ‘intimate gate’ to Apple Bloom.

Apple Bloom pulled another deep breath in through her nose as she raised the maiden key into position, letting the small tip of the egg-like knob end rest against the plump folds of her long-time rival’s mare-hood. An ocean of emotion nearly drowned Apple Bloom as she stood there in a place her mother should have been. A mother she could barely remember, who had died when Apple Bloom was only a month and-a-half old.

Apple Bloom swallowed and calmed herself, taking another deep breath as she did. A gentle breeze played with her hair-bow, tickling her ear. She willed herself forward, to jam the white apple-wood ‘key’ into Diamond Tiara’s body. She didn’t move. She recollected her self and again tried to make her self move forward to pierce Diamond’s folds and sunder her hymen. The breeze whispered in her ear making it twitch … and she heard a voice in the softness of the breeze.

Apple Bloom laid the maiden key back on the cloth and looked at her sister with teary eyes, “Applejack, I can’t.”

A small gasp went up from the assembled ponies as Apple Bloom sullenly began to walk away. She could see the faces of Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, one uncomprehending, the other sympathetic, both disappointed.

“Perhaps your Highness would care to bless my daughter’s union by opening her maiden vault?”

Apple Bloom barely heard Diamond Tiara’s mother make the offer to Twilight, the murmur of approval from the assembled ponies, nor the round of applause from the princess’s acceptance. Her heart wasn’t in it; it was with the voice she’d heard in her head, a voice she couldn’t remember in real life, her mother’s. The whisper had barely been a syllable but Apple Bloom knew what to do, and she did it.

“What,” Diamond Tiara’s haughty voice cut knifelike into Apple Bloom’s calm, “to scared to be a mare about things. If it were up to me I’d jam you so hard you’d cry like when you were a little Blank Flank.”

That cut it …

Apple Bloom whirled around on Diamond Tiara and marched right up to her accuser’s face as Princess Twilight Sparkle stood behind the snobby young pony and lifted the maiden key in her magic.

“I don’t care what you’d do,” Apple Bloom looked Diamond Tiara right in her crystal blue eyes as she spoke, “after tomorrow your going to be almost like family, and the foals you have with my brother will be. I don’t want to start our relationship as family by hurting you, that’s not what family is supposed to do.”

Apple Bloom saw the flash of pain cross in Diamond Tiara’s eyes, and she would swear she’d heard the soft ‘pop’ as the vestigial membrane had split as the purple alicorn telekinetically shoved the ‘key’ into Diamond Tiara’s tight maiden lock. In a rush of sudden movement Apple Bloom threw her front legs around Diamond Tiara’s neck, covering Diamond’s face into her mane.

“Family isn’t suppose t’ hurt you.” Apple Bloom hugged Diamond Tiara hard, and whispered into the pained pony’s pink ear as Twilight gave the ‘key’ a quarter turn and then pulled it free with a soft popping sound, before holding it high in her magenta magical grip for the other ponies to see, “family is supposed t’ be there to hold you when your hurting.”

Apple Bloom could feel the tears on her neck.

Author's Note

* Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Twilight, and Cadence and Shining Armor's daughter

** OC = Order of Celestia

General note: when breeding a maiden filly or mare it is recommendable to breach the hymen 24 hours prior to having her covered by the stallion. It reduces the discomfort of the mare/filly and is said to improve the chances of conception, as equine blood supposedly has spermicidal characteristics in relation to equine semen.

Don't look at me like that, I told you Diamond Tiara was going to get her cherry popped, I just didn't say how or by whom.

Anyway, next up the handover, the reception, and teasing the stallion.

Endeavour To

Endeavour To

“Ya still ah-live in there?” Applejack’s voice came through the door of the newly refurbished master bedroom of the barn-house at Sweet Apple Acres.

Big McIntosh Apple didn’t reply immediately, he just kept staring at his reflection in the long mirror in the corner for a while longer. It had been a long, dull day yesterday, fishing with Magnum and Uncle Fil’. It had been a longer night once some of his kinfolk had arrived.

“Eeyup,” he finally croaked back.

“It’s almost three,” his sister’s voice replied, “and the ceremony is at four-thirty so ya’d best be getting a move on.”

There was an edge in his sister’s voice, albeit a hidden one, but he’d known Applejack easily long enough to know her mannerisms. The elder of his two younger sisters was headstrong, prideful, and stubborn. He knew from the start she didn’t like this arrangement.

The thought of him bringing the former bully of their baby sister even partly into the family, specifically to sire foals off of under contract, was galling to AJ. She’d just as soon watch Diamond Tiara get run out of town on a rail for what she and Silver Spoon had done over the years to Apple Bloom and her friends. It didn’t matter what it would mean to Uncle Fil’ and Aunt Sil’, not that AJ thought even remotely of Diamond Tiara’s parents in the same light he did.

AJ, Mac knew, could hold a grudge, not that she showed it at times, but she did. Even though Apple Bloom and the others had long gotten over the teasing and harassment that Diamond and Silver had levelled on them, it was Applejack that was still hot under the collar over it all this time later. It hadn’t made getting Diamond settled any easier, that was for certain.

Apple Bloom, on the other hoof, had been initially pretty low on the idea too, but had warmed to it once she had had some time to think on it. He remembered finding her sitting in the family grove one evening staring at their parents’ graves. The young pony had been obviously crying, wet stains running down her muzzle as she had turned her head up at the sound of his approach.

“Big brother,” she’d started out, “I don’t like this contract y’r getting involved in with Diamond Tiara’s family. I don’t understand it.” She’d looked back to the graves of their parents for a second before continuing. “But I know it’s something that Ma ‘n’ Pa wanted an’ all …”

Apple Bloom’s face showed she was about to break as her lower lip quivered, but she forced the words out.

“I… I… never really knew Ma ‘n’ Pa,” the little red maned olive-blond pony sniffled a moment, “but if I can help give them this last wish, I will.”

At that point she’d finally lost it and Mac had pulled his little sister to him and let her cry herself out against his chest.

In some ways Apple Bloom was less a sister, and more a daughter to him. He’d had no small part in raising her. He’d worked hard to put food in her belly, see that she did her homework. Sure, she was close to AJ, and sisters should be. There were things about life best leaned from another mare after all. Still, AB’s approval and cooperation meant the world to him on this.

The stud contract meant a lot to him too, for his parents’ memory and for the family’s legacy, both families. AJ had no inclinations to get hitched anytime soon. She was married to the farm like he was, despite her participation in far more diverse array of social venues like rodeo competitions.

Apple Bloom hadn’t even been born yet when that last contract was originally negotiated. Granny Smith had told him that the contract with Diamond Tiara was originally made hoping Apple Bloom would have been a colt, that the two might grow up as friends and then let nature take its course. AB had been right shocked when he’d told her about that part a day or so after the whole deal had been finalized. In the end, though, the both of them had had a right good laugh over it.

Of course in the end Apple Bloom and the Cutie Mark Crusaders, all eight* in Ponyville, had gotten together and had the renovations completed on the family’s home in record time it seemed. They’d also adapted one of the farm’s out buildings for use as a Breeding Shed, or as it was more commonly known a ‘Love Shack’ for him and Diamond to use that first night. Apple Bloom and the CMC volunteers had been really proud of their work. Particularly when one little colt by the name of Rip Saw had gotten his cutie mark as a result.

AJ, though, had been saddled with the task of showing Diamond the ropes around the farm, as it were. Mostly that entailed Diamond helping out AJ at the market stand and helping Granny with housework while moving some of her belongings in.

While Diamond’s cooking skills were not that far above Sweetie Belle’s, market sales were showing gains. AJ, though, took every opportunity she had to get Diamond to buckle on a harness and haul, pull, and carry, much to the prissy pink pony’s dislike. Not that Mac minded. Diamond had always been a rather soft pony for the most part, but three weeks under AJ’s supervision had caused the younger pony no small amount of grief and had only cost her a little dignity, and a little more unneeded body fat. Diamond’s muscle tone was also showing improvement, her flanks especially, after AJ had her hauling the market cart back to the farm each time, her coat running in sweat from the load.

Shut up down there. Mac directed his thoughts to a twitch from below that drew his attention. You don’t even have a real brain in that head, so you don’t get a vote on the matter. And don’t you dare come out before you’re needed later. The teasing is gonna be hard enough without you vying for attention.

As young ‘John Thomas’ retreated from his scolding, Mac reached up and plucked a brushed black Stetson from a nearby dresser. Placing it atop his head, over his dark orange mane, he looked back at the pony that looked out from the mirror. It looked like the pony was going to a funeral.

Actually, the last time he’d worn his father’s good Stetson was at a funeral.

That funeral.

* * * * *

The scroll contorted itself as it floated in Twilight’s magenta magical grasp. With an audible pop the rolled parchment with its bright pink, six-pointed star embossed seal collapsed upon itself, displaced through time and space to its intended receiver.

She missed Spike. It had been strange not having her constant companion around since she had put him to sleep earlier in the spring. Having learned the scroll sending spell that Cadence, Celestia, and Luna all used to dispatch their own scrolls made things a little easier. She cast a glance from where she sat on her balcony on the upper most tier of Ponyville’s Town Hall towards her former residence of the Golden Oaks Library.

A thin streamer of dark grey smoke trailed lazily from the library chimney indicating her number one assistant was still happily snoring away. Twilight still used the living quarters of the library as a personal retreat, though her main residence was now the suite of rooms that had been renovated from the disused upper most floor of Town Hall. “Far more suitable for a princess,” Rarity had stated when the decision had been made for Twilight to relocate.

Twilight hated to admit it but it was true, the royal apartment renovation had been a breathtaking success. Between Rarity’s flair for all things extravagant and Apple Bloom’s boundless creativity, the project had been a marvellous accomplishment. Still, it would feel more like home once Spike awoke from his first draconic hibernation in the fall.

It was as Twilight was contemplating just how much Spike might grow during his hibernation that a knock on the door of her receiving room / solar drew her attention from her absent companion.

“Your Highness?” Silver Spoon’s voice emanated from the other side.

Twilight reached across the room with her thoughts and opened the door to let the silver-grey earth pony enter.

“What is this now, Silver, ninety-nine times I’ve had to remind you about when to drop protocol and just call me Twilight?” the soft mulberry-purple alicorn gently chided her young diplomatic aide.

“Actually, it would be ninety-eight, your Highness, if this counted,” the younger pony replied with dignified formality, “but, as it is after three o’clock, that puts you, according to your own personally written schedule, on official duty for the Rich-Apple handover ceremony until the end of the reception later tonight. Consequently, protocol is in full effect, your Highness.”

“Very well, Silver,” Twilight smiled as, with a whisk of thought, she replaced her writing supplies on the writing desk of the solar and sent the books she’d been reading back to their spaces on the bookshelves before entering the room herself and closing the balcony doors behind her. As the pair set about prepping Twilight for her role officiating the handover ceremony for the stud contract, Twilight took a moment to reflect on the situation.

It was nominally tradition that the mayor of the settlement where the exchange was taking place would officiate, or the caravan elders if the exchange took place away from a settled area. In Ponyville it would therefore normally be Mayor Mare who would preside over the handover. As a favour to the Apple family, Twilight, herself being an ‘honorary Apple’ like the rest of her six closest friends, had agreed to preside over the ceremony.

It was odd to think she’d agreed to officiate at the handover ceremony, but had ended up performing the hymen splitting with the ‘maiden key’ at Diamond Tiara’s maiden fete yesterday as well. It was originally to have been done by Applejack, but she had passed the opportunity to Apple Bloom, who in the end had been unwilling to do it.

Twilight had been concerned for having possibly hurt Diamond Tiara in performing the ‘key rite’, but within moments of having the deed done Diamond had been back to her normal self, claiming the remnants of tears were from Apple Bloom having choked her during the impromptu hug.

After Diamond had been cleaned up in back, and her skirt and panties put back in place, the festivities had taken an upswing. Laughter at lewd jokes regarding sex, stallions, and foals had made some of the more conservative mares blush, Twilight included. Diamond Tiara had made a point to note that she was, as a newly made mare, being permitted the ‘adult’ cider thereafter.

Even more hilarious had been when the cake had been brought out. Silken Sash had covered her daughter’s eyes while the cake was brought out and placed before Diamond, business end first. Diamond’s reaction when she had opened her eyes had, according to several witnesses, been more dramatic than her ‘unlocking’. The pink pony of the hour’s eyes had popped wide and she had fallen over backwards at the revelation of the big pink frosted cock-cake pointing at her snout.

“There,” Silver Spoon sighed with satisfaction, bringing Twilight’s mind back to the present as she made a final adjustment to the alicorn’s regalia. There really wasn’t much to it, her crown and hoof guards were the majority of it. Twilight wasn’t ranked up highly enough to warrant a metal peytral like Celestia, Luna, or Cadence, but Rarity had fashioned a lovely cloth alternative from gold silk that even the oft distant Princess Luna had to admit looked fetching on the young princess without breaching decorum.

With fifteen minutes to go Twilight made her way down to the main audience chamber of town hall, led by Silver Spoon.

“Announcing Her Royal Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Element of Harmony, OC,” Silver Spoon called out in her high formal voice, the assembled townsfolk bowing as Twilight approached the ceremonial dais and installed herself on the mayoral seat behind the low podium for the ceremony.

From the high seat Twilight looked over the gathered crowd of mostly family with a goodly number of friends of both sides. It was no Summer Sun Celebration or Apple family reunion, but it was a sizable gathering. In the back of her mind Twilight wondered how many were really here to see Diamond Tiara get publicly cut down to size after so long, considering the atmosphere was more akin to a criminal sentencing than a wedding ceremony, she felt it was likely to be plenty.

Big McIntosh stood near the base of the dais looking quite different from how he normally went about town. Gone was the heavy harness collar, and in its place the big red farm pony wore a dark grey denim vest and black duster. On his head was a black Stetson, much like what Applejack wore. Though unlike his sister’s, Mac’s bore a hatband of green enamelled, polished brass leaves with a large, red enamelled apple centre front, complementing the green one on the bolo tie around his neck.

The doors at the end of the hall opened and the crowd turned to look as Diamond Tiara entered. She was lead up the aisle by her parents and a surprising clatter of approving hooves, her head held high and aloof, on a white lead rope attached to a Rarity designed lace bridle. Diamond’s trademark tiara was atop her lavender and frost mane and her tail had been tied in a ‘keyhole loop’. A white cloth was tied at the fetlock of her left foreleg, stained with her maiden blood from the day before indicating her ‘preparation’. Beyond that her body was covered in a stable blanket showing the Rich family colours of navy blue money signs on a burnt cream base.

From the mayoral seat Twilight flared her wings and commenced the ceremony, addressing Diamond Tiara’s parents.

“My little ponies,” something in the back of Twilight’s mind cringed as she addressed ponies almost old enough to be her parents like that. It just felt odd to her as she continued, “Do you hereby affirm that this pony is your daughter, Diamond Dazzle Tiara, by Filthy Rich out of Silken Sash, promised in contract to Big McIntosh Apple, by Apple Ridge out of Orange Bloom, to here after be delivered of two foals by her stud before the terms of the contract are fulfilled?”

A hushed gasp drifted through the room at he mention of two foals being contracted of the soon to be dam.

“Yes, she is.” Diamond’s parents echoed each other.

“You may present the lead.” Twilight nodded as Filthy Rich stepped forward to place the lead across the podium while Silken Sash removed the stable blanket from her daughter. Beneath the blanket Diamond Tiara wore a simple, powder blue dress saddle of a rather plain cut and style, but expertly fitted by Rarity for the occasion.

For the next few seconds Diamond Tiara was a ward of the Crown, a pony without family. Twilight had read in the old days it was looked on differently as it was usually the stud who was often changing families not the mare. Over the intervening generations the contract had been adapted as the needs required.

“Do you,” Twilight turned her attentions to Big Mac, “Big McIntosh Apple, accept this pony into your home, your life, and your bed, to care for and protect as per the terms agreed?”

“I do.”

The scarlet stallion’s response brought another murmur as some ponies reacted to Big Mac saying something other than ‘eeyup’ or ‘nnope’ for what seemed like the first time.

“You may take the lead.”

As Mac stepped forward to claim the lead, Diamond shot a discreet look of resentment at Twilight that the Princess noted as a pale façade for Diamond to hide her uneasiness behind.

A number of other reactions in the crowd were noted by the young alicorn. Filthy Rich looked stoic and pleased, while Silken Sash looked ready to dissolve into tears. In the front row of the gathered ponies, Granny Smith and Apple Bloom were sniffing back tears of joy while Applejack hid behind a wary smile, though something in her eyes told Twilight that her friend was honestly ready to start chewing nails out of wolfram.

The white rope between his teeth, Mac lead a frostily composed, reluctant Diamond down the aisle until …

“A moment please, my little ponies,” Twilight’s voice brought the pair to a halt as she stretched out her thoughts and took the lead from McIntosh, who gave it up with no small amount of reluctance but not a word said.

In her mental grasp, Twilight looped the lead around Mac’s broad neck, forcing Diamond to draw up along side him. Then, pinching a section of the line, Twilight tied off the lead between the pair in a bow.

“There, much better.” Twilight smiled as she released her magical grip on the lead allowing the two ponies, now almost shoulder-to-shoulder, to resume their recessional down the aisle to the approval and stomping hooves of the assembled herd.

* * * * *

The grand hootenanny that was roaring along at Sweet Apple Acres was in full swing. Bonfires crackled merrily, the smell of both fresh and fortified cider was in the air, and food was in abundance with the approaching summer harvest parade. Ponies were eating, drinking, dancing, and generally celebrating a milestone event in the lives of two of their fellow villagers.

It wasn’t a real romantic wedding reception like Twilight’s brother’s was in Canterlot. Of course, there also wasn’t a secret changeling plot to conquer Equestria afoot here either, so that was good too.

It had taken Pinkamena Diane ‘Pinkie’ Pie a full three weeks to get this all set up in among four birthdays, a ‘Congratulations on Your Promotion Rainbow Dash’ party, a cute-ceanera, and a baby shower for Sassaflash. It wasn’t easy with all the Sad Sallys, Sour Sues, and Grindy McGears that had been involved with this party either.

It was hard at times being everypony’s friend. There had been sooooo many ruffled feathers that needed to be smoothed out in order to get here. Which was even harder because not a single one of the ponies who needed their feathers unruffled over this event was a pegasus. Did that make a difference?

It certainly hadn’t made it any easier, that was for sure.

Mr. and Mrs. Rich had sort of been the easy part. Contrary to what some ponies thought of Pinkie’s modus operandi, she usually started with the easy things first. After all, that left more time for dealing with the harder things. Things like a young pony who was ready to chew diamonds out of charcoal just as soon as talk to her parents.

While Diamond Tiara and her parents had already agreed to the contract, the resulting rift that had opened up between them and Diamond was a total downer. While her parents saw the contract as tough love, Diamond had seen it as a betrayal.

That’s when Pinkie had suggested that instead of just having the whole thing over and done with, quick as a bunny, why not to go all out? After all, Diamond Tiara loved being the centre of attention, and what a better way to show their appreciation for Diamond’s cooperation than to have a whole big party with Diamond Tiara at the centre of it. Even if it was a marriage of convenience, and one that almost every pony thought was destined to fail at the end, it was still a marriage, and that meant it was a wedding, and that meant it needed … a Party!

For Pinkie, a party was an extension of life itself, even if it was only a party of one. You always took what you were given, and celebrated the best of it to remind yourself that you could always make things better if you tried.

Pinkie had tried that line of approach, among others, on Diamond Tiara. Being friends with everypony meant knowing a little something of what made each pony tick. When it came to Diamond Tiara, it was to be in control, and the centre of attention. As far as Pinkie knew, Diamond largely regarded this whole contract as a loss of control and social suicide.

It only made the party planner shake her fuzzy, raspberry-pink maned head that Diamond Tiara couldn’t see her own hoof work in all this. Social suicide, that was getting caught by the boss’s husband while ‘kissing the boss’s plot’ in a far more literal sense than most business ponies would view as acceptable. Then later to be discovered equally literally developing one’s ‘oral persuasion’ skills while trying to undermine your supervisor.

As a friend, Pinkie had tried to point out Diamond’s good parts to her, that she was bright, socially adept pony, and an excellent organizer, all of which were probably very attractive to a strong, smart, but very shy stallion like Big Mac.

Still, with every thing she had been able to do, she had only managed to upgrade Diamond Tiara’s mood from sour to semi-sweet. It was really hard to help a pony see the upsides to a situation when they were determined to see the bad, but at least Diamond was talking to her parents again.

The pink party pony tipped her head back and emptied another bag of Pop Rocks into herself.

Mmmm, sugar. Pinkie could feel the sacred substance flowing through her, restoring her energy.

“Greetings to you, Hello and Hi, on this fine night, my friend Pinkie Pie.”

“Oh, Hi-ya Zecora!” Pinkie beamed as the Zebra shaman approached, “How are you doing? Having fun?”

“Of food and friends, I am among the best, it is an honour here to be a guest.”

Pinkie smiled at the complement. It was amazing to think that she’d once thought her Zebra friend was an ‘evil enchantress’.

“Friend Pinkie, might I inquire of you about that shed, to where young Diamond Tiara is being now lead?” The striped mare asked, directing a hoof to where Diamond Tiara was being escorted from the gathering by a small cluster of mares including her mother, Applejack,and a few others.

“Oh, they’re just taking her there to get her ready for the covering,” Pinkie cheerfully explained to her friend. “After all, there’s been a wedding, so next comes the bedding.”

“So within that shed will they do the deed, join their flesh to plant life’s seed?”

“I guess you could put it that way,” Pinkie mused as she downed a mug of spiced cider before casting a glance about for a particular crock that contained gummy fruits, apples and cherries mostly, with a few worms mixed in for humour. They’d been marinating in Tarpan Vodka from Stalliongrad since yesterday. Didn’t need any unwanted colt’s or fillies finding those…

“So if within the shed they are to mate, why does Big Mac seem to dread his fate?”

Pinkie Looked to where another knot of mares and a few stallions had begun to gather around a very nervous looking Big Mac.

“Oh, they’re getting him ready for the teasing.”

“Of what do you speak, this thing called ‘teasing’? To Big Mac it would seem not to be pleasing.” Zecora melodically observed.

“It’s an old earth pony tradition to get the lucky colt all hot and bothered for the waiting mare,” Pinkie explained before pausing to practically inhale an apple fritter.

Mmm, gooey sweet, the pink pony smiled as she felt the warmth of the fresh fritter slide into her belly, and from there then spread out inside her. Sooo erotic.

Big Mac seemed to find the whole teasing far less so. His long duster had already been discarded earlier in the evening, and now Braeburn and his cousin Bushel were holding him in place, one on each side, in the middle of a circle of mares as the normally timid Fluttershy stalked up to the big red farm pony.

It was obvious to Pinkie that Fluttershy was calling on her experience as a fashion model to hold her shyness in check as she proceeded to unbutton Mac’s vest with her teeth. The vest, once opened, was quickly stripped from the reluctant stallion as Fluttershy made a sensual about face before him, and gave Mac a brush across the face with her tail.

The process of approach, flirt, and withdraw was repeated by several more mares. Cheerilee had followed Fluttershy, pressing herself right up against her one time beau, dragging her mane across his muzzle as she reached up and plucked the black Stetson from his head. Then turned and gave him a long, saucy stroke of her tail before she placed the hat on a different ‘head’ that Mac was desperately trying to hide with his front hooves.

Rarity, in turn, had given his hat a spin on its new perch with her magic. Even Scootaloo, Pinkie noted, had eventually gotten involved. The young pegasus had hovered unsteadily just above Big Mac’s face and given him a thorough muzzle dusting with her tail, … while sucking back a number of shiny, fat, … gummy worms!

Luna’s Sweaty Plot! Pinkie gasped as her brain locked on to the rude display she'd just witnessed. Somehow Scootaloo had gotten into those gummies.

But before she could compute the mental equations to alter physics to allow herself to bounce up and pluck the sauced saucy young pegasus out of the air—whom Pinkie then intended to interrogate as to how she had acquired the alcohol infested invertebrate impostors—the party pony’s infamous ‘Pinkie Sense’ went into ‘watch out for runaway stallion’ alert as Big Mac finally slipped the grip held on him by Braeburn and Bushel, and charged down the assembled gauntlet of mares straight to the only opening he saw, the waiting open door of the ‘Love Shack’.

As the lucky, big red stallion flashed through he privacy curtains that hung inside the door, the gathered crowd congregated around the ‘Love Shack,’ somepony closing the door as the crowd listened in silence for the telltale sounds of …

A sharp yelp of pain that could only be from Diamond Tiara sent the assembled ponies into a chorus of cheers as they reveled in the traditional climax of the night.

While the party gradually wound down in the farmyard several ponies wondered aloud if McIntosh was enjoying the sweetest treat of the night, or suffering the sour truth of his new Apple ‘studded’ Diamond.

Author's Note

* Even after receiving their cutie marks the original three CMC's found themselves mentoring other younger ponies, currently five, as an informal youth organization.

Ah, the breeding notes. Normally teasing is done to mares that are in season to determine their receptiveness to breeding. This is usually done by 'teasing' (introducing in controlled, non-breeding circumstances) them with a stallion (often not the one they are intended to be bred to) and judging their reaction on a scale of 1(unwilling/hostile) to 5 (more than willing/ Rut me now baby!) to determine the mare's willingness/ arousal. Here I decided to reverse the rolls and basically have Mac tempted/taunted by some of the townsmares parading past him in a a 'too bad you didn't pick us' kind of deal.

And of course the teaser for the reader ...
Do I actually need to put one in this time? I'm quite sure you all know where things stand, ... we gotta find out how Scootaloo got the vodka soaked gummy worms right? It's not like I locked Big Mac and Diamond Tiara in an enclosed space ...

Wait I did do that ... didn't I. :rainbowwild:

Beget A Foal.

Beget a Foal

In a society that eschewed clothing for the most part, to feel naked was a rarity. But as she lay atop the cool white sheet, on the final altar of her innocence, within the solitude of the small sparsely furnished shed that earth ponies affectionately called a ‘Love Shack’, Diamond Tiara felt just that: naked.

The altar itself was comprised of three bales of straw that had been stacked, two for the base and one atop in a triangular form. Atop the upper tier the pillows from her old bed had been laid out and the whole covered with a white linen sheet.

The pillows were to cushion her barrel as she lay atop the top riser, a ‘mounting bench’ the two older mares had told her. It was meant to allow Big McIntosh to ‘do his thing’, as her mother had put it, without placing undo weight on Diamond’s hindquarters. She guessed she should be grateful for that, considering McIntosh’s strength, and that he outweighed her by nearly triple.

There were two pegs placed in the lower bales, not to hold her in place, though the older of McIntosh’s sisters had suggested tying Diamond in place. The pegs were to help keep Diamond’s legs spread by allowing her to just rest her gaskins against them while she lay on the top tier.

It was rather quiet inside the small shed, Diamond Tiara had to admit, at least relative to the din of the celebration outside. There hadn’t been a great excess of space inside when she’d been lead into it by her mother, along with McIntosh’s two sisters and Diamond’s closest friend, Silver Spoon.

But they were gone now. They had left after helping Diamond out of her dress, putting it away, and tying her tail into a wrap to ‘keep it out of the way later’. They had lingered long enough after to offer some comforting thoughts, well wishes, and such. Most of it had fallen on deaf ears, as Diamond couldn’t recall much of what was said to her by the others.

All she knew was in a little while Big McIntosh was going to come through the privacy curtains that hung across the doorway, somepony would close the door from the outside, and then she’d be truly rutting bucked.

“Ah really hope mah brother just fucks you bloody tonight, you little pink worm. After all the grief you gave mah sister ‘n’ her friends over the years, there’s a bunch of ponies out there just waiting to hear how sorry you’re gonna be.”

Of all the little nuggets of conversation that had been offered inside the shed, it was that message, replete with its profanity, that Diamond could remember. The young blond maned, orange mare's words had been as sour as the whiff of hard cider on her breath as she whispered them in Diamond’s ear as the others had been exiting the door. The light cast by the glow lamp had given Applejack’s green eyes an almost surreal shimmer of vengefulness as she’d done so before leaving Diamond Tiara alone to await her fate.

Diamond cast a glance around the room again, in the dim light of the glow lamp. The one window opposite the door had the shutters closed and curtains drawn on it for her and McIntosh’s privacy. To the left from the door, there was a pile to one side of the main area. It was straw and fresh cut grass, covered in blankets and pillows and boxed in on three sides by bales of straw. A traditional earth pony love nest of sorts.

Honestly, she always pictured her first time being in one of the upper suites at the Wingdorf Celestia Hotel in Canterlot. Certainly it had not been a ‘Love Shack’ on some sprawling bumpkin farm while ponies outside celebrated her defiling. At the very least it would have been in her own room some night with her parents away, or maybe in the parlour in front of the fireplace bathed in the warmth and glow of a crackling fire.

To the right side a sideboard had been laid out. There was cider, both fresh and aged, apples, pastry treats, and baskets of edible flowers, some dusted with powdered sugar for extra sweetness. She’d nibbled the flowers and sipped some cider to try to ease her nerves. It hadn’t worked.

It wasn’t like in Saddle Arabia, as Silver Spoon had told her following the ‘key ceremony’ yesterday. Apparently there, when a maiden filly was bred, the sheet from the marital bed was hung on display on a clothesline or from a balcony outside the house afterwards.

Silver had also told her that the Saddle Arabians believed that the bigger the bloodstain, the purer the filly, and the greater the honor to the stallion that had covered her. Diamond was glad to know that at least her bloody honors wouldn’t be flown from the farm gate of Sweet Apple Acres for every pony to see. Though the way Applejack had put things, there was no need to see it, as she was hoping to hear it.

The sounds of a ruckus outside meant that the ‘teasing’ was underway. Damned if she knew why some rural ponies still practiced such customs, jeering lewdly at another pony for gratification and encouraging their embarrassment …

Diamond’s mind froze at the truth of her sudden realization and its implication as her head hung limp over the end of the riser causing her tiara to drop to the edge of the sheet below.

The zen of the moment was shattered by a voice on the roof yelling “Yeah, Scootaloo! Swing that thang!” It sounded like Rumble, the younger brother of Ponyville’s weather manager, Thunderlane.

Before she could think further on the matter a rumble of a different sort, accompanied by cheering ponies, began to head her way from beyond the doorway behind her. With a loud whinny and the heavy pounding of hooves, Big McIntosh thundered through the curtains into the shed as the door slammed shut behind him.

For some reason, out of the blue, Diamond Tiara’s mind conjured an image of the last queen of Prance, Marie Antrotnette, laid out before the guillotine. Only Diamond’s executioner wouldn’t be removing her head from her body, but placing another inside her.

* * * * *

Big McIntosh slammed the brakes on hard as he burst through the curtains hanging just inside the door, his eyes adjusting to the dim interior as the door slammed shut behind him.

Horse-apples! The big red pony thought as he shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory of the last few moments, Scootaloo specifically.

The ‘teasing’ had always been his biggest fear when he’d agreed to let Diamond Tiara’s parents go all out for the celebrations. Everything had been going well, he had his cousins Braeburn and Bushel to ‘hold’ him in place while what few clothes he had been wearing were taken off by various mares from among his friends and family.

Once the clothes had been dispensed with, a few mares were just to parade about before him, looking sultry, while trying to get him all hot ‘n’ bothered for Diamond, who would, of course, be ‘waiting’ just beyond the curtains of the ‘Love Shack’. When the time came, he would then have to walk the gauntlet of gathered mares from the spot he was at, through a double-line forest of flicking tails to the door of the shed where he’d finally earn some ‘relief’ in private.

Fluttershy had been nervous when AJ had asked her to lead off the ‘tease’, but the bashful pink maned mare had agreed when she was told she only needed to undo his vest and walk away. She’d embellished a little more in the actual execution than McIntosh had expected, adding a little flank shake and tail flick, but she’d kept it tame, although it probably classed as ‘wild’ by the standards of the yellow pegasus.

Cheerilee had followed Fluttershy. The raspberry-purple earth mare too was a good friend, and had slipped Mac’s hat from one head to the other when she saw him trying to cover up in embarrassment, adding a tail stroke of her own. The marshmallow-white unicorn, Rarity, just had to take the opportunity, it seemed, to flirt just a little harder, using her magic on the relocated Stetson.

Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash were to have been part in the ‘teasing’ too, he expected, along with three or four of his more distant cousins. But then Scootaloo had dropped in, practically dropped her plot on the end of his nose, and started giving him a hard-core tail dusting.

The young pegasus had reeked too, from both ends. Mac could smell the alcohol on her breath as she giggled wildly, slurping back those liquor-laden gummy worms. It was something far more aromatic, however, from her very slick plot that had thrown up the final warning for him. The drunk and randy antics of his baby sister’s pegasus companion had been over Mac’s limit, and he’d bolted for the safety of the breeding shed.

Now inside, his heart was pounding. As his eyes finished adjusting to the interior lighting, not that there was much, a quick glance down found his father’s Stetson was still hanging off its impromptu hook. Mac took a moment to set the brushed black hat aside on a peg by the door before proceeding further.

The bedding was laid out just as he’d asked Apple Bloom, as was the sideboard. He took a step towards the small buffet to the right of the door, meaning to give himself some time to contemplate how he was going to proceed, not to mention get the scent of pegasus filly out of his nose. The scrape of a hoof on the roof above drew his attention to the gathered quiet.

Dang. The big stallion furrowed his brows as his mind connected the fact of the hoof on the roof with the lack of sound bleeding through the walls from the festivities that should have been going on outside. They’re waiting for it. Dang buzzards.

Taking in a heavy breath, he turned from his path to the sideboard to address what many a bated breath outside the shed was holding for. The scent in the shed told him that somepony had already been at the cider, and there was a small hint of something ‘else’ in the air that was starting to come through as he approached his lone companion in the shed.

Diamond Tiara didn’t do anything more than move her wrapped tail aside as she obviously heard his hoof-falls behind her. Mac regarded the pink pony’s situation as she lay draped across the top of the mounting aide. Her head was down, tail off to the side, pegs at her gaskins holding her legs wide, and her forelegs holding ready to brace against the oncoming thrust. A pair of light lace knickers still hung forlornly from her left hind leg at the hock where the limb was still in the leg hole, almost as if trying to look enticing.

It was pathetic.

He stopped just to her left back quarter and placed a hoof on her loin above her croup. She twitched slightly and responded.

“Please, just do it,” Diamond whispered sullenly. She didn’t even lift her eyes to look at him.

Mac shook his head in disappointment and reared back.

* * * * *

Diamond had been counting her heartbeats like a condemned prisoner awaiting her sentence to be carried out, like they were the last seconds of her life.

SMACK!

Diamond yelped in abrupt pain as her right haunch suddenly came alive with a burning sting. She immediately grabbed behind herself, only to end up with her forelegs pinned behind her back by McIntosh’s mass and strength as he draped himself over her. She tried to scream again only to find her muzzle clamped flat to McIntosh’s left fore hoof, stifling her next cry as she twisted her head back to look at him.

“Sshhh!” he hissed in her ear as she struggled futilely under his superior force and position. “I’m sorry.”

As he finished, she could begin to make out the cheers and celebratory catcalls from those now ringing the small wooden structure. It was the sounds of ponies cheering her pain. She was certain Applejack was among them, maybe Apple Bloom, even Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle too. Maybe not Sweetie Belle, the little unicorn songbird never had, as far as Diamond could recall, a fortitude for suffering.

Diamond wondered if even her mother was cheering, half sloshed on apple brandy. She had smelled the liquor on her mother’s breath earlier. Applejack’s breath had been the same. Diamond was sure her father was probably patting himself on the back right at this very moment, congratulating himself on a deal successfully concluded, and more than probably surrounded with several other ponies likewise offering him similar sentiments. The very thought made the pain in her rump sting all the harder while souring her stomach.

And McIntosh. Him, she just quit struggling against and glared at him with all the loathing she could muster, the big dumb brute.

And in response, he did nothing.

Eventually the cheers faded back into the background of general festivities and Diamond felt McIntosh relax his grip on her, his weight lifting as he stepped back. She was still glaring hard at him as she felt her forelegs slip loose.

Smack!

* * * * *

McIntosh turned his head with the hoof-slap, easing the impact. Diamond flopped back down on her belly in resignation atop the mounting podium, fury temporarily spent.

“Eeyup,” Mac commented flatly, “I deserved that.”

He couldn’t see her face, but he noted her surprise as her right fore-hoof she was using to rub the sting from her rump abruptly stopped moving.

“What the … ?” Diamond stammered, obviously caught off guard by his statement before proceeding with a soft sneer, “Aren’t you going to rut me you stupid colt-cuddler, or are there too many holes back there for you to figure out which one it goes in?”

“Nnope,” Mac took a step forward to lean into Diamond’s ear, “I don’t really fancy having an audience listening in for that, even if you do.”

He could see the expression go blank on the younger pony’s face at the implication. It was easy to tell she didn’t want an audience either, as she let her head hang low again, forelegs falling limp to her side.

“Please, just … just get it over with.” Diamond quietly whined, intoning a sense of urgency, but unable to hide the dejection inside herself.

“Nnope,” Mac countered, sighing. He was getting slightly tired of this apparently repetitive conversation. “You just want to be done with it so you can crawl back inside your pretty little ego and wallow in your own pity. So you can tell yourself how poorly treated you’ve been and how you deserve to be treated better. I’m not going to oblige ya.”

“No,” Diamond voice carried a hollow attempt to put conviction in it, “I want you to. To do … it, … please?”

Mac gave a snort as he took in her words; a blind mule playing ‘Longhorn Hold‘em’ could pick that bluff from across the room. Mac knew how to play that game, and he was calling her bluff. The big colt moved back behind the mounting bench Diamond lay atop and reared himself into position, letting his weight drop on her croup, not using his fore-hooves for support on the lower steps.

Diamond flinched and started under him as he settled himself and brought his ‘foal pole’ up to nudge at her proper gate. He could feel the tension in her haunches against his belly, as she tried to hide a thin whine of fear by pressing her muzzle into the draped sheet.

“Nnope,” he pronounced flatly before lowering his head to her ear again, “you’re lying.”

He dismounted her abruptly, not proceeding any further, and quickly turned about and stepped to the sideboard for a cup of cider.

“No, no, please, do it, just do it.” Diamond’s whining picked up its imperative. Mac wasn’t buying in.

“Nnope.”

“Why not?” The ire in her response was clear. “Don’t think my little quim is going to be as tight as your colt-cuddling buddy’s poop-chute?”

“You’re pathetic Diamond,” Mac gave back with a sigh, “I can see now why you got thrown out of your apprenticeships. You got caught playing your little wannabe Machneighavellian power games with your schoolyard foal’s rules and got played by grown ponies who knew how to find your weaknesses. I bet you’ve never even read The Prince have you? Tell me Diamond, why are you here?”

“Because Daddy sold me out to you, so you can fuck me and force foals out of me in exchange for what’s rightfully mine.”

“Nice try. Keep lying to yourself and that manure you’re spewing might just start to taste good.”

Mac took a long pull of cider, it was good; hoof pressed crab-apple with a hint of blackberry, strained, boiled slightly, fermented for three weeks, and frost fractal distilled twice. Not overly strong but just right for tonight, with a slightly bitter note. The big colt smiled, dang he did good work, granddad would be so proud. Pa too.

“Now why are you here? Try the truth this time. I made sure you were fairly given your options that night after dinner at your parents. You knew the options: disown the business, your cousin’s brothel, or the stud contract. You picked up the quill and asked me to sign the contract. Why?”

“I … I …” quavered Diamond, her voice cracking as she struggled to answer.

“The way you just offered yourself to me, maybe the brothel would have been a better choice,” Mac calmly offered the rationalization. “I’m sure your cousin would still take you in.”

“No …” Diamond croaked back in rejection.

“Well, you can slide off that stack of bales and trot on outta here I guess.”

“I … I can’t,” the pink pony sniffled.

“Can’t or won’t?” McIntosh countered, “You aren’t tied down, the door latch works, and it’s not locked.”

“I … can’t.” The young mare broke down finally, soft sobs drifting into the stillness of the shed as Mac indulged in some dried apple and nut mix from one of the wooden bowls on the sideboard.

“You can’t ‘what’ now?” Mac asked as he poured another mug of cider and selected a pair of roses, dusted in powdered sugar, adding them to the bowl of apple-nut mix.

“I’ve practically ignored you for the last three weeks, left you under the direction of my sister, Applejack, who still hates your guts something awful for tormenting Apple Bloom and her friends back then, and yet you’re still here in this little ‘Love Shack’ tonight lying to yourself about why you’re here when you’ve had all this time to choose another path an’ walk away from this. Tell me Di, what can’t you do that made you go through with all this?”

“I …” Diamond faltered as another sob slipped out, “I … can’t lose … I … can’t …”

“I think I know what you mean,” Mac offered empathetically. “Be it your friendship with Silver Spoon, your father’s business, your family, or your social standing, whatever it is it’s what you value most, even more than yourself. Even if you won’t admit it to yourself.”

Mac expertly balanced the bowl and mug on his broad muzzle. It was waayy easier than balancing a 15 hoof tall, four-tiered custom cake on his back halfway across town. He moved in behind the ‘backside’ of the linen covered mounting bench the emotionally drained Diamond lay deflated atop. He placed the bowl on the floor at the base and then moved up along side, making sure to keep his flank close to Diamond as he did. Hooking the mug in a pastern he held it below Diamond’s nose, offering it to the fallen filly.

* * * * *

Diamond sagged atop the pillow padded mounting bench. If she’d felt naked before, just lying atop this white draped altar, hindquarters spread, plot on full display, panties dangling from one hock, she had no words to describe this. Big Mac had made emotional-intellectual filly fillet out of her. She wanted to hate him so badly, but she couldn’t, he’d seen right through her. He’d psychologically pared her to the core and she had no emotional strength left to hate him. She couldn’t feel more rawly naked right now if he’d physically gone and skinned her hide off of her, and now he was offering her cider. Stupid colt, why couldn’t he make sense?

“Why?” she meekly queried the big crimson conundrum disguised as a pony, not even bothering to look up at him.

“You told the truth.”

“I did?” Diamond quipped, accepting a sip of the semi-sour cider. It was good, refreshing really, but like this night it carried a slightly bitter taste to it.

“You did,” he affirmed as Diamond took another sip of the cider, “and you earned some respect for it.”

“How?” Diamond didn’t quite follow, but wasn’t about to deny herself the offered cider.

“You admitted that there is something you care about more than your well being, something you’re willing to suffer through this ‘sham’ as you probably call it to preserve. I think it was power you were trying to hold on to. Whatever little scraps you can cling to, to let you keep your head up, to feel that you're better than others, to make them do what you want. Just like when you blackmailed my sister an’ her friends into keeping up that gossip column for the school paper. You thought this contract would let you keep the most you could, because it would allow you to hold on to that illusion just a little longer. Am I right?”

“Yes.” Diamond felt like she’d been slit open and her innards let hang out as she gave the answer.

“And you know now it was all an illusion; that you lost it all well before your daddy dug that contract out of his desk and asked me if I wanted you.”

“Mm-hmm.” Diamond was losing her will to form words, this stupid farm pony was cleaning her to the bone, and she hated it, hated … the truth of it. She wanted to hate him. Wanted so much to … but couldn’t.

“I bet you're feeling mighty low right now little lady?”

Diamond simply hung her head and nodded as Mac took a big sip from the cider mug before letting her finish the rest. She closed her eyes. She was splayed, skinned, and gutted inside, like some poor condemned victim of a tyrant king having been hung drawn and quartered. The quiet that reigned now extended outside, the festivities having wound down and the guests gone.

“So why do you think I accepted this contract?”

Diamond gave no reply. The simple answer was to fuck her, hurt her, humiliate her, get back at her for all the times she had taunted and tormented his sister and her friends. She knew the answer was wrong.

“Because I saw something in you.” The big pony put the empty cider mug down as he kept up his explanation. “You’re a smart pony, but you made some bad choices. You have real poise, but wrapped yourself in the arrogance from empty dreams.”

Diamond whimpered quietly in affirmation, she was raw to the bone and he was still flensing her further.

“But what I really admire about you is what brought you here, something I wasn’t sure you had.”

What? Diamond’s mind was grasping for straws. Did he just say he admired something about her? Admired what brought her here? What was the daft colt going on about now? He’d stripped her inside more easily than her own drunken mother and Silver had stripped the dress off her earlier.

“You have a will, a resolve, a confidence in you. Even facing your own bad decision that you didn’t want to believe was yours, you stayed a very difficult path. You kept striving for what you wanted, even if it was an illusion. Today, when your parents lead you up the aisle at town hall, you had finally managed to place your poise over that, and even through what arrogance you wrapped yourself in to bolster your self, you were beautiful inside. You knew a lot of those ponies had come to see you shamed, to see you break, and you didn’t break, didn’t give in. That’s why I wanted you, why I do now.”

“You did?” Diamond sniffed back. It was true, the whole time in the town hall she’d wanted to hate them all, her parents, the gawkers, all of them. It had been to hold her poise she’d done it, to hold herself up so they wouldn’t see her falter, see her break like they wanted her to.

And she’d done it, too. She’d held out the whole time. Only when she had finally been left alone with McIntosh, when he had finally set to whittling her down alone in private had she broken, and only because he knew what he was looking for.

“Eeyup.”

“Why?” Diamond asked softly the sorrow abating an odd calm taking hold. “Why not just … rut me … and be done with it?”

“Because my Pa once told me that if I was ever to be lucky enough to find a mare that would have my foals, I needed to give her the utmost care and respect for doing it. Then when your daddy offered you to me, I tried to see the best in you, to see if there was a seed I could work with, something that could grow. I think I was right in what I found.”

Diamond nodded inside, the big lug was right. He had torn her down and found inside her what he’d seen, something that even she had never known because she chose to only see the surface.

“But, I also saw you didn’t have any respect for anypony, and that meant you really didn’t have any respect for yourself. I can’t respect ponies who can’t respect themselves, let alone others. But I wanted to help your Daddy, so I did.”

“And now?” Diamond could feel the cold of sadness creeping back into her, what now?

“And now you’ve learned some, and earned a little respect for doing that, so now you have a choice to make, and I think you know what that is.”

Diamond swallowed, trying to keep what felt like her heart in her chest. She knew what he meant about the choice.

“The contract …” she started.

“Or the door,” Mac finished, “and what you choose is fine by me, so choose what you think you need to do and I’ll respect that decision.”

The door! The DOOR! THE DOOORR! The little mental homunculus of herself with the scarlet goat horns was screaming at her, impaling the bloody corpse of its halo-wearing twin. Fuck’em, Fuck’em all! We’re outta here. We’ll show them, show them all, we’ll come back someday and make them pay for casting us out. We’ll-

Diamond stopped the ranting thought, crushing it with a psychological sixteen-ton weight crafted from her own will. She was done listening to her self-indulgent conscience. She knew it was a lie. To walk out of here meant walking away from everything that mattered. Probably it meant walking straight into her cousin’s brothel and allowing herself to be abused by those that cared only for themselves and their own pleasures, ponies who would cast her aside when they could get nothing more from her.

“I … choose …” she felt herself wavering as she spoke, but she wouldn’t let herself falter. She drew in an affirming breath and focused her will into her words. “I choose the contract. I don’t like it, but I choose it.”

It felt like a great weight was easing off her, even as she ground the imaginary sixteen-tonner down on her evil little mental homunculus with an image of her own hoof.

McIntosh put a heavy foreleg over her withers and hugged her. His body was warm in the cooling air of the night. Diamond leaned into him, waves of emotion washing softly through her and entering the still air as an odd mix of sobs, sniffles and sighs.

“So …” Diamond asked uncertainly as McIntosh released the hug and stepped back behind her, the waves having calmed within her, “What now?”

“I think you know.”

Diamond let her head sag again. It was time to accept her fate. She started as she felt Mac’s soft nose bump into her plot. He took a deep breath, the tiny breeze rushing coolly across her sex causing a shiver. He held it in while gently stroking his nose along her folds. He then slowly let it out bathing her furrow in warm, moist heat from inside him, eliciting a stronger tremor.

“What are you doing?” Diamond meeped in surprise.

“Treating mah fine young mare to the benefits of a little respect, Sugarplum, or would you rather I just covered ya right here and was done with it?”

“No,” Diamond quickly answered. She wasn’t sure she was quite willing to go ‘that far’ yet. Besides, the soft touch of what she could only assume was a flower blossom on her sexual petals made lingering a more enticing option. “That’s quite alright, carry on.”

The flower departed accompanied by a soft munching sound and was shortly replaced by Mac’s muzzle as he gently began to pull at her hind lips with his front ones, adding soft, warm licks about the growing tingling sensation he was causing.

The sugar coated flowers! She realized, suddenly aware of what he had done, using one of the flowers sprinkled in powdered sugar to sugarcoat her honey pot. She and Silver had never tried that, just a little kiss-and-lick every so often. Cunning beast.

“Oohh,” Diamond sighed as McIntosh worked his way down the inside of one leg, then back up the other on his way back to her centre, “where did you learn that trick?”

“Caramel likes to brag about him and Sassaflash, and your Daddy gave me a couple of ‘brown wrapper’ magazines a couple of days after you signed the contract. Can’t say I liked them much, kinda rude actually, but there was an article on a filly’s first time in one. Made a good read.”

Any attempt to form a coherent answer vanished as Diamond felt the warm slick tongue of her partner part her honeyed flower. He slid it in, top to bottom between the lips, descending ever lower to slide the hood off her clit and further heat the warm seeping passion betwixt her nethers.

His fore-hooves came up and started making slow circular motions on her flanks. He used his superior body size to reach as far up as the top of her loin, extending the massage. He wasn’t the best plot licker, she noted, but he could cover a lot of ground. Silver, of course, really knew where Diamond’s ‘hot spots’ were from experience, but Mac would learn, Diamond figured, and she’d insist he practice.

Diamond was beginning to doze in a blissful torpor from Mac’s efforts and massage. No orgasm though. It had taken Silver several attempts to give Diamond her first, and it had been several more attempts before Diamond could return the favour. She didn’t expect some dumb colt to strike the big one first time.

It was then she noted to her disapproval that her wet want was cooling. She lifted her head and spotted Mac lying on his belly over on the blanket covered straw and grass pile. When had she missed that?

“Not going to finish the job?” Diamond gave a sultry whine that easily conveyed her own unfinished need.

“Eeyup, Sugarplum,” Mac grinned with an expression that made him look like an oversized school colt. “I just didn’t rightly feel like doing ‘it’ there, kinda impersonal.”

Diamond had to agree, and without much time needed either.

“Figured I’d like my first time to be a little more classy, don’t ya think?” he said, patting a spot on the blankets at his side.

First Time! Diamond could hear the little goat horned ego-filly screaming from underneath the psychological sixteen-ton weight where she’d buried it. Celestia’s plot, he’s a bucking virgin! We’re screwed! He won’t even be able to get it in the right hole, the dumb shit!

Who cares? Diamond thought back to herself as she gave the mental block another gratifying shove further down on her obnoxious ego-self. He found the right one earlier easily enough, and it’s not like I was expecting a good time from this, really. Only now I know I’m just not going to hate him for it.

“Eeyip,” she mocked back at McIntosh as she slipped off the back of the mounting aide, drawing in a heavy breath as she steadied herself on her hooves, her legs slightly numb from just hanging there.

How long was I lying on that thing? Diamond wondered as she paused a moment to collect herself.

Lifting her head high with another steadying breath, she marshalled her resolve and stepped toward the bedding pile. She heard a grunt from McIntosh and saw him shift uncomfortably on his belly as she felt her forgotten panties finally slip the last of the way off her leg, stepping out of them as she reached the edge of the blanked covered pile.

Diamond settled herself beside him on the remarkably soft pile of bedding and rested her head against his shoulder.

“Your move now.” She rubbed her head against his solidity. She could hear his heart pounding steadily inside him as she rested her head against him, heard the great whoosh of air in his lungs. Somehow it was more like her dreams than she thought.

“Actually, all you have to do is ask when you’re ready, Sugarplum.” He nuzzled her lavender and frost streaked mane as he spoke.

“I am,” she answered with certainty, “but I was wondering if I might make a proposal first? Since you’ve been making a big point of ‘choices’ it seems.”

“Go on.”

“If it wouldn’t be too much,” Diamond dialed up the ‘suck up to Daddy’ sweetness out of habit, “maybe I could get an allowance of sorts for good behaviour?” She finished with a flutter of her eyelashes.

“Well, you don’t have much t’ work with as I see, but I’ll hear ya out to be fair.” He gave the inside of her ear a lick as he finished.

“Do you think I could get a few bits, for each day you cover me in when I’m in heat?” She knew she was trotting on thin ice, but if he liked her determination she might as well try and show it, though she really didn’t like sounding like a harlot.

“Here I thought you’d be asking me to get AJ off your rump,” Mac countered.

“Oh yes, that too, and some more of what you did … before.” she added, the fading heat in her nethers offering a sordid reminder.

“Counter proposal,” Mac leaned over and kissed her nose, before he continued, “An allowance is fine, five bits each day I cover you in season, and mouth service any other evenings before bed, at your discretion and my agreement. I can’t help you much with AJ, you’re gonna have to work things out between you two, but I can lend you a hoof. Applebuck season is coming up and I’ll be needing AJ on the farm here with me, so you’ll be responsible for the market stall on your own. Show my sister some honest commitment to your chores and you’ll start cracking that chip off her shoulder okay? But, so you know, take the deal and when I cover you its straight-up, minimal foreplay, starting in the morning, no complaints, and we can renegotiate favours end of the month, or no deal. Fair?”

“I’m sorry Mac, I shouldn’t have tried,” Diamond sighed her spirits falling. “I sound like a whore doing this.”

Mac nuzzled her neck as she turned away in shame.

“I know you’re just trying to show me your resolve and independance. You’re doing fine, and as it’s just private between us,” he gave the back of her jaw a lick on the left side, neck to ear. “I’m okay with it.”

Damn stallion, Diamond thought as she turned back to the big red pony beside her. Definitely more to him than meets the eye.

Still, it seemed like a fair deal. Maybe uncomfortable, but five bits over six to eight days, she’d probably get a spa day every week, why not?

“Deal,” she agreed.

“You sure?” Mac asked flatly.

“Yes, I’m sure, I accept your counter offer.”

Diamond moved to get up and position herself for the consummation of their private services contract, but Mac placed a hoof on her withers halting her.

“Nnope, you don’t need to get up, right here will do jus’ fine.”

“Okay.” She settled back down as McIntosh wormed back a bit and then moved atop her, taking his weight on his knees. Her head was even with his and his rump almost fully behind hers as he settled himself. Trapped below him she felt caught and caged and small.

There was also something else she felt too. She felt a hot thick rod rub long-ways up her left flank and across her dock. She tried to look over her shoulder to catch a glimpse only to have McIntosh turn her head back, eyes front.

“Nnope, you don’t want t’ be lookin’ there jus’ yet, Sugarplum.”

Look no, feel yes. It was enough to get an icy spider wrapping its legs around her gut as it pressed into the soft bedding.

“McIntosh, I’m scared,” she affirmed wholly. No sense in lying to him now anyway. It was weird really, so almost cliché to say it. What was weirder was she could remember an answer from a fantasy book series Silver had been reading, where a father dire wolf tells his son that only when one was scared could one truly be brave. She knew she was going to have to be brave.

“’Bout what?” Mac’s voice came from above, but she could feel it through his chest and into her own barrel.

“Getting covered,” she admitted, not coyly but with solid concern, her admission easing the grip on her gut. “I think it’s going to hurt … a little. Your sister said … you’d make it hurt.”

“Hmm, it might,” his voice carried thoughtful, deep, and resonant through her, “and AJ’s got a sore spot for you for sure. Likely, she was meaning to just scare you. Still, it wouldn’t be right to just let you carry that alone, would it?”

She pressed her head back against his thick neck and shook her head, no.

In response, he slid back on her rump slightly and leaned over and took one of the pillows from beside him in his teeth. He shook the cushion free from inside it leaving the pillowcase dangling from his mouth, and then wrapped it around the cannon of his left foreleg.

“If you feel the need, use this for help.” He tapped the wrapped limb on the end of her snout.

What the … Diamond thought as McIntosh shifted himself back into place, but before she could think further, she felt him begin his entry. There was a tiny twinge of pain as he passed the fresh remnant of her maidenhead. Then came the sinking swelling sensation as her body acquired a new, if temporary, internal organ.

Did it hurt immediately? No, it didn’t. But was it uncomfortable? It was, absolutely it was. His progress within her was firm and even, not jabbing, not ramming, just a firm, continuous push. She felt a jolt of maybe pleasure for a moment when his medial ring tripped over her sensitive nubbin as it passed into her. He finally bottomed out with a bump in her depths that felt much deeper than she figured it could be. That hurt a little.

Diamond Tiara found herself panting as he began to withdraw, a slight sucking pull inside her tenderness as her body seemed to cling to his. It was an odd thought that idled in her mind, that McIntosh was at once both inside her and surrounding her. The bell of pleasure chimed again as his medial ring again tripped her pleasure pearl in passing.

“Okay?”

She heard the question but only managed a feeble gurgle in reply as her mind tried to sort the diverse and often conflicting sensations of what was going on.

She felt the wrapped cloth bump her nose as he shifted back to ingression. The motion was still even, but the pace quicker. The tripping of her clit was faster, but less pleasurable, and the bottoming more abrupt.

Her eyes crossed as the tempo picked up. She started panting like exercise period back in her schooldays, or when Applejack had first made her haul that market cart back to the farm. This was not going to get easier.

Slow and gentle Diamond thought she might have had a chance to get used to McIntosh’s presence inside her, maybe have eventually found it enjoyable somehow. Now, she sure as shit was not going to. She was going to scream and Applejack would have her revenge on Apple Bloom’s behalf. Diamond didn’t want to vindicate the convictions of the cowpony, not one bit.

“Take it,” Mac grunted, the pillowcase swaddled limb bumping her nose.

How was that going to help her? Her body was starting to ache, and she could feel the scream welling in her throat as she felt Mac bumping inside her again and again and again, forcing the pain up her body. The cloth bound leg tapped her snout again.

“Take it!” Mac hissed with a grunt, more insistent as he became lost in his quest for climax.

What was the point of the cloth? For all the good it would do she might as well … YES!

Diamond felt the cloth clad leg tap her nose again and immediately wrapped her jaws around it. She felt the wave of pain rise up like an evil orgasm, and she let it come. Let it come up through her and into him, through her teeth, as she bit down. Hard!

His pace was feverish now, the strokes short, barely moving much distance as he kept his mount. It wasn’t pleasant but she didn’t scream, she didn’t whine, she held her jaws tight to her stud’s leg, and rode it out until …

She felt McIntosh push deeper into her than she thought he’d ever done. She felt him swell and stiffen, and then she felt him burst, hot and wet inside her. He had reached the end and she could feel his strength ebbing as he kept his weight from her, eventually pulling them both over on their sides.

Her jaws slackened their grip on McIntosh’s leg as his maleness slipped, hot and limp like a massive noodle, from her now well tilled and tender plot. Their breathing came fast and heavy, the silent air in the shed licking coolly at the sweat that shimmered on their coats.

“I … I’m sorry I did that to you Diamond,” McIntosh panted, the emotion in his words showed genuine sympathy for his actions. “It was thoughtless of me to do that to you like that, I’m sorry.”

“Actually,” Diamond sighed, pressing herself deeper against his chest to savour the sounds of his breath and beating heart. She stretched out her left foreleg along side his. The white cloth bearing the blood of her deflowering coming to rest against the white linen wrapped around his left front cannon where points of scarlet could now be seen spreading from below. “It was very ‘big’ of you.”

Author's Note

All righty, we have come to the end of the first plot arc here, so I'm taking a vae-cae of sorts and putting our unlikely couple out to pasture for a bit, and put the story on hiatus. But don't worry, the second arc is planning as we speak. It's fragmentary at the moment so ... we'll let it gestate a bit.

Again thank yous to my fine editor Aziraphael, and my tactfulness consultant and pre-reader Loyal2Luna. You two are So Awesome!

Breeders notes: Well I'm honestly not sure if horses can do a crouch mount like I depicted, I've only seen standing covers done. I have seen deer and alpacas do it crouched (the alpacas in full view of a class of 4th graders I was chaperoning at the local zoo - they noticed, and asked :facehoof: ) so morphologically it seemed sound, and a little more romantic.

Again the tale of An Apple Studded Diamond is not done yet, watch, fave, and read the blogs, a 'Rich Harvest' will be coming.

Again to you readers, thank you!

To be Raised

To be Raised

The sun rose warmly over Sweet Apple Acres, and Applejack was there to greet the day as she took a last look out her bedroom window. It was hard to believe that the party of two days ago had been cleaned up so quickly, and what a party it had been. Between friends, family, and other townsfolk, there must have been four hundred plus in attendance, and of course where there was an Apple family gathering, there was food, dancing, and enough cider to drown half of Canterlot.

Applejack couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten so much, or drank that much. In fact, she’d had a hard time remembering anything since she had heard Filthy Rich inform Granny Smith that he wanted Big Mac to get Diamond Tiara with foal. That was three weeks ago. Since then Applejack had found herself replacing the bottle in the bottom of her nightstand at least once a week.

It wasn’t so much that Filthy Rich had approached her brother about fulfilling the contract that bothered her. Yes, it was an old earth pony tradition, arranged marriages, stud contracts and all that; Diamond Tiara’s parents had arranged the whole thing with Applejack’s own parents years ago. But how were Ma and Pa ever to know so many years ago all the grief that little pink imp of a pony would cause their youngest daughter.

How could they? They’d died not long after Apple Bloom had been foaled. They had left their children: a wimpy stick pony of a colt, a young filly, and a foal to the care of an aging farm mare. Not that Applejack was resentful of Granny Smith in any way, far from it; she dearly loved her old grand-mare. The old green mare had taught her nearly everything about the farm, chores, hard work, and looking out for your kinfolk.

Applejack paused, kinfolk, it was something Diamond Tiara would never be. The ‘wedding’ was a sham, a whitewash to erase the bastardy of the foals that Diamond would have, courtesy of Big McIntosh. Why, why, why had her brother ever said yes to that lowdown upscale business pony, with all his fancy trappings and money? She’d never understand. Sure her brother could claim that Filthy Rich had helped them keep the farm after Ma and Pa had died, but she’d never seen the business pony do one lick of work on Sweet Apple Acres.

Ponies like Filthy Rich were always looking down on hard working ponies like her it seemed. Why couldn’t Diamond have just stayed in Manehatten, or Canterlot, or wherever, and left Ponyville for good, and left Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo alone. How could her dolt of a big brother have said yes to covering that little pink imp of a filly that thought herself too good to stay on some muddy old apple farm? Well that was easy, he was thinking with that other head of his, the one that most stallions eventually answered to, dumb boys.

Applejack looked over at her bedside table to where the bottle of her namesake liquor sat next to the shot glass. The bottle was only a quarter full now, the shot glass full to the rim. The orange farm mare smiled as she wrapped her lips around the top of the glass and tossed her head back draining its contents before replacing the bottle and glass in the bottom of the nightstand. Smiling to herself as she felt the warming swell of the liquor melting through her, Applejack set her Stetson in place and trotted off down the hall towards the newly renovated ‘master’ suite that Big Mac and Diamond Tiara shared.

Well, there was one good thing about having that prissy little pink pain-in-the-plot under her roof now. Diamond Tiara might be sleeping in the ‘master bedroom’, but AJ was still boss mare around this farm and nopony was going to be slacking off on her watch.

“Wakey, Wakey, Diamond!” Applejack blared as she burst into the master bedroom, “Time to hit the dirt hooves running. Nap times over, and you’ve got a couple of big loads to deliver today after you haul the cart to market …”

Applejack blinked as she scanned the empty room. The bed was made, and the room empty. From the window sill, a squirrel sat and blinked at her in stunned silence a moment before sticking the thumb of its forepaw to it’s nose and wiggling its fingers while blowing a raspberry at the stunned mare.

“Hey AJ,” Apple Bloom’s voice carried up the stairs, “whadda ya want with y’r coffee, apple-bran muffin or apple Danish? Oh, and Big Mac left ya a note here. He says that he took the first load of apples into town this morning with Diamond, and you’ll need to come take over for her at the market while he takes her to see the doctor later this morning.”

The steam was practically visible seeping from Applejack’s ears as she stood in the doorway of the empty bedroom. Damn her big brother for getting Diamond off easy. He had his own chores to do, and helping Diamond wasn’t one AJ meant for him to be doing. The only thing he needed to do with that little pink plot-hole was jam it full of his foal pole every night that he could. The rest of the time that little pink trollop’s hide was hers.

* * * * *

The sturdy wagon rattled along the well-worn cart track that ran between Ponyville and Sweet Apple Acres in time with the clip clop of hooves. Dawn had broken to an early summer fog laying over the fields, hills, and orchards, casting the land in an almost ethereal appearance. Early mornings trotting under load of wagon or plow were nothing new to Big McIntosh. For Diamond Tiara, however, she would normally still be happily dreaming away, wrapped in the soft covers of her bed, yet fate did seem to make for strange bedfellows.

One glance up at the scarlet mound of muscle beside her told her all too well how strange those bedfellows could be. A twinge of pain from her nethers told her that her particular bedfellow was all too genuinely real as she let her crystal-blue gaze wander over the much larger stallion. It had been just over three weeks since she had blundered into asking the big red farm pony to endorse the stud contract that had been drawn up between the two families by both their parents back when she was a newborn filly and he, a scrawny red stick of a colt.

The following three weeks after the contract had been agreed to had been an abstract rendition of chaos that Discord himself might have taken pride in. Mornings had been filled with event planning, dress fittings, and other civil preparations. The afternoons had been a veritable cornucopia of labor and drudgery at the hooves of McIntosh’s sister Applejack. Still, in the end, Rarity had to take in the flanchards of her dress by over a hoof at the final fitting, though Diamond had been aghast at the lying nature of the bathroom scale, telling her she had also gained over a stone’s worth of weight at the same time.

It had been two days since her parent’s had formally handed her over to Big McIntosh to be bred. Her cherry had been popped in the traditional manner the day before the handover, so the actual covering would go off with less discomfort. Diamond rolled her eyes to herself at the thought.

Sure that first night Big Mac had proven himself disarmingly intelligent, astute, and oddly charming. Even when he had first pushed himself into her she had thought maybe things weren’t so bad, yet the farther into the act, the more uncomfortable it had become. At least he had given her something to bite down on so that she wouldn’t scream out and vindicate Applejack’s desire for her brother to have her rutted raw and bloody as some kind of vengeance for having teased Apple Bloom and her friends when they were younger.

Diamond remembered using a pillow to bite on when Big Mac had covered her again the following morning. It had been less relaxed and more perfunctory that time, and it had stung pretty much from the moment he’d mounted her. Though he’d been apologetic afterward when he’d seen her trembling there with tears in her eyes.

She’d still been walking a little funny when the families had gathered for the big day after brunch before the guests had departed. There had been a good deal of congratulations and well wishes offered her. She’d smiled, as a good mannered pony should, as she’d accepted them standing beside Mac amid the gathered host.

She had managed to get a little time to speak with Silver Spoon even, and promptly lied to her about how wonderful the sex was. Maybe she’d been a little drunk from the cider that was still flowing. She‘d told Silver how Mac had slapped her flank shortly after entering the ‘Love Shack’ in order to give the gathered listening ponies what they wanted to hear, then how when he was sure they were alone he had thoroughly seduced and ravished her in the manner of a scene from a cloppy romance novel.

Yeah, she lied, but lying was a skill like any other Diamond had found, and skills needed to be practiced. It was odd that lying didn’t seem to work on McIntosh; every lie she’d tried he’d seen right through. He had seen through her lies well enough to still make her feel raw and naked every time he even looked at her.

The thought brought a blush to Diamond’s face, as much of a blush as when she and Mac had retired to the bathroom after supper that first night at Sweet Apple Acres. Mac had been hinting at turning in early all through the meal, and Granny Smith seemed to be the only pony to pick up on her grandson’s intentions. Applejack had kept shooting hard glances at her brother and Diamond at each veiled suggestion. Apple Bloom just seemed to alternate between turning a little greener under that blonde coat of hers and pricking her ears up in curiosity at the innuendoes.

Still, at the end of the meal Granny Smith had asked her two granddaughters to take her out for a walk around the orchards ‘on a lovely summer evening’. That had left Diamond and Mac with the place to themselves. Diamond had figured it would be just a simple trot on up to the bedroom and get it over with. Mac had caught her off balance again when he suggested they wash up together first.

It seemed there was a hint of a romantic curiosity in the big crimson colt, and the two had taken turns washing each other, almost like foreplay, the bathtub only able to accommodate them one at a time due to McIntosh’s sizable stature. That had been the first time she’d actually seen Mac’s colthood. Yes, it wasn’t the first she’d seen up close in person. Her gut twisted at the memory of her undignified scandal with that snot nosed Canterlot snob of a unicorn. Even after she’d swallowed for him he’d still gone and exposed her misappropriations to the CFO.

Mac’s stallionhood though was grander by a goodly margin. It had given Diamond pause to conclude that with so much of their egos already coming out the tops of their heads, unicorn stallions needed less between their legs. Mac, on the other hoof, had enough 'ego' between his legs for two ponies, she thought. ‘Big’ seemed to go everywhere with McIntosh. His personal ‘Apple Tree’ as Diamond had dubbed it at the time was a very unmasculine pink at the end, mottling to a more dignified red near the medial ring, darkening towards the root where it disappeared into his sheath, and roughly the same size as her foreleg!

Still she played coy for him, though it was more of “great Celestia’s horn, that thing’s already been inside me, twice!” as opposed to genuine coyness. Still they had been gentle with each other—her plot was still sore from that morning—having mutually decided to make the best of the situation. After toweling off they had made their way to the master bedroom and then it had been down to ‘business’ with Diamond going belly down on the bed, back hooves on the floor, and Mac placing that personal ‘apple tree’ worth of colt-wood inside her.

Mac hadn’t got past the first stroke, Diamond recalled, when she’d had practically leapt off his foal pole, vaulting the bed in the process, and come crashing down on the opposite side in a heap. She recalled how annoyed Mac had been at that moment. She had agreed to let him cover her straight up, with minimal foreplay, in exchange for an allowance of five bits a day while she was in season.

A bump in the road brought a rattle from the wagon beside her bringing Diamond’s mind back from her recollections. She looked back to where the Sweet Apple Acres market cart was double hitched to the back of the cargo wagon Big Mac was pulling. Across the fields she could see the morning mist evaporating like Mac’s anger had last night when he’d seen that she was truly hurting.

She shook her head in disbelief only to draw notice from Big Mac beside her.

“Problem Sugarplum?”

“No,” she looked back at her stud and the load he was almost effortlessly pulling. “I was just thinking about last night, and I’m sorry, I should have just mared up let you finish.”

“Nnope,” Mac tossed back in that nonchalant manner of his, “you shouldn’t have. You should’ve said something sooner ‘bout your feeling sore and all. I promised your Daddy to get foals off you like our folks wanted, but I also promised to look after you, and not to hurt you while doing it. So there’s no sense lying about it, lying got you into this predicament, now you’re going to have to fess up and find your true path out of it and be honest about it. You’re a strong pony Diamond, and you need to start doing what’s right, not what’s easy.”

Diamond ruminated on the words for a while, she’d agreed to this contract to try to save what power and prestige she had, only to find out she’d already lost all of it without knowing. She thought back to last night, as Mac had lifted her into the bed and held her as he wiped away her tears. She remembered resting her head against his chest and listening to the heavy drum of his heartbeat as she’d drifted off into the warm embrace of the bedding and sleep as he had stroked her mane.

Mac had told her to be honest, tell the truth, stop lying—especially to herself—and she’d find her path out of this. She wasn’t sure she could. It felt like she was wading into a pool of raw emotion that kept getting deeper with every step, how could she find her way out when she didn’t know where she was to start with.

The wagons trundled along as the two ponies crested the last hill on the outskirts of Ponyville. Subconsciously, Diamond took a step closer to McIntosh as they trotted into town.

* * * * *

The mulberry purple alicorn lay on her belly on a woven rug displaying her cutie mark on the balcony of her royal apartments at Ponyville town hall. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted into the oncoming rays of light. Her wings were partially unfurled like feathered radiator panels drawing in the morning sunshine. On a low table nearby sat a pot of fresh herbal tea and two cups not yet filled. The scene was of one of calm serenity.

On the opposite side of the tea table, Silver Spoon lay like her employer on a simple but comfortable rug of her own. The young silver-gray pony, however, didn’t embody the calm serenity of the nearby alicorn, her mind wouldn’t let her. Between her front hooves a pencil rolled back and forth from nervous energy. A nearby notepad stood ready to record and organize the myriad of tasks that formed the young princess’s itinerary.

From the moment she’d awoken in the princess’s former rooming loft in the Golden Oaks Library, her mind was working at a fever pitch as it always had. The festivities of the last two days had drained precious time away from the formal schedule. Well, not precisely. The events had been planned and scheduled in part by the princess herself, and Her Royal Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Element of Harmony, OC, was a very detailed organizer.

Yet in the last two days they had yet to address the request for Twilight’s attendance at the Crystal Fair. The invitation had been issued by the princess’s own brother, Prince Shining Armor, KPCE*, OC, and by Twilight’s own informal bestowment BBBFF, and by her pegasister-in-law, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, LCH**, OC, and most importantly, mother of the first trueborn alicorn princess in millennia. Such an invitation had to be responded to, not to mention the luncheon with the Canterlot Literary Awards Commission, the Annual Buffalo Stampede and Treaty festival in Appleloosa, her parent’s anniversary …

Twilight’s Parent’s Anniversary!

Oh Tarnish! Silver swore in her own personal modality as she realized that she’d forgot to put that down on the list that morning. How could she have overlooked such a thing? Quickly she flipped the pencil off one hoof sending it pin wheeling into the air where she quickly moved to catch it in mid spiral … only to have her teeth clack shut on empty air.

“Silver, what is it this time?” Twilight asked calmly, the magenta glow emanating from her horn mirrored on the pencil as she held the writing instrument above her own head out of Silver’s reach.

“Your parent’s anniversary. I didn’t put it on the to do list this morning, I’m sorry Your Highness,” Silver sighed sullenly.

“Ninety-eight, I believe Silver? We’re not on official protocol right now, so you’re supposed to call me …”

“Twilight,” Silver let out a breath of deflation. “Ninety-eight, yes, Twilight.”

“Thank you, my little pony.” The princess smiled as she shook out her wings and brought herself to a sitting position while the teapot lifted into the air under the her mental guidance and began to pour. “What would I do without you right now?”

“Wake the dragon … erhm, Spike?”

Twilight giggled at the fantasy book reference Silver Spoon had involuntarily made before answering. “I think Spike would be a little hard to wake up right now.”

Both ponies looked over in the direction of the Golden Oaks Library where a thin tail of dark smoke drifted lazily from one chimney indicating that Twilight’s number one assistant was still fast asleep in draconic hibernation in the library’s basement. He wasn’t likely to wake up until sometime around the running of the leaves, barring an earthquake or similar.

“Now that I’ve finished my morning meditation, what’s on the agenda, besides having you remind me of my parent’s anniversary?” Twilight smiled as she lifted her cup of tea.

“Well, as it’s Monday, you’re due to hold court a little over an hour from now, as per Princess Celestia’s instructions.”

“That’s why I wanted my meditation not to be interrupted,” Twilight chided her apprentice adjutant with a friendly grin. “A little more relaxation would do you good too, Silver. In fact, why don’t you take the afternoon off while I deal with my family’s events? Yes, actually, you will, or I’ll order you to. Why don’t you head to the spa after lunch with Diamond, use my tab as a …” Twilight paused a moment as she recalled the event’s of the last two days surrounding Big Mac and Diamond Tiara. “You said that it wasn’t a wedding, right?”

“Yes,” Silver acknowledged, “it was a stud contract agreement. Though it also was a wedding of sorts, just for a very specific type of term contract marriage, that’s why there was the maiden fete instead of a bridal shower. I told you there was a difference, only I never got a chance to tell you what that difference was.”

“I see, so it’s one goes with one, not the other.”

“Exactly, a bridal shower wouldn’t have the maiden key ritual, as a wedding is a celebration of love not a contractual breeding. With a wedding the bridegroom gets the honor of the first if the bride wishes, but she may still opt for the key, my mother did.”

“I see, well, call it a gift and we’ll leave it at that,” Twilight smiled.

“Of course,” Silver smiled back at Twilight. The part of her that was still a filly positively squealed with excitement at being given direct instructions from her boss to hit the spa with a friend. Not what she had guessed when she’d woken up this morning, but one didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Besides, Silver thought, maybe Diamond will dish some more on her ‘experiences’ with Big Mac.

The young pony smiled inwardly at herself. Just because she was prim, proper, and a formerly slightly stuck up nerd didn’t mean she had no libido.

“Anyway,” Twilight added, pausing to take another sip of tea, “I’m due to meet Fluttershy and Rarity there after court adjourns, then I’ll show you the art of the ‘Steam Room Cabinet Meeting’ as Cadance calls them. Now, what’s on the docket for this morning’s petition hearings?”

Author's Note

* Knight Protector of the Crystal Empire
** Lady of the Crystal Heart

Well, here it is, the first chapter of Arc 2 of An Apple Studded Diamond. I figured a little bridge chapter might be in order.

Breeder's Note: Bathtub scene: Prior to covering, the Mare and Stud should have their anatomy washed with a mild antiseptic soap solution to reduce the chance of infection/ bacterial transfer during act. Uterine infections in equines are potentially hazardous and may quickly escalate to uterine sepsis. :pinkiegasp: if left untreated.

Also if any of you are interested and hadn't read it before on my blog post the link to the Stud Contract is here. Enjoy.

With Love

With Love

The sound of his wife’s sobbing echoed in the hall as Filthy Rich reached the stairs to the main floor. The pale brown business pony took in a deep breath to fortify himself in light of the situation, but as he released it his head drooped nearly to the floor in dejection. Somehow he felt a shot of vat 1983 Hayvana Gold might have been more apt to help. But this moment was not the time to be indulging in sugary liquors.

Another resounding sob from down the hall pulled Filthy’s mind back from the contents of his office liquor cabinet to his current predicament. An unfortunate convergence of separate events had ignited a conflagration in his little private corner of the universe like a match in a pool of lamp oil, a pool that he happened to be standing in the middle of at the moment. Another deep breath steadied his nerves only just enough to allow him to descend the stairs from the upper story of his home and attempt to deal with the next level of the disaster.

As Filthy Rich reached the foyer landing he shifted his downcast gaze to the ponies in the front room. The soft violet eyes of one pony seemed magnified from behind her glasses as their owner glared scaldingly at him from beside the mulberry-purple alicorn beside her. The stern glare of the young alicorn was nothing light in its weight either.

Nearby, seated on a different cushion in the large front room, Rarity looked none too pleased at the moment either. Filthy knew her mother, Pearl, was up in the master bedroom sitting with Silken, offering comfort and support her despondent friend. The only time he had ever seen his wife so distraught was just after Silken had recovered from the infection that had nearly claimed her life shortly after foaling Diamond. The doctors had told her that the infection she’d contracted, though cured, had rendered her incapable of ever having another foal.

The light of the coming sunset from the window behind the silvery-white unicorn cast a shimmer of gold on her back and spread a deep shadow from under her deep amethyst mane that shrouded her face in darkness. It was a darkness that allowed her sapphire eyes to seem to gleam bright and sharp, half lidded in disgust at the pony she now regarded.

“I …” Filthy began to try and offer an explanation to the three mares in the room, but changed tack as his voice caught and offered a more personally pressing question to the trio. “Has there been any word on Diamond?”

“No, Mr. Rich, there has …” Princess Twilight began to answer only to be cut off by the younger pony beside her.

“How could you!?” Silver Spoon’s sharp pitched voice plunged into the conversation like a dagger. The young almost mare-grown filly took an aggressive step forward as she spoke. “How could you do that to Diamond? How could you pair her off with some colt she had hardly ever spoken to, and then tear her family and dreams from her?”

Filthy Rich could see the tears welling in the corners of the eyes of his daughter’s best friend as she stabbed her accusations into the conversation. He could only imagine what Diamond must be feeling at this moment.

“Silver Spoon,” Princess Twilight interjected at the first available pause, stepping up to place a protective wing over the smaller pony’s withers. “That’s hardly appropriate behavior for a situation like this. To be accusing Mr. Rich like that, it’s inflammatory.”

“It, …,” Filthy Rich stumbled forward in his speech again only to be cut off by the other pony in the room. The thought of his beloved only child hearing the words, and coming from her own mother’s mouth no less, that Silver Spoon had recited to them all later clawed at him coldly from within. Silver had to her credit as a friend tried to catch up to Diamond as she fled from the spa after hurling her tiara at Silken in a tartarusly indignant rage, but had been unable to keep up the pace Diamond set and had eventually lost track of her.

The stallion’s quivering heart gave a pained grieving twist. Fate had stolen any chance of more foals from Silken, and now she had possibly driven their only child from the family forever with another twist of fortune and poorly chosen words taken out of context.

“Quite so, inflammatory.” Rarity sniffed, “and immensely rude my dear Silver. Such talk is highly unbecoming of a young diplomat such as yourself.”

Filthy Rich gave a small sigh of relief at the silvery-white unicorn’s defensive statement. The relief was too short in being though as the fashionista’s voice quickly dropped a demi-tone as she turned her attention to him.

“However, not nearly as rude as knifing one’s own blood, and family friends, in the back, I think.” The amethyst-maned mare’s voice was a smooth as glass as she spoke and as sharp as the trio of diamonds on her flank. The words though cut deep, deeper than the business stallion could stand for as he felt his hindquarters buckle and his rump sag downward to settle on the floor, his head hanging as he did.

“Rarity.” The Princess gasped in surprise at her longtime companion’s comment.

“Rude perhaps, Twilight darling, but the question does beg an answer.” The unicorn calmly countered with an aloof toss of her head.

“Mr. Rich doesn’t need to explain anything to us.” The young alicorn added her words to the reproachful glances she shot at the other two mares as she stepped up to where Filthy Rich sat on the foyer’s mat feeling like a smear of pale brown earth, or worse, that had been wiped from the bottom of somepony’s hoof. She placed a hoof softly on his and extended a wing in support around him, as her mentor had done so many times to her over the years.

“He doesn’t?” Silver Spoon quirked sharply at her mentor’s statement.

“No, he doesn’t.” Twilight replied with a firm kindness to her aide.

“Of course,” Rarity chimed in, her tone shifting to a more sympathetic one couched with her own embarrassment for her lapse of decorum. “I’m terribly sorry, that was far too callous of me. Please do forgive me, it’s just your wife has been such a long time friend of my family. I guess I forgot myself for a moment.”

“Thank … you.” Filthy finally managed to choke out. For all the times Diamond had spoken of her admiration of the power of a princess, and what she could do with that power, Filthy Rich knew now that Diamond truly knew nothing of it. With a simple genuine act of compassion, Twilight had shown him a glimpse of the true power of a Princess, in a way Diamond could never imagine.

Even as the young alicorn helped him back to his feet, allowing him to steady himself, her soothing tone made words he did not want to hear still seem buoying. She gently turned his head with a hoof as she spoke, to where he could see through the window of the back door where a large red pony sat on the edge of the gardens in back.

“Unfortunately there is some pony you do owe an explanation to.”

Filthy swallowed hard as he made his way to the portal and then beyond to where his best friend’s son, his hoof picked sire of his daughter’s foals, sat like a scarlet statue on the cool green lawn. A calm mountain of equine muscle shrouded in the cool late afternoon shade of the shadow of the house; a mountain that Filthy feared could turn into a volcano, with a fury as striking and red as the young stallion’s coat.

“McIntosh?” Filthy found it hard to keep his voice from trembling as he made his approach, almost as if to a gallows.

“Mr. Rich.”

Filthy could feel his heart fall in his chest, the noose line snapping taught at the flatness of McIntosh’s reply. Gone was the closeness of ‘Uncle Fil’, now replaced with a stony detachment from the colt he had watched grow into the finest stallion he knew of.

“I want to apologize to you for this fiasco McIntosh. I’m sorry. I should never have brought you and Diamond into this. It was vain of me to try and get you to save my family with that Cerberus-pissed-on stud contract. I should have known I’d let Diamond go too far over the years, that she was too far gone in her pettiness and shallow desires for power and avarice to be redeemable. It was my own fault, and I should have just faced the truth of my misdeeds and seen the financial cliff I was about to fall off of and let it be.”

Filthy Rich gave a sigh of resignation as he finished, the silence of the garden weighty and barren. The red stallion merely sat there, wheat stalk swishing between his pursed lips like the tail of a distempered cat. Filthy turned to leave, his muzzle dragging on the grass, as he slowly turned away back to the house. His failure was complete, but he had admitted it.

“Nnope.”

Huh? Filthy nearly toppled onto the patio steps as the one word answer hit him like a full on buck in the side. Had he heard right? Did McIntosh just tell him he was wrong? Filthy Rich staggered for a moment as he recovered himself, questioning the cryptic meaning of the crimson colt’s wording. Did he just refuse the apology? What did he just say? Mean? Do? Nope? Nope what?

“Beg pardon, McIntosh?”

“I said, ‘Nnope’, you’re wrong, but you’re also right. You let your prize apple go rotten; I’ll give you that. What she’s done over the years at times wasn’t right sweet at all. When you offered her to me, it took a lot of thinking, but I realized that she really was just a rotten apple.”

So I’m right? Filthy dropped his haunch onto the bottom patio step in disbelief as the red stallion continued.

“But the thing with a rotten apple is that most ponies would just look at it and see a rotten apple, their first instinct is to throw it away, it’s no good.”

“Eeyup.” Filthy nodded as he let Mac continue on.

“I knew you didn’t want to throw your daughter away, but I had to find out if there was something there I could work with, and there was, her seeds.”

“Mrmphm?” Filthy cocked his head at the statement. “So the foals …”

“Nnope, not that kind of seed that comes from us … uhm ...”

Filthy felt a wry smile creep onto his lips as the Big Red stallion struggled with sexual modesty and words. Same old McIntosh, he thought.

“Nnope, the kind of seed from up here.” Mac recovered himself and tapped a hoof to his temple. “An apple seed has to be taken out of the apple and put in the ground to grow. But ponies are different from apples. Ponies can grow inside themselves if they want to, if they really want to. Not like having a foal from … you know … bedroom stuff, but from growing inside themselves on their own. I just had to show Diamond there was something inside herself she could grow from, and not just the rotten fruit that everypony looked at her like.”

Filthy just sat there as him brain digested the massive philosophical pile that McIntosh had just unloaded on him.

“You mean you believe in her?”

“Eeyup.” Mack nodded.

“So why the extra foal?” Filthy didn’t know why he asked that but Mac answered calmly all the same.

“Figured I might need some extra time to get through to her once I figured things out. I’m just real sorry things had to happen like this, I only hope that the seeds I planted had time to start growing already.” Mac let out a thoughtful sigh as he changed gears, “Has there been any word on where she went?”

As if to punctuate McIntosh’s statement a loud crash emanated from the front of the house accompanied by a chorus of yelps from the mares inside. Mac and Filthy quickly made their way back inside to find the front door knocked in and a pile of blonde mane and gray coat and feathers piled unceremoniously atop it in the foyer.

“Oops, sorry about that,” the pile spoke as the it began to right itself, “but I though you’d want to know right away. Dinky just got home and told me she sold Diamond a ticket at the train station.”

“Train ticket?!” the collected others gasped, “To where?”

Finally back on her hooves the pegasus mare shook her head a moment as if to clear her head before answering, though it did nothing to correct her permanently misaligned golden wall-eyes.

“It was for Appleoosa, … I think.”

* * * * *

The warm summer sunset bathed the yard out front of the barn-house of Sweet Apple Acres in a beautiful golden light as a sunset colored mare danced merrily about the yard, a battered brown Stetson on her head, and a bottle of McIntosh Special Reserve Cider clutched in one front pastern.

Diamond ran away, fiddle dee dee

Diamond ran away, fiddle dee doe

Diamond ran away, fiddle dee dee

Kicked to the curb my darlin’

Applejack took another pull from the now one-third-full bottle as she danced about on her hind legs, jigging like she had an infestation of jitterbugs in her flanks. The sensation of her namesake liquor was both cooling and warming at the same time. The smile that split her fair freckled features was as broad as Sweet Apple Acres itself, and the tears in her eyes were from laughter from the exhilarating joy welling up inside her. It was an effervescent joy she found in hearing that not only had Diamond Tiara’s parents disowned her, but that the little pink meadow muffin had torn a strip off her mother’s own hide out front of the spa and disowned them back, and then had gone so far as to leave town!

How could this day get any better? The country mare thought to herself as she looped the yard again. Maybe winning the overall title at the Equestria National Rodeo this year? The orange mare grinned wider, yeah that would be the ice-cream on the apple pie for sure. She drank a toast to her dreams.

Actually, there was one thing that made this day better, Applejack remembered: Fluttershy! That was right. Her butter-yellow pegasus friend had, upon finishing her shopping, made her way back to where AJ had been minding the Sweet Apple Acres stand, and with her typical reservation and shyness inquired about exactly how Earth Pony stud contracts worked. More specifically she had been so bold as to ask if ‘anypony’ could agree to participate.

Applejack took another celebratory swig. Shoot, Fluttershy had all but come out and asked if Big McIntosh would be the sire of her first foal! That was a contract AJ knew she would heartily endorse. The shy pegasus was almost an earth pony by trade anyway. She was an animal caretaker after all, not a very pegasus job in the farm mare’s mind. Heck, Fluttershy had even moved into the old Posey place, as Granny Smith used to call it, after coming to Ponyville and ‘Old Posey’ had moved into the Shady Pines rest home. Posey had been Ponyville’s previous wildlife caretaker, and an Earth Pony.

The fact that Fluttershy was both a neighbor and a PFF made her almost like family. Shoot, she was even an ‘Honorary Apple’ after all; Big Mac’s foal in her belly would make her a genuine Apple in every sense of the notion family as far as AJ was concerned.

A movement of red against the white rail fence near the gate caught her eye as she wiped the remnants of her most recent toast to FlutterMac joining the family on the back of her cannon.

“Heya Mech, how’sh the luckiest colt in Equestria?” she waved her greeting to her big brother.

“AJ, you’re drunk.” The heavy red farmer eyed her up and down.

“Neh-whey, Ah’m right happy and a little dizzy from dancin’ is all.”

“You smell like your name.”

“Eeeyyupp!” Applejack mocked her brother’s normal reply, “and you can too if you care t’ join me in a shot to celebrate that little pink toad hopping right on out of here,” the orange mare made a hopping gesture with the bottle she held for emphasis as she spoke, “and finally being out of Apple Bloom’s life fer good.”

“Nnope.” The big pony dropped flatly.

“Oh come on, if y’re all pissed about losing a place to park y’r colt pole, y’ don’t need worry none. Flutterzshy’s looking f’r y’ t’ to deliver a load of y’r special ‘Apple Seed’ to her ‘private orchard’ as soon as she an’ Granny get the contract done. ‘Sides, that Dumb’and Tush’ara weren’t no good f’r ya any way. She didn’t want t’ be here, she didn’t want to be on no apple farm, an’ she didn’t want to have some mud-hoof hayseed soiling her sophisticated little plot hole. Good riddance.” AJ spat on the ground to make her point as she finished, then refreshed herself from the bottle in hoof.

“And why, if your friend wants to offer a contract for me to cover her, would she want to talk to Granny? Diamond is my lead mare now, if anymare wants to have me sire a foal on them they’ve got to get her permission first, besides mine, not Granny’s. I also remember a young filly who didn’t want to stay on some muddy apple farm, who wanted to be a sophisticated city pony like her Aunt and Uncle Orange in Manehatten, a little filly I helped her raise her train fare for.” The expression on the big red colt’s face hardened as he leaned into his words as well as AJ’s personal space, his nostrils flaring as his calm slowly eroded.

“I came back!” Applejack thundered back at her brother, jabbing him in the chest with the mouth of the bottle as she did. “I came back ‘cause I’m better than her. She’s just a rotten pony not fit to be part of this family.”

A blur of scarlet motion sent the bottle of applejack careening from the drunken pony’s grip to burst against the side of the barn.

“My sister, Applejack, came back, and she’s a much better pony than you are, standing there celebrating a young mare who doesn’t even think she had family to come back to now. If Ma and Pa could see you now, they’d be in tears over this Applejackass of yours.”

The smack of Applejack's hoof on the side of her brother’s face sounded like a tree snapping, the crescent shaped welt turning dark under the stallion’s scarlet coat. Applejack glared at him daring him to do something, but he only turned and walked off towards the main orchard and the Everfree Forest.

Shows him, she smiled as she watched the slapped stallion withdraw, she’d gotten the last word on him finally and he’d had to back down. She turned back to find where her younger sister had been standing quietly behind their brother. “Apple Bloom, c’m’ere and give your sister a big hug, Diamond Tiara won’t be hurting you an’ y’r friends any more, she’s gone f’r keeps now.”

The scarlet maned near-mare-grown filly with the tool packs on her work saddle just stared at her sister a moment.

“Yeah Sis,” the youngest Apple turned her head slightly in shame as she spoke, “I’ll give you a big one, but I think big brother should have given it to you instead.”

Applejack’s rump hit the ground hard as her hind legs dropped from under her. Her head was ringing brightly, a harsh tinny sound, as she watched her sister, and Apple Bloom’s mirror like twin, gallop away toward the family grove near the orchard gate. A warm, moist, sensation made its way down her upper lip, spreading onto her lower one. A similar, but faster moving, sensation of liquid warmth was spreading beneath her as she brought her hoof up to her muzzle and watched it come away crimson.

As realization took root within her, Applejack cast another glance to where now only one Apple Bloom passed through the gate to the small gallery grove that held the family graves. Near the gate stood two ponies that the stunned farm mare now remembered only dimly from her childhood. As the light sandy-orange mare and oaken brown stallion looked back at her, Applejack could see the tears in her parents’ eyes.

Her ability to remain upright now totally lost, AJ reached out her bloody hoof towards the spectral figures as her own tears blurred her vision, before fading to black.

“I’m so sorry …”

* * * * *

As Diamond Tiara stood on the small railway platform in the fading dusk a cyclone of rage swirled anew inside her. In many ways it was not unlike the one that had brought her here, wherever ‘here’ was.

The memories of what had transpired that afternoon tore at her.

… filly or colt, it really doesn’t matter to us, so long as Diamond doesn’t get the business.

Diamond could still hear the words of the light-lavender mare as Silver Spoon had opened the doorway of the Ponyville day spa. She had been talking back over her shoulder to Lotus and Aloe. It was only then she had seen Diamond standing there.

“Mother!” Diamond remembered gasping, “How could you! You said if I let McIntosh breed me I’d save the business. You and Daddy never wanted to save the business for me! You wanted the foals to save the business for you! I HATE YOU!”

She remembered grabbing the tiara from her head screaming, “If all I am to you is a way to get another foal to replace me with, then you're as dead as that shit slide of a cunt you dropped me out of, both you and Daddy!”

She remembered then hurling the diamond accented piece of silver jewelry at her mother. Diamond though had never been the most athletically coordinated filly in school, and her prowess lived up to it in that moment as well. The tiara had struck the edge of the door that Silver Spoon was holding open and bounced carelessly astray, though not without breaking a little first.

Diamond hadn’t cared to look. She had turned and run. She could barely see for the tears in her eyes, the torrential thunderstorm of lashing hateful emotion that washed through her in those moments. She could dimly remember Silver Spoon calling after her, but she couldn’t make out the words.

See, they hate you, they all hate you. She remembered the voice in her head speaking to her, smooth and seductive. They never loved you; they only wanted to use you. But you showed them, you will show them all.

It was the little scarlet horned homunculus that she had squashed with her will the first night she had let McIntosh cover her. Diamond Tiara could practically feel the little horned pixie sitting on her withers leaning up to whisper in her ear as she ran.

They’re evil, all of them, it said, hate them. Use your hate, and your hate will make you powerful!

The little horned imp had kept whispering in her ear as she ran urging her on as to how she would show them, show them all how wrong they were to deny her, and how sorry they’d be when they came begging to her some day only to have her callously use them for her own enjoyment, as they once used her, then grind them out like the butt of a cigarillo while she laughed at their suffering.

That had been the basic plan, as she practically threw the small purse of bits McIntosh had given her that morning as they left Ponyville Medical at the pony at the ticket booth for passage on the next train going anywhere. Anywhere away from her evil family and the ponies around them.

She had boarded the outbound express with a liar’s sweet smile on her lips and an air that nothing was wrong. She had found her seat and settled in for the trip, her mind grooming ideas the way a griffon grooms its talons before battle.

As the train had sped further down the tracks Diamond had been trying to organize her thoughts. She had very limited resources available for one thing; maybe she’d have to consider selling herself if she couldn’t swindle some pony out of the bits to cover her basic expenses. Of course her mother’s cousin, Velvet Glove, had made her fortune in the brothel trade. Perhaps, Diamond thought, she could succeed there too.

The problem there, Diamond determined, was it left her open to being exploited, an unacceptable outcome. It was the very reason she had decided against it a month ago. A better course she determined, was to find an entry position in some small company, not unlike her father’s. Preferably where there was an unattached son to be seduced, or a widower stallion who might be receptive to a firm flank and a tight, yet available, plot.

Yes … the little dark cloaked imp chortled from beneath its cowled hood as Diamond began to doze in her seat as the train kept its steady rhythm down the line. We can find some easy fools like that. Use your hate, make yourself strong. You will show them, show them how wrong they were to hurt you. I foresee you becoming the most powerful business pony in Equestria.

Powerful. The horned imp cooed breathily to her as Diamond smiled at the thought.

Strong. It whispered, and in her mind Diamond had nodded in agreement.

You’re a strong pony Diamond. The words drifted through her memory. But it wasn’t the raspy undertone of her dark cloaked ego imp. The words drifted through in a calm assuring baritone.

McIntosh! Diamond recalled the big red stallion saying just that to her earlier that morning as they had walked to town. Everything she could recall in the last three weeks about him, he had never once intentionally tried to hurt her, and when he had ended up hurting her he had always stayed by her side to hold her and comfort her.

Diamond was bolt upright in a blink of an eye as the train pulled into the station with a great sloughing hiss of bled off steam. The dark, rage-filled thoughts scattering like dry leaves in an autumn wind as she sucked in a great gasp of air.

You’re a strong pony Diamond, and you need to start doing what’s right, not what’s easy. She remembered McIntosh’s words clearly now from earlier that morning. It was not what she had done. It had been too easy to give in to her darker side, to run from her problems as opposed to dealing with them.

Even if her parents had betrayed her, McIntosh never had. He had always insisted that it be her choice to accept the stud contract. He had stood up to her parents for her right to choose her own path when she had first found out about it. Even on that first night as she had laid there on the mounting bench, exposed and vulnerable, he had ensured she knew she had the right to choose her fate and that she exercised that choice. He had always given her the final decision to accept the consequences, and had stayed there by her side when she had.

Diamond dropped her saddlebags on her back and trotted off the train abruptly at that moment. She knew without a doubt she had made a bad decision earlier that day. Regardless of what her parents had done, she, and she alone had made a big mistake in choosing to run from her problem and not facing it.

Why did it bother her that she was not going to get her father’s business? She knew she had already lost it all before she ever heard her mother say it at the spa. McIntosh had told her as much that first night before he ever covered her. He had made sure she knew what the reality of her situation was well before ever moving to consummate their agreement, and he had given her the choice to accept it or not.

Now as she stood alone in the fading sunset on the tiny rail platform, Diamond snuffed out the last embers of her storm of self-loathing. It wasn’t going to do her any good now anyway to be tearing herself up inside. She had made many bad choices in her life, she freely admitted to herself. Now, because of her latest, she found herself alone, in a strange town, without a bit to her name.

Well, I guess I get to start from scratch, and I better put my best hoof forward, if I’ve got any chance of getting back home. Thought the solitary pink pony as she trotted down off the platform and headed for the small rural hotel next to what looked like a general store, only halting for a brief pause as she took a moment to contemplate her situation, and the town sign on the corner of the station platform.

But where in the name of Celestia’s cake-bloated backside is Hooferville anyway?

Author's Note

Well, if the last chapter ended on a slightly sour note, I think this one swung the pendulum back. I did say that I' was going to run Diamond out of town on a rail, and I did, with a little emotional roller-coaster thrown in. I also was looking to find a good set of POV's to bring AJ's background story arc to a conclusion in a way as well. Though I may have another card or two to deal her yet, ... (discordian grin goes here).

And Kindness

And Kindness

The early summer breeze drifted softly through the stately stands of trees which chivalrously laid their shadows on the winding path that meandered through their domain. Behind the mare the wagon rattled in the grooves worn in the path by many other travelers over many years. The deepening warmth of the afternoon made the shade offered by the woods a boon.

It would be so easy to stop and rest when the winding creek that flowed nearby again came out from the cover of the trees to offer a crooked bend in greeting. Perhaps if she chose, the weary mare might take to unhitch herself for a spell and wade into the waters of the creek and let the cool flowing waters leach the soreness from her hooves while she wet her self within with a drink of those self same waters. Such wonderful idyllic beauty Equestria offered, it was truly breathtaking. She could almost hear the echo of the hoof-falls through the trees of the unicorn stallion, an officer of the royal guard no less, bared of his armor, as he galloped through the woods.

The lone mare could almost see him now splashing nobly through the clear waters of the stream and powering up the other side, his coat running with the droplets caught in his pelt, his firm muscles twitching beneath. In her mind’s eye she could see him so clearly, his golden eyes flashing, his sapphire mane with its aquamarine highlight running through it.

He would bar the way ahead of her rearing proudly pawing the air; she’d have to stop for him. He’d approach and unfasten her harness, lead her off to the side of the road to the shade of a tree. He’d circle her, inspecting her at first, then begin to nibble at her withers, rubbing his cheek gently down her spine to where he’d nip again at her flanks and dock prompting her to lift her tail and bare herself to a more intimate inspection before he would finally swing his chest up onto her back and drive his rampant masculinity deep into her throbbing …

Starlight Charm brought the wagon to a rough halt. All four of her legs were shaking as she stood there in the middle of the forest track. She could practically feel the stallion enter her and she squeezed her nethers tight against the sensation, strangling it where it lay.

With a thought, she reached out and pulled a canteen from the side to the wagon and brought it to her lips. The water was warm from the sun, and slightly stale, but wet nonetheless. A quick mental shake of the vessel and a pulse of a chilling spell channeled through her horn and the water’s temperature dropped to half that of the ambient air, suitable to be considered cool.

Starlight Charm took another drink of the canteen, finding it immensely more refreshing now. She loved the early summer season, but loathed being in season as she was now; the damp churning, the wringing need. There were potions and herbs could stave off those irritating symptoms. However there was nothing that could purge from her mind the thoughts of the white stallion, Gallant Stride.

Starlight cursed her parents, and Gallant Stride’s for what they’d done to her. She remembered it being during Hearth Warming break during her first year at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. She’d gone with her dam, Meadow Charm, and sire, Stalwart Light, to visit friends of her parents, Gallant Fox, and his wife, Melodic Step. It was there, the mare remembered, meeting their son, who was a little over a year older than her, and fine looking colt if ever there was one.

Gallant Stride was a charming, well read, and physically accomplished colt, and destined, his father proudly stated, for the Guards Academy, once he finished at Caterlot Academy. Starlight Charm remembered how the white colt had lifted her hoof and kissed it as they were introduced to one another, setting the two sets of parents murmuring with delight as she blushed through her coat. They had visited more frequently after that, and on the first day of spring the following year, Starlight had found herself standing in the middle of a circle of unicorns facing Gallant Stride, their horns touching, as magical energies from the gathered unicorns swirled about them.

Starlight replaced her canteen on the side of her wagon and gave a shudder at the memory. Since that spring, every time she’d gone into heat she had to contend with images of Gallant Stride invading her thoughts. When she had later discovered what her parent’s had done, initiating her into a sworn betrothal, she had been furious.

Aristocratic unicorn traditions be damned. To mentally pair-bond her to some colt for the sake of tradition and social advantage was one thing. To expect her to give up her ambitions, never! If she had no particularly great talent she might have acquiesced to the old social conventions, but that was hardly the case. She was the most magical unicorn in Equestria, barring two.

Well, maybe not, Starlight Charm thought to herself. Both of the others had once been the personal students of Princess Celestia herself, a position Starlight Charm herself had coveted while attending the Princess’s School for Gifted Unicorns. After all, Twilight was an alicorn now, and Sunset Shimmer hasn’t been heard from in years. I guess that leaves … me.

Resuming her pace down the forest path, Starlight eventually slowed as she approached a signpost near the edge of the woods where it gave way to rolling fields and the track split. She cast a glance at it with her grayish-violet eyes.

Silver Dollar City, where she’d last stayed, lay 280 furlongs behind her; and good riddance: that jackass of an innkeeper, Shorty, was starting to get on her nerves. Not to mention the onset of her estrous was making it harder to say no to his advances. Hooferville and Pretty Colt Junction lay 120 furlongs ahead on the right fork and Bugtussle 180 down the left. A rumble from her belly informed her that the shortest path to a hot meal was preferable.

“Ha Ha,” sang Starlight as she reared in her harness. “Tonight Hooferville shall be honored to host the performance of The Great and Powerful Trixie!”

* * * * *

The wagon came to a halt in front of the general store with a tired rattle. Taking a deep breath the young dirty pink mare that stood in the traces let out a sigh of relief before setting to unbuckling herself. Stepping free of the harness Diamond Tiara gave herself a shake in release before mounting the porch of the store.

She paused a moment to take in the spectacle that was the checker game being played atop a barrel beside the open door. She’d been gone over an hour and not one piece had moved in that time. Actually not a single piece had moved since earlier that morning when the pig, Arnold, had made his last move.

“Mr. Bucker,” She leaned in to where the old shopkeeper, with a storekeeper’s apron and an accountant’s visor for a cutie mark, was intently studying the game board, right where she’d left him over an hour ago. “I’m back.”

“Be with ya in a minute, Miss Diamond.” The old gray store-pony replied, not bothering to look away from the board. Diamond stepped into the store and planted her hindquarters on a convenient seat; a dusty burlap sack actually full of, what else but, dusty burlap sacks. Apparently, it seemed, that’s what they got shipped in.

As she sat there, Diamond took a few minutes to think back on the last two weeks she’d spent working for the old shopkeeper. It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t affluent, and it was barely enough to cover her basic room and board. Of all the unassuming little towns that dotted the Equestrian countryside, she just had to get off in this one, a town that seemed to be fifty years out of touch with the rest of Equestria.

The soft scrape of a game piece being moved caused Diamond’s ear to prick up, its movement tracking to the site of the checkers game. A grunt of consternation from the pig on the other side of the barrel was soon followed by the clip clop of hooves as Mr. Bucker walked back over to the store counter.

“That ought t’ keep that pig thinkin’ for a while then.” Grinned the elder pony, “Now, what can I do f’r ya there, Miss Diamond?”

“Here’s the payment from the last delivery Mr. Bucker.” Diamond placed the small bag of mixed bits on the counter-top.

“Thank ya kindly, Miss Diamond.” The old shopkeeper undid the mouth of the bag and emptied the contents on the counter and counted it. “All there, and it looks like you got a tip there too.”

Diamond smiled. “Just put it towards my account Mr. Bucker.”

She was still in arrears for various purchases shortly after her arrival. She had managed to barter some personal effects from her saddlebags for enough bits, five to be precise, to open an account at the town bank, also run by Mr. Bucker. It wasn’t much of a bank; it was basically a locked box under the counter of the general store. At least it had allowed her to establish collateral to open a line of credit from said institution, and take out a loan.

“Oh, I almost forgot there, Miss Diamond,” the older pony added to the conversation, “the train came while you were gone, and dropped the mail, and there was a letter for you. You can pick it up at the post office.”

“I’ll head over there right away.”

Diamond had also acquainted herself with the local postmaster, also Mr. Bucker, shortly after arriving two weeks ago in order to send a letter back to Ponyville. Originally Diamond had wanted to send it to Silver Spoon. Just to let her friend know she was safe, and so that Silver could let her parents know to call off the search for her. It was not that Diamond particularly cared for her ex-parents’ peace of mind, they had basically disowned her in Diamond’s reckoning, and Diamond, in turn, had not so eloquently disowned them back. What she had really wanted at that moment was that she didn’t really want to be found, and sending word back to Ponyville, Diamond knew, would bring the inevitable search to an immediate halt.

Hopping off her seat on the sack of burlap sacks, Diamond walked over to the postal counter while Mr. Bucker took off his banker’s visor and donned his postal cap before flipping the sign on the counter from ‘closed’ to ‘open’. Diamond could remember at one point, after leaving Ponyville for her first apprenticeship in Manehatten, thinking she was glad to be out of that ‘one horse town’. Hooferville seemed to put a whole new perspective on that concept, with Mr. Bucker and his general store standing in for everything from assayer’s office to justice of the peace, town hall, and constabulary office. A reinforced root cellar out back even served a dungeon if so needed, but mostly it served as a root cellar.

“Hi ya Miss Diamond,” Mr. Bucker’s cheerful tone announced the fact the post office was now open for business, “How can I help ya today?”

“I understand you have a letter for me?”

“I sure do. That’ll be three cents.”

Diamond repressed the urge to facehoof right there, but rolled her eyes in mild frustration as she turned to retrieve the three copper bits from her saddlebag. Tired, dusty, and mildly frustrated just scratched the surface of what Diamond was feeling right now. Although she felt that Pinkie Pie might get a real twisted kick out of this place, some how.

“Oh wait, this here letter came postage paid already.”

Diamond let the small crude coin pouch drop back into her saddlebag and gave herself a moment to recover her temper.

“Thank you, Mr. Bucker.” Diamond flashed an overly enthusiastic smile at the old pony as she plucked the letter from the counter with her teeth and deposited it in her saddlebag. “Any other deliveries for today?”

“Naw, you can go on home then Miss Diamond.”

With that, Diamond bid the old storekeeper a good day and trotted off on her way back to where she was rooming. Well, if staying in a disused shed on a slightly rundown farm, in an almost nonexistent town, could be considered rooming. It was not quite the first class accommodation she was used to, it wasn’t even the bedroom she shared with McIntosh for one night, but at least the roof didn’t leak.

As she made her way back to her shack, Diamond took a moment to pause near where a large chestnut tree stretched itself near the bank of the nearby creek. It was still early in the afternoon, too soon to help her landlady with dinner. A quick look over herself and the necessary action was clear to Diamond; get clean.

Dropping her saddlebags in the juncture of two of the chestnut’s roots, and pulling the ties from her mane and tail, Diamond backed up a few paces and charged forward. With a solid thrust of her hind legs she launched herself into the air from the bank of the creek. She’d discovered much earlier that the creek was particularly deep at the bend where the chestnut stood, perfect for swimming, or in Diamond’s case, washing.

With a heavy splash Diamond hit the water, and after staying submerged for a short time, resurfaced and immediately began scrubbing herself as best she could. Hooves rubbed the grime from her coat wherever they could reach. Rolling in the gravel shoal that spilled from the far bank into the curve of the creek and rubbing against the hanging branch from the chestnut tree served for those areas hooves couldn’t reach. Then after slipping back into the deeper waters where she first landed Diamond rinsed herself clean before exiting near the slope beneath the chestnut tree.

A violent explosion of water arced into the air as Diamond shook herself dry before she took an old towel from her saddle bags and laid it out next to the chestnut tree to let the hot summer air finish drying her. As she lay there in the sun Diamond could almost come to enjoy the life she had now, if it wasn’t for the fact that she felt oddly empty inside.

In her mind she stacked and reshuffled the bits of her financing about. The conclusion she reached every time pointed to the fact there was no denying it, she was on a downward slope and there wasn’t enough spare work in this little town to get her off it. The skills she did possess that could earn her more bits just weren’t in great need. The fact that Mr. Bucker casually filled all the financial niches in the town while still running the general store made it harder. Pulling her delivery wagon, which she rented from Mr. Bucker anyway, and doing dishes at the Shady Rest Hotel to pay for meals at times just didn’t cut it. Diamond shook her head in resignation and lowered it to rest on a thickened section at the base one of the chestnut’s roots.

As the young pink mare dozed lightly in the merciful warmth of Celestia’s sun it almost felt like the presence of another pony lying behind her, spooning her. With the warmth drifted in the memory of that first morning she’d awoken with McIntosh’s hooves around her. She remembered the sensation of his breathing, the slow even tempo of his heart as it pushed the living warmth of life through him as he lay behind her. She remembered how she had hooked his right front cannon with her pastern and slowly pulled his big hoof down from where it rested near her shoulder, down to the side of her barrel to her belly, then even lower. She remembered the soft feather like tickle of his unshorn fetlocks against her small teats as she guided his hoof lower to hook his pastern in the furrow of her formerly virgin folds.

Diamond let her mind wander the memory for a while. She recalled how Mac had so deftly lectured her on choices and consequences, how he had calmed her and consoled her. She remembered how he had slapped her flank hard enough to make her yelp, so that the eavesdroppers outside the shed would have something to cheer about and move on. She remembered how she slapped him back after he let her go and he’d calmly accepted it, stating he deserved it. Later he’d had her bite down on his left cannon to stifle the scream that his drunken sister had told Diamond she wanted to hear. She remembered the sensation of his first entry of their joining, the sensation as he had firmly and evenly pushed himself into her body, while his own also wrapped around her.

Diamond lifted her head as the reverie ended and her thoughts turned to the letter she’d just received and reached out and pulled the envelope from her open saddlebag. Originally she’d meant to write to Silver Spoon, but when she’d actually gone and written the letter she’d decided to send it to McIntosh instead.

Settling on her belly Diamond unfolded the parchment and began to read:

Dear Diamond,

I, along with your friends, was most relieved to hear from you and your parents were very grateful when I told them that you were safe. As far as anypony knows, you’re taking some time away on your own to come to terms with your new situation.

You have no idea how broken up you mother has been since the ‘incident’. She deeply regrets her choice of words and realizes how badly they must have hurt you. She says she never meant to hurt you, and I genuinely believe her.

Even Applejack has expressed some regret over her behavior towards you, although it took a rather blunt prompt from Apple Bloom to knock the point home. At least my reserve cider is not being drained like a bathtub anymore.

I also find I must offer my apologies as well for whatever role you may believe I had in this. I can only say I approached this with only the best intentions I could. Your father has offered me a chance to annul the contract and I’ve given him my answer, but I want you to know that I believe the decision should be yours, whatever you choose.

One last thing is I cannot understand why in your letter you specifically stated you did not want anypony to send you money or assistance. I can only guess you want to try to make it on your own, and if that is your choice, I will respect it. I just want to let you know that there are ponies that care about you and willing to help if you need. I never wanted you to deny yourself, only to be true to what you were inside.

Do what you must Sugarplum, and know I believe in you.

McIntosh Apple

Diamond sighed as she folded the letter and put it back into the envelope before replacing it in her saddlebag.

Damnable conundrum of a colt, Diamond thought as she let the letter sink in. Somehow she didn’t feel as empty inside after reading it. Even if she still resented her parents for leading her into this she couldn’t bring herself to despise McIntosh, she just couldn’t. For whatever reason, she knew there was more to that big red riddle with a tail in the middle than she knew.

He raped you, a raspy strangled voice hissed from somewhere above her, at your father’s command, he raped you and soiled you.

As she finished replacing the envelope Diamond turned her head up to look to the source of the voice, the dark cloaked horned ego imp. The vile homunculus hung where she frequently chose to place it, swinging from a lynch line off one of the chestnut’s more suitable branches. The caricature of herself leered at her with bloodshot eyes bulged from strangulation as its head hung at an odd angle from its broken neck.

I chose to let him cover me. I know if my father had offered me untouched and laid in silk to him on a silver platter he wouldn’t have touched me without my consent.

And look where it’s gotten you. The demonic corpse rasped, its tongue hanging dryly from the side of its mouth.

Shut up! Diamond glared back, I’m in this mess now because I chose to listen to you, and run from my problems, instead of running to those who could help me.

Like that unicorn, Point Margin, in Manehatten, who offered to help you cover your tracks and exploit the system of the financial firm you were apprenticed to?

Diamond’s mind flinched; she could still taste the bitter memory on her tongue. Point Margin had been bucking for her cherry, he’d settled for her tongue. She remembered crouching on the floor behind his desk after hours taking his raw unwashed length in her mouth. Then there was the lingering cloying taste as he finished inside and made her swallow his spend before he’d allow her to remove her lips from his rod.

I left myself open to be exploited by trying to exploit others, and nearly paid with my innocence.

Innocence? The desiccated apparition chortled as it swayed in its noose before ending in a dry choking cackle.

Shut Up! And leave me alone. Diamond snapped back in her head.

I can’t do that; the vile thing croaked back, I’m inside you, part of you, the true you.

You’re not, Diamond focused her thoughts on the imp, and just because you’re inside me doesn’t mean I have to listen to you. She mentally tightened the rope, strangling any further response from the image of her dark past.

Giving a stretch, more catlike than pony, Diamond ended her respite and got to her hooves. Casting a glance at the sun the young pink mare determined it was time to be moving along and see if Mrs. Bridlely needed help with preparing dinner over at the hotel. The girls would be getting back from school soon, and might need help with their homework as well.

* * * * *

Celestia’s sun sank low in the west as the mighty alicorn once more laid her charge to rest for the night. The glittering polished brass and bronze hues that bathed the world gave a vision of truth to the sign that hung from the post out front of the hollowed out tree: The Golden Oaks Library.

Princess Twilight Sparkle smiled quietly to herself as she watched the sleeping form in front of her. The green and purple wyrmling she knew as Spike lay sprawled across a pile of gold bits, jewels, and other personal treasures donated by friends to the cause. Gone was the little baby bed he’d once used, a renovated blacksmith’s forge took its place, where the hot growing drake now dozed atop his amassed horde. Streamers of dark smoke trailed from the more pronounced snout as he snored softly, at least in comparison to other dragon snores she’d heard in years past.

Taking a warm breath of the heavy hot air in the furnace room of the library she once called home, the young alicorn leaned in as near as she wished and whispered tenderly, “Sleep well my number one assistant.”

As if in acknowledgment Spike murmured in his sleep and rolled back over onto his belly wrapping his now lengthy tail around himself, his back facing Twilight.

Taking her leave, Twilight smiled as she mounted the stairs and ascended to the upper levels of the library. Even asleep for over three months Spike was still Spike it seemed, even if he’d nearly doubled in mass and added more than a quarter to his overall length.

Closing the lower and upper doors to the furnace room behind her with a thought the alicorn princess made her way back to the more livable summer heat of the main library above. Not much had changed in the seven plus years since she’d first moved here as she proceeded to the living loft above the main collection rooms.

Passing by the small kitchenette and breakfast nook, Twilight made her way to her former private reading room. She paused a moment as she passed the steps to her old bedroom, placing a hoof on the rail leading up to where her diplomatic protégé now lived. As she removed her hoof she found no trace of dust left behind: Silver Spoon was as fastidious about cleaning as she was about studying.

Entering her former private study with its broad balcony outside, Twilight spotted Silver rubbing her eyes, her blue rimmed glasses resting on the desk atop an open book.

“Silver, have you spent your entire day off studying again?”

Twilight had given the young nearly mare-grown filly the day off to relax before they headed up to the Crystal Empire, at the request of Cadence and Shiny for a conference of the arctic nations before attending the annual Crystal Fair just over a week later.

“Lämpimiä terveisiä, prinsessa, ja ei, en ole.” The silver-gray earth pony blurted as she hopped up from her sitting cushion, bowing as she did.

“Come again?” Twilight’s brow furrowed at the unfamiliar words before offering a forgiving smile to the younger pony as she approached, “and you can drop the formality, I think, were not on official time here.”

“I’m sorry, Twilight, ninety-nine,” Silver’s ears drooped slightly with shame for her error as she straightened herself and retrieved her glasses. “What I said was ‘Warm greetings, Princess, and no, I have not.’ ”

“Didn’t sound like that to me.”

“It was in Renavala, the language of the Reindeer, they’re one of the delegate groups attending the arctic conference.”

“And since when do you speak Reindeer?”

“Since I finished ‘The Foals Guide to the Basics of Renavala’ at about three this morning, I don’t know if I have the enunciation correct, I haven’t had a chance to practice with a fluent speaker.”

Twilight’s face blanked and her jaw dropped at Silver’s explanation.

Give her a day off and what does she do, study all night and teach herself a foreign language. Twilight backed up her thoughts in her head, then smiled inwardly. Of course what would I have done when I was her age, trying to impress Princess Celestia? Stay up all night studying all I could about things.

If for whatever reason Twilight decided, if Silver Spoon didn’t want to continue as diplomat, Twilight would readily recommend her as a private tutor for her niece. That is, if she wasn’t tempted to somehow try to grow a horn on the earth pony’s head first, and teach her magic … though Zebras did magic despite not having horns.

“So,” Twilight let warm encouragement seep into her voice in imitation of Princess Celestia, as she placed a caring wing over Silver’s withers and peered over the tomes spread out on the reading desk. “What are you working on now, advanced Reindeer grammar … ?”

The alicorn princess left her question hanging as she realized what her young apprentice had just been reviewing.

“No, actually I was looking over Diamond’s contract trying to figure out why she ran away from it, actually.”

“Based on what you told me happened outside the spa, I thought it was obvious.”

“It is really. What I can’t figure out is the changes made to the contract a month before the reception.”

Twilight canted her head quizzically as Silver pulled a copy of the contract from under one of several the treaties on Equestrian Marital and Breeding Law.

“Mac made these changes I was told,” Silver continued as she began pointing to the amended clauses in the contract, “he doubled the required number of foals, okay, It’s not unheard of if the match is expected to dissolve immediately afterward. But what I found strange was he dropped the maintenance by half, while choosing to keep custody of the foals until their majority. Most stallions increase the maintenance if they are expected to raise the foals without the dam. Why would he do the opposite? It makes no logical sense, Twilight.”

“I’m a princess Silver, not a psychologist, and I was an introverted unicorn before that. Heck, I didn’t even realize my brother and my foal-sitter were seeing each other until after I got the wedding invitation. What I can tell you is …”

Twilight turned to peer over her shoulder, only to catch a glimpse of a poofy raspberry-pink tail bounding along past the balcony. She knew she had to tell Silver something, but had to tread carefully in doing so. She had sworn a pinkie promise that day in the orchard, all of them had, not to mention what had transpired.

“Big Mac may seem quite unassuming, but he is the most perplexing pony I’ve ever met, other than Pinkie Pie. He’s an enigma wrapped in a question around a riddle with an apple seed in the middle. All I know Silver, is that there is more to him than meets the eye.”

That They May Grow

That They May Grow

The cool breeze of the deepening evening tugged gently at the leaves of the elm tree that stood silent sentry out front of the little country inn. From inside the common room of the Shady Rest Hotel the warm glow of the oil lamps could be seen shining out through the lace curtains, offering their promise of welcome hospitality to those passing by.

Alone in the kitchen though, one young pink mare was anything but soothed by the picturesque scenery so easily viewed through the window above the sink. Diamond Tiara was just finishing up the last of the dinner dishes. The glittering diamond dust of stars that twinkled to life in Princess Luna’s night sky, looking down on the shimmering silver moonlight that brushed the treetops of the nearby woods beyond the window glass gave an ethereal beauty to the scene.

Yet as Diamond looked uneasily out the window she focused her attention on how just beyond the treetops the soft moonlight gave way to the darkness in the forest below, between the trees. Diamond Tiara sighed as she placed the last dish back in the cupboard before taking another look out the window at the darkness. It was a foreboding darkness that lay across the thousands of furlongs between her and her future; a future that lay out there, somewhere, whatever direction that was, and she knew she couldn’t reach it alone.

As the young mare turned from the window, the darkness outside seemed also to have wormed its way inside of her too, slowly caressing her heart with the icy flicks of a windigoe’s tail. Yet, for all her fears, the young mare knew, it was also not going to stop her. Diamond drew in an affirming breath and cleared her mind of its cobwebs of doubt. She was going to be leaving soon enough, her debts here would be cleared in the morning and she would be able to leave this one pony town, and not need to come back.

See now, things aren’t so bad. Diamond looked up at her reflection in the darkened window, the ghostly pink image in the glass looking back at her with familiar sparkling blue eyes. The only difference from the image she knew were the long, bright crimson goat horns that grew from under the edge of the lavender and frost forelock. A little luck doesn’t hurt either now, does it?

Diamond mentally nodded to herself. The arrival in town of the traveling showpony,The Great and Powerful Trixie, had been a timely and fortuitous occurrence. It wasn’t that Diamond didn’t like Hooferville. She actually found the townsfolk quite likeable and very friendly, if only slightly peculiar, but no more so than say, somepony might find Pinkie Pie, peculiar. The townsfolk had also been exceptionally helpful and accommodating. It hadn’t taken more than a day after she had stepped off the train, Diamond recalled, to find both a roof to rent and some odd jobs to try to make ends meet. ‘Try’ unfortunately, was the operative word there. Diamond knew she was already fetlock deep in a growing financial bind, and tying herself tighter by the day, with no way out, no two bales about it.

Some how, Diamond knew she had to get out, and soon, otherwise she might never be able to. As much as she was beginning to feel oddly at home here, it also felt oddly more constraining than even Ponyville ever had. Hooferville had tiny population with no economic niches to be filled or exploited. It really meant there was no future for her here. Well, unless she opted to simply marry some local farmer and spend the remainder of her life locked into a marriage of convenience as some hayseed’s broodmare.

Of course you don’t want that, my precious. Diamond could feel the imp now riding at the base of her crest, slowly stroking the side of her neck as it hissed comfortingly in her ear while she folded the apron she had been wearing over the back of a chair and walked across the kitchen. That’s what your dear daddy, and that sterile sperm slot of a dam wanted for you. The imp changed its tone to a high-pitched taunting imitation of Diamond’s father as it continued. Now see here Diamond, you’ve been a great disappointment to your mother and I. So we’re going to disown you and ship you off to your mother’s cousin’s brothel in Canterlot unless you agree to let Big McIntosh knock you up so we can give your inheritance to the foal.

Diamond ground her teeth hard at the thought. All her aspirations had been torn from her that night in the breeding shed by McIntosh as he deftly ripped the blinders off her, lanced her ego, and cut the tapestry of her dreams to ribbons so she could see the truth of her situation. She hadn’t liked it in the least as Mac had adroitly pointed out to her that she’d been living solely within an egotistical fantasy of her own design. How she’d already lost her father’s favor, and the rights to inherit his business by her own hoof. She sniffled slightly at the memory as the imp gently stroked her crest. She remembered begging McIntosh to just get it over with, and rut her, ravish her, and be done with it.

And he didn’t, did he, the stupid fuck. The imp hissed in her ear, its voice sizzling like butter in a breakfast skillet, hot and ready to burn the unwary foolish hoof. No, he made you give in, debase and deny yourself, crawl your sorry plot over to him and tell him that he was right, and then, only then, did he bother to violate you, take his pleasure from you, make you scream in pain for the pleasure of his sisters and all of those ponies listening outside.

The memories of that night seemed distant, jumbled, and faded as she made her way from the kitchen, through the dining room. Each step felt like she’d gotten tangled in a thorn bush. Prickles of sensation scratched at her coat, and the carpet under her hooves felt like she was walking on burning cinders. She could feel a hot wellspring of anger and hate was bubbling up inside her gut as she slowly walked toward the heavy green curtain that separated the dining room from the hotel lobby where her salvation was patiently waiting. The imp was right, she had to take this chance, she had to give it her all, it was time to do or do not, there was no more try.

It’s not like your going to have to do anything you haven’t done before Diamond. The horned pink homunculus purred with friendly assurance to her as it stretched out leisurely on her back. Sure, her wagon is probably heavier than Bucker’s delivery wagon, but so what, you can handle it. And that other stuff, well that’s the easy part, isn’t it, and you know you like it. You always told Silver how much you liked it.

Diamond stopped in front of the fabric wall and thought back, her negotiations with the unicorn mare had begun on the walk back to the hotel after Trixie’s performance had concluded. She had brought her best negotiation and persuasion skills to bear on the blue unicorn, skillfully and succinctly explaining the benefits of her proposed arrangement to the older mare. Yet somehow Diamond had found herself unprepared for the response she’d gotten. “The Great and Powerful Trixie, does not negotiate on an empty stomach.”

It had actually been after dinner at the Shady Rest, while Mrs. Bridley was putting the girls to bed that Diamond had had a chance to again try her negotiations with the traveling showpony. In the end, though brief, the negotiations had been productive, with an understanding ultimately being reached. If everything went well, The Great and Powerful Trixie would see that Diamond’s debts were cleared before the pair left town in the morning.

In exchange for the showmare’s help, Diamond would assume the role of Trixie’s personal valet and attendant, hauling her wagon from town to town in repayment of the debt. There were conditions the unicorn mare had made though, in the form of some very suggestive insinuations regarding other very ‘personal’ services that would be expected of Diamond, services of a rather intimate nature. Fortunately, Diamond had become rather familiar with most of them from her many slumber parties with Silver. The indiscretions during her apprenticeships, and several cloppy romance novels, had provided the veiled vocabulary to understand the implications the unicorn mare was making.

Come on now, the Imp cooed contentedly from its resting place at the base of Diamond’s mane between her shoulders, you can’t let this chance slip through your hooves. Screw this up and your going to be lifting your tail for some poor sap of a sharecropper for the rest of your life. It’s a small price to pay, don’t deny yourself.

Taking a deep breath of assurance, and with her ego securely behind her, Diamond willed herself to step through the curtain.

* * * * *

The unicorn sat quietly on a dark green settee near the door, alternating occasionally between looking out the window beside the door or perusing the quiet vacancy of the small hotel’s common room-come-lobby. The aqua-blue mare seemed relaxed and at ease. Within her own mind, however, Starlight Charm was writhing harshly under the withering ego lashing of her own self-creation, The Great and Powerful Trixie.

In spite of the serenity of the room Starlight found it disagreeable. It wasn’t an uncommon thing for ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie’ to be displeased with her lot. Starlight regarded practically the whole of the population of Equestria as something that was beneath her, and tonight was no exception. The mental construct and outward identity had been a product of her early days alone. Born of necessity and ego in a tavern in the old miners town of Golden Hoof, which nestled at the foot of the mountain known variously as the Maretterhorn, Marebor, Marenas Tirith, The Queen’s Spire, or most often simply by the name of the wondrous city that grew high up on its slopes, Canterlot.

Starlight gave a small sigh, and veiled it to the outside world in a shroud of impatience. She had been born in Canterlot, a foal of privilege in the unicorn nobility. Her talent for magic had gained her acceptance to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, where her raw potential had been honed under the skill and tutelage of the finest mystical talents anywhere. Perhaps, at one time, there had even been a chance to become the personal protégé of the Grand Dam of the school, Princess Celestia herself.

In the end, an apprenticeship under Celestia was never to be. She had initially lost that honor when she had first arrived at the school to a young filly by the name of Sunset Shimmer, and by the time Sunset had vanished a few years later; it had already been too late for Starlight. By that time she had realized she had fallen into a different, insidious trap of her own parents’ machinations, her sworn betrothal to Gallant Stride.

The sad truth of the matter was, as Starlight saw it, that the old desires for power and control ran every bit as deep and dark in the blood of Equestria’s unicorn nobility as the school foal’s tales said the old crystal caverns did beneath Canterlot itself, and Starlight was certain that they were every bit as twisted.

It had been in her sophomore year at Celestia’s school that she had learned the implications of what had transpired in innocence those years earlier. It had been at an early spring garden party, one held in her honor, in an ivy covered gazebo hung with white lace and streamers, she had been mystically and psychically bonded to Gallant Stride, the son of her parents friends, Gallant Fox and Melodic Step. In her own defense, she had been naïve, and utterly infatuated with Gallant Stride, whom she considered the handsomest colt in Canterlot. Offered by her parents a chance to take her feelings a step further she had consented to a ‘special ceremony’ for the two of them.

What she hadn’t realized, through the blindness of her then rose tinted world, was that she would later on be expected to abandon her studies and become the mare-in-waiting to Melodic Step. All of which, of course, was in preparation for her one day becoming the Dam-of-the-Manor once Gallant stride had earned his commission in the Canterlot Royal Guard. It was a destiny that she had never wanted.

It was through her schooling Starlight had learned to harness and hone her considerable magical talents, and it was here that she had also discovered new ambitions and desires. She thrived on the adoration of others, the chance to show off her capabilities, and demonstrate her superior talents. These were things she had no intentions of setting aside in order to merely oversee the needs of a household, while, in time, providing it with heirs and playing petty social games of posturing at garden parties such events while waiting for her in-laws to expire. Her power was her own, and through it she meant to deny herself nothing that she could attain. So on the last night she spent at the school, she had escaped the senior filly’s dormitory by transmogrifying her bed sheets and a closet rod into a hang glider, while keeping the castle guards chasing their tails, and shadows, with several cunning illusions of her own design.

Starlight let herself settle back a little on the floral print cushion of the small sofa as she took a break from her reminiscences to cast a glance out the window. Outside, the silvery glow of the moonlight fell gently on the leafy crowns of the trees over the hills beyond the railway line. Between the rail line and the hotel’s porch the only things that stirred were the small eddies made by evening breeze in the grass of the yard, the soft rustle of the leaves of the elm out front, and the occasional chirp of a cricket or the flicker of a firefly.

Drawing her eyes from the window view Starlight took a slow look around the front room of the little hotel. The partition curtain had been drawn, closing off the dining room from the lobby, and the hotel’s matron was quietly doing paperwork at the reception counter as an old yellow cat dozed in its basket, out of the way, by the foot of the stair.

The pure saccharine wholesomeness of the setting was enough to make her gag, and the pitiful collection of bits that had decorated the bottom of her tips bucket was enough to fan the ire of ‘Trixie’s’ ego. Still, the reason for her choice to come here had been plainly written on the signpost earlier in that day. Hooferville was 60 furlongs closer to sating her hunger than Bugtussle had been.

The lack of grumbling from her no longer empty belly though spoke volumes of the meal she had partaken of. It had been quality, if rustic, fare: Hayloaf with collard greens, fresh oat bread with apple butter, sweet potato pie, and rice and raisin pudding for dessert. Quite good actually, especially compared to her own limited culinary skills, which she had often supplemented by having to browse and forage along the road, a reality that she loathed.

Of course the best part of the meal was she had not had to pay a solitary bit for it either. The hotel manager had, as Starlight had become accustom to over the course of her travels, extended an invitation for ‘Trixie’ to have dinner at the hotel in gratitude for the show. It was an invitation that Starlight had readily accepted as the hotel manager’s three fillies bounced about asking all manner of questions about the astounding magical feats they had just witnessed.

What Starlight had not expected was the young mare that had introduced herself on the way back to the hotel. Diamond Tiara, the pink pony had called herself and the young mare had gone on to state that she had a business proposition that The Great and Powerful Trixie might find to be of interest. The only thing, however, that Starlight knew that ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie’ wanted at that moment, beyond the adoring praise being heaped on her by the Hotel Manager’s three young fillies, was a full belly.

Still the young mare had been persistent, and had again approached Starlight after dinner had finished, while the hotel manager had gone upstairs to put her daughters to bed. With her hunger pleasantly sated Starlight found herself more willing to hear the young mare’s proposition out. Albeit it was more out of boredom than anything, as the only other conversational opportunities lay with the hotel’s only other guests, a pair of traveling commission-sales ponies who were distinctly not nonpareil.

Starlight turned her gaze back out the window to hide her demeanor as she felt the tug of a smile in the corner of her lip. The thought of how surprisingly easy it had been to lead the conversation with the obviously desperate young mare, tickled the showpony immensely. The pink mare had readily divulged all the details Starlight could want with hardly any prompting. Alone and destitute, the young mare was looking for a means to escape her predicament, not that Starlight cared one copper bit.

What did intrigue her were the answers she had gotten when, for her own amusement, she had started making veiled suggestions of sexual services, and the pink mare had acknowledged in kind, to up-the-ante, as the term went. Starlight had found the negotiations becoming an erotic duel of innuendos and subtle suggestive hints. With her own estrous fueled arousal becoming unmanageable she had finally gotten Diamond to name terms.

Now, Starlight was no stranger to filly fooling. Her time in the dorms at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns had provided for a select, if illicit, education as some of the young mares ‘helped’ each other deal with the urges of their early estrous experiences. Starlight had also, since abandoning Canterlot those many years ago, dallied with stallions, mares, fillies, and colts, some were better than others, many worse. Not that she cared for any of them; they were all a means to an end one way or another.

She had even once, drunkenly, bedded a griffon a few years ago, on a dare from her companion at the time who was a griffoness herself. It was the last time Starlight had ever bragged ‘whatever you can do I can do better’. The experience had been more painful than having paid for the shelter offered by the barkeeper who had found her hiding in the back room of his establishment with her virginity, and while not in season either, following her flight from Canterlot. Griffons, though far less endowed than ponies, had two sexual secrets of note Starlight had discovered. The first was though they spent themselves quickly they recovered just as fast, and were capable of a dozen or more climaxes in an evening. The second, and easily the most insidious, were the backwards-facing barbs lining the males shaft behind the head of his anatomy. The memory made Starlight cringe, the sensation of being rutted with a bottlebrush while getting a talon massage from withers to flank was one that Starlight knew she’d never forget, along with Gilda’s squawking laughter the next day.

In the end though her sexual follies mattered not one bit. Every casual encounter, every twisted debauchery, had it’s purpose for Starlight, and that was to spit in the metaphorical eye of her parents, her would be in-laws, and Gallant Stride. Her life and her body were hers, and hers alone, and nopony would keep her from her rightful destiny, not even the creepy old voice in that thrice Tartarus damned Alicorn Amulet.

Her encounter with the Alicorn Amulet had nearly been her total undoing Starlight knew now. She had originally sought out the arcane necklace to facilitate an act of revenge for her humiliation in Ponyville. Finally she succeeding in tracing it to the back alleys of Canterlot’s merchant’s district. What a jape, that had been, one of the most powerful artifacts in all Equestria and beyond and it had been resting under Celestia’s muzzle for years. Even Sunset Shimmer had not sought after the piece, in spite of her ambitions. Starlight remembered asking Sunset about it during an Artifacts and Archeology class at CSGU.

“It’s not real power.” Sunset had told her. “Besides, I’m already an alicorn inside, I just have to find a way to make it happen.”

To Starlight, Sunset’s answer was simply self indulgently arrogant; power was power after all, who cared about its providence. More was always preferable to less as Starlight saw it.

Oh how Starlight had discovered just how wrong she was on that. Whatever lay dormant in that amulet, it was not meant for pony kind, nor did it bode well for it. From the moment she had closed the latch she could feel her power magnifying, along with her resentment of Twilight Sparkle, Celestia, and others. But as time passed she could feel the shadowy presence in the necklace slowly smothering her, replacing her with its nameless self. All that the thing wanted was power, utter domination of the known world and beyond, and ... its horn. *

Starlight gave a small impatient snort of derision. She had been so grateful when Twilight had tricked her free of the foul thing, she had sworn to her rival-come-benefactor in gratitude to reform her ways. ‘The Humble and Apologetic Trixie’ had died one lonely night not long thereafter, strangled by Starlight’s realization of how Twilight and her friends had tricked her. Not through the ‘magic of friendship’, but though a vile deceptive con. Twilight and her friends had manipulated her just as Starlight remembered her own parents had manipulated her into that sworn betrothal. Through lies and deception.

Starlight turned her gaze to the top of the stairs where she could see the ghostly mental projection of Gallant Stride beckoning to her, encouraging her to give into the rising throb of her heat, bend her will to the desires of their parents, discard her dreams and desires into his embrace. Starlight ground her teeth and closed her eyes, drawing in a stabilizing breath.

She would never give into those urges, those lies, and the damned will of her parents to control her. Machneighavelli taught that there were those who had knowledge of power, and those that did not, and those that thought they did; players and pieces. Starlight Charm was a player, not a piece to be played with, like those unicorn fan-colt twits, Spits and Drools, or whatever their names were from Ponyville that had followed her around like lost puppies.

As Starlight looked back to the upper landing of the stairs as the image of Gallant Stride faded from her vision before a rustle from the curtain at the bottom of the stairs drew her attention as Diamond Tiara entered the room.

Starlight smiled at the sight of the young pink mare as she entered the room. Diamond Tiara was a piece like so many others to Starlight, and a pitiful one at that, alone, destitute, and desperate. Fifteen bits was a woefully small price to sell one’s self for, and it made the pink mare all the more pitiful and foolish in Starlight’s view. Starlight would get her satisfaction from this piece, sate the urges of her flesh, and in time discard the pink pony when she either became too problematic or dreary a presence. In the end, Starlight was only interested in looking out for one pony, herself.

“Ah, good. You’re finally done here?” Starlight beamed charmingly at the tired looking young mare. “I hope you aren’t too tired, there’s a few contractual ‘details’ I believe need to be attended to before we leave in the morning, and 'The Great and Powerful Trixie' does not like to be kept waiting.”

The pink mare said nothing. Her head hung low and her muzzle pointed dejectedly at the ground in exhaustion, her unresponsiveness scraping Starlight’s horn the wrong way.

“Did you not hear me?” Starlight bolstered her voice to a more firm and assertive tone. “Are you ready to attend to your responsibilities toward The Great and Powerful Trixie? The Great and Powerful Trixie requires an answer.”

Starlight was practically glowing with giddiness inside as he trembling pink mare slowly lifted her head to address her new mistress, give her affirmation and complete her subjugation. The soft voiced answer felt like the roar of an ursa major in Starlight’s ears.

“No.”

* * * * *

To Diamond Tiara, it seemed as if the voice that spoke belonged to somepony else, and had sent the little ego imp in her mind into a howling unholy fury at the unseen source of it. It was in that moment, as she saw the expression on The Great and Powerful Trixie’s face, that Diamond realized who had spoken, and she knew why.

You’re a strong pony Diamond, and you need to start doing what’s right, not what’s easy. I never wanted you to deny yourself, only to be true to what you were inside, and know I believe in you.

Like some abstract puzzle the words of the stallion who had let her bite his leg bloody to stifle her scream as he had first covered her suddenly fit together and Diamond saw the true image. She had nearly done what she had done before, try to take the easy way out, to scheme and counter scheme, lie and maneuver, and let her lazy, greedy, imp-atient ego lead her blindly into folly because she thought she was better than others.

“What did you say?” the shocked unicorn cut back verbally as she recovered from her initial shock.

“I said ‘no’.” Diamond repeated with a genteel calm and politeness as she lifted her head up with a swelling feeling of pride in herself. She now knew what she was speaking to as she fixed the blue unicorn mare firmly in her gaze. Diamond could feel the growing sensation inside herself, a building, strengthening feeling crystallizing into her very core, as she stared down the older unicorn there at the threshold with the darkness looming beyond the doorway. She was speaking to an embodiment of her own possible fate, a self righteous, arrogant, manipulative, outcast that looked down on others like the scrapings off the bottom of her hoof. A fate that was inviting her down a path of darkness that she’d never find her way back from.

“No?” The azure enchantress lofted whimsically, though now Diamond could now see the burning distain that lay deep in the other mare’s eyes.

“Eeyup. No.”

The Great and Powerful Trixie's expression soured. “I thought you told me you wanted to leave this pitiful excuse for a village because you made a mistake by coming here, that there was no future for you here, only destitution.”

The cold hard words sank deep into Diamond’s heart, for sadly they were the very words she had used earlier in pleading her case to the traveling showpony, and she was ashamed of them.

“It’s true, I made a mistake in order to come here.” Diamond sniffed sadly, turning her head ashamedly aside a moment, before turning back as she felt her heart surge and spit the coldness from itself. “But, I haven’t made a mistake by being here.”

The unicorn’s face took on an expression of total confusion, her jaw working but no sound for a moment before answering.

“Fine,” The Great and Powerful Trixie bit back as recovered herself and thrust her snout in the air as she turned her flank on Diamond, haughtily adding, “suit yourself. Stay here and starve, or sell your sorry hide to whoever might deign to throw a few bits at you, it’s no hair off my tail.”

“Nnope.” Diamond exhaled softly under her breath as she watched the hotel’s door open and close itself on the mental command of the departing unicorn as she strode off into the darkness. Only when Diamond was certain the other pony was gone did she take a moment to bask in the warm light of the room that surrounded her, drawing in an assuring breath that she had done the right thing.

“Are you all right Diamond?” Mrs. Bridley asked, prompting Diamond to turn to where the hotel’s owner was still seated behind the reception desk. “I thought you said you’d be leaving with Trixie in the morning.”

“I’ll be fine, Mrs. Bridley.” Diamond smiled at the older earth pony mare. “I just won’t be leaving as soon as I expected.”

“I see, but didn’t you once tell me that things weren’t going so well for you here and you needed to find a better way to earn a living? I mean it’s rightly obvious your special talent isn’t exactly hauling carts or doing dishes, not that Mr. Bucker and I haven’t minded the help.”

Diamond smiled warmly at her landlady as she walked over to the reception desk, “I know, my daddy is Filthy Rich, the owner of Barnyard Bargains, and I used to think my cutie mark meant I had the ability to get my own way all the time and lord it over other ponies. I know I was wrong now.”

“So if your daddy is so all fired rich, why are you scraping by doing odd jobs in a two pony town like this?” The country mare mused to Diamond.

“I made some mistakes with my life and tried to run from the consequences of them. Only I couldn’t run from them because I took my problems with me and left the ponies that could help me behind.” Diamond leaned over the counter as she finished and gave Mrs. Bridley an affectionate rub of the cheek with her own.

The older mare smiled as she returned the friendly gesture of the younger mare. “So what are you going to do now?”

“Well,” Diamond said as she settled a smile sparkling with confidence on her face, “If you could spare me a piece of paper and a pen, I‘d like to get started on making things right.”

“So will you be looking to move out of that old shed and let me put you into a proper room then?”

“Thank you, but no.” Diamond answered her landlady’s offer a genuine smile of appreciation gracing her lips as she did. “I actually would feel better staying where I am for now, it just feels … right some how. But if my plan works out, I’d like to reserve a room for a weekend, about three weeks from now.”

“Of course you can, Diamond,” Mrs. Bridley smiled as she passed the paper and pen to Diamond, “which one?”

* * * * *

Dawn had not yet broken across Equestria, though Luna’s moon had surrendered its place in the sky that Celestia’s sun would soon rise to take its place. It was that neither day nor night time known as twilight. For Applejack though, it only meant the ending of another sleepless night.

Wearily, she raised her left hoof to her muzzle, touching it lightly, though she did not yawn. In the two weeks since Diamond had fled town AJ had not had a good night’s sleep. It wasn’t the talking down her brother had given her when he’d found her drunkenly celebrating Diamond’s departure in the farm yard, or the hoof in the nose that Apple Bloom had punctuated things with after Mac had stormed off.

No, it was what she’d seen as Apple Bloom had run off to the family grove afterward. Standing by the gate of the small gallery grove where the past members of the Apple family living here in Ponyville were laid to their final rest she had seen the specters of her parents, tears of shame and sadness in their eyes. It was in that moment that she had realized what she had done.

A lone tear made its way from AJ’s emerald green eye down to the end of her nose where it fell off into the grass between her parents’ graves. It had taken her days to build up the courage at first to sit before her parents’ graves and plead for forgiveness.

It hadn’t worked so far. It was as if not just her parents, but all her ancestors were shunning her, and that had only made the hurt grow worse. Every night she could see the shame and scorn on her late parents’ faces in her dreams, and each morning dawn had found her sitting before the stone markers in the family grove with no answer to her pleas.

This morning though, Applejack hoped different. A spark of inspiration had come to her last evening and she had gone to Granny Smith for advice.

“Ma, Pa,” the orange mare began, she had rarely gotten past adding ‘I’m sorry’, but this time the words flowed freely, “I’m really sorry for how I acted. I was selfish, stubborn, and stone headed. I let my pride drive a young mare from the hospitality of our home that you so offered in life. I had no right to do so. I know that you forgive me, and I realize that it’s not your forgiveness I’m seeking, but my own. My fool's pride drove me from the family that I sought to protect, and now I must prove to myself that I‘m worthy of the family I nearly lost. So I ask for your blessing on this undertaking. Please.”

As the first gleam of sunlight crept through the orchards and into the sacred stillness of the graveyard grove Applejack could feel the warmth of two ponies beside her, one on each side, hugging her from beyond.

As the tired mare got to her hooves she placed her favorite Stetson back on her head, and reached for the dull envelope she had placed atop her mother’s marker, tucking it carefully back under her hat. The path to forgiveness was a hard road to walk, especially alone, and Applejack knew she was alone no longer.

Author's Note

* Last known location somewhere in the arctic north, in the vicinity of the Crystal Empire.

One horn to rule them all, one amulet to find them, one spell to bring them all, and with the shadow's power, bind them. - Tome of Tirek, a.k.a. The Book of Shadow.

Proud

Proud

The bright July sun slowly warmed the ground as McIntosh stepped to the rear of the wagon to give his aging siredam a helping hoof down while his sister unloaded the baggage over the sideboard.

“Thank y’, McIntosh.” The old green swayback earth pony mare smiled at her grandson. The yellow and orange flower print shawl about her shoulders shivered slightly as she steadied her old legs back on the ground.

“Eeyup.” The big red work pony nodded back. “You’re welcome.”

“C’mon, Granny Smith, we need to get you on the train and settled. It’s going t’ be a long ride,” the young orange mare urged as she lifted the two sets of apple-motif embroidered saddlebags onto her own back. Saddlebags settled, she picked up a pale-brown, well used, rounded suitcase with a well weathered lariat loop stitched into one lower corner. Inside the loop, if one looked carefully, the faded initials O.B. could still be seen.

The two pony siblings escorted the elderly family matriarch onto the station platform. McIntosh walked Granny Smith to the door of the coach, seeing that she didn’t stumble as she crossed the gap from platform to car as she stepped aboard, as Applejack handed off their baggage to the purser at the baggage car further down. With the elder pony safely aboard and the conductor lending a helping hoof to see her to her seat, McIntosh turned his attention to where his sister was trotting up jauntily, her own saddlebags still across her back.

McIntosh shifted his position slightly at his sister’s approach, barring her path to the coach door. The years of experience as siblings let her know that he had something he needed to speak with her about, and she slowed to a halt as she reached the spot where he stood.

“Mac,” Applejack opened, inviting him into the conversation with her easy and familiar tone.

“Are you sure about this, AJ?” Mac asked softly, leaning in towards his sister who kept a fair distance between them by lowering her head slightly such that the brim of her Stetson touched the end of his muzzle. He’d been toying with how to broach the subject ever since she had made her will known at the dinner table just over a week ago, having caught both him and Apple Bloom more than a bit by surprise with her announcement. Now, with just moments to spare before she stepped on the train, he simply went with the basics.

“Ah’m sure, big brother.” Applejack raised her head, offering a small, but loving and genuine, if sad, smile as a stray ray of sunshine glanced off a window and into her emerald eyes setting them a glitter. “I’ve had a long talk with Ma ‘n’ Pa in my heart, and I know that this is what I need to do. We Apples have always been about family, and I guess in all my zeal for that family I somehow lost sight of what that means to us somewhere, I couldn’t see the orchard for the apple trees so to speak.”

McIntosh nodded sagely, and knew what she meant. He’d seen her every morning for over a week, strangely up before he was, sitting in front of their parents’ graves in the ‘family grove’ near the entrance to the main orchard. Often he’d approached quietly, out of concern for her, only to hear her sniffling quietly and murmuring ‘I’m sorry.’ He’d respectfully given her her space. He’d often gone to the grove for his own reasons, or to great-grandad’s walnut grove near the edge of the Everfree*, when he needed to take those moments to listen to the wisdom of his ancestors. It wasn’t often his headstrong younger sister showed her philosophical side, but that fact she had her moments just reaffirmed to him that Apples didn’t fall far from the tree.

“So you’re sure about this.”

“Eeyup,” Applejack flashed a wry smirk in reply, “and I know that even if this turns out to be a mistake, I’ve got friends and family I can come back to who will be there to help me through it.”

“Eeyup,” Mac echoed.

“So, as long as we’re on the subject, what did you see in …” Applejack paused as she struggled with herself for a moment, the words not wanting to come out right.

“Diamond?” Mac finished for her.

“Yeah,” AJ swallowed hard before finishing, “… Diamond.”

“I’ll be honest with you AJ, …”

“Is there any other way for an Apple to be?” the blonde-maned farmpony ribbed him as she gave him a friendly chuck in the shoulder with a well groomed hoof.

McIntosh smiled at his sister’s remark as he continued, “I don’t rightly know, it took a bit of thinking right there that morning, but I guess when I thought about it I saw something that reminded me a of a ‘little princess’ I once knew, who lived in an enchanted wood, and who was a little hard to get along with at times …”

“I was not …” Applejack began defensively, only to haul up on her own reins before she went any farther.

McIntosh said nothing, and merely gave his sister a wry half grin, watching as she tumbled her thoughts around in her head before she replied. “You think, Mac?”

“I know.”

A sharp double blast from the train’s whistle broke the isolation of the moment for the two ponies as the conductor called out, “All ‘board!”

“Well then, take care of the castle, my good Ser.” Applejack smiled at her brother before rearing slightly to throw her forelegs around his neck and giving him a mighty hug, “… and your lady as well.”

Mac hugged her back with one leg before she broke it off and hopped aboard the outbound train with a final wave, which he merrily returned, along with his parting words.

“As you wish.”

* * * * *

Not the way I planned it.

This is not the way I planned it.

The mantra repeated itself over and over in Diamond Tiara’s head in time with the clickity-clack of the train’s wheels on the rails as it wound its way through the Equestrian countryside. No, this was not how she had planned things at all. Her plan had been in the letter she’d sent to McIntosh the day after her epiphany in the lobby of the Shady Rest Hotel.

In the letter she’d told him about her realization, and how she wanted to proceed in light of it. She had told him how she would like him come out and join her in Hooferville at the end of the month, for the weekend, before returning with her to Ponyville. Diamond sighed softly to herself as she watched the countryside whiz past outside the train car window, whiz by like the last three weeks had.

She had wanted to have him alone, in a place she felt safe, when she made her confession. Her confession, the pink near mare-grown filly mulled the words over in her mind. Confessions and apologies, that was something she was going to be doing a lot of in the next while, she figured, and she’d wanted to start with him. There were so many ponies that she had snubbed over the years, enough she knew she couldn’t remember them all. So many misdeeds …

Easy there girl, a voice inside her offered as a phantom hoof softly stroked the base of her crest, no sense digging yourself a pity pit to wallow in now, is there?

No, there wasn’t any sense in that, Diamond had to agree with herself as she tried to focus on the reflection in the train car window. Very faintly she could see, if she tried, the image of the tiny pink mare sitting contentedly the base of her mane. It looked like a miniature version of herself, even down to the five-arched silver tiara on its head matching the one Diamond had ‘left behind’ in Ponyville. The only real difference beyond size, and corporeality, was the battered golden circlet, with one fractured section taped back into place, that hung rather lopsided above its head.

I guess not. Diamond though to herself.

Of course not, the mini-mare yawned as she snuggled down into the luscious frost and lavender locks of Diamond’s mane. Now, you’ve got things to do, but I’ll be right here if you need me.

Diamond could almost hear the muffled grumble of disapproval from somewhere back in the darker reaches of herself, where the little imp, the other half of her conscience, sat sullenly with its muzzle stuck in a corner like a scolded foal. Diamond smiled inwardly at the image of the sulking homunculus. She knew she’d never be rid of the little imp as much as the imp now realized it could never be rid of its benevolent twin, or the fact that Diamond was now in charge of both of them.

Changing her line of thought, the young mare shifted her position on the seat so she could lean against the window. As she did so, a happy metallic clink of coin on coin, many of them if fact, could be noticed quietly emanating from her saddlebags as her flank nudged against them. When McIntosh’s unfortunate reply, that he would not be able to make it out to Hooferville as she’d asked, had arrived just over a week ago; there had also been a package that he’d sent to go along with the letter, in addition to a copy of the stud contract as she’d requested.

Diamond had many a time over the last few weeks had kicked herself for not reading the contract before signing it. Even now, there were so many questions that hadn’t been answered having read the damnable document. But it was all in the past now, she’d trusted her father to treat her like his little princess as he always had. She’d naively expected her father to clean up her messes and to keep letting her do as she wanted. Well, this time she had run into genuine adult size consequences to her filly bred machinations, and it was nopony’s fault but her own. She’d befouled her apprenticeship opportunities, lost her right to inherit her family’s business, and if being placed as a contract broodmare to some overworked sharecropper was to be her fate, well, she at least she could make sure she got the pick of the litter if nothing else.

But, that wasn’t the case entirely; there was something about McIntosh that didn’t add up, something that definitely did not add up at all from what she’d seen. It was that… that intangible, nagging, something about him that had kept the gears in her head turning ever since she’d left Ponyville in that horrid rush just over a month ago.

That first night together in the little breeding shed that earth ponies chose to call a ‘Love Shack’ he had been … well, not what she’d expected at all, and it bugged her. If he’d just sauntered in and mounted her like she’d expected, taken her brusquely and roughly like Applejack had wanted, and made her scream like the crowd of revelers gathered outside had been hoping… If that had happened she’d never have considered coming back after having run away. But it didn’t.

Instead he’d been, if she had to pick a word now, she guessed it have to be reluctant. His first stop after entering the shed had been not her, but the side bar. Even when she had begged, cajoled, and goaded him to just get it over with, he hadn’t. He did slap her flank hard enough to get her to yelp and bring a cheer from the gathered eavesdroppers outside, and when she’d slapped him back once he’d let her go, he had been the one to apologize. Even more, she recalled, he’d said he deserved it, though she now regretted having slapped him.

Then the conversation had begun. Choices and consequences, she recalled, had been the initial topic. He’d peeled her psyche like an onion, or perhaps, as she now thought, an apple. She’d had to admit he was right; with every point he’d made as he slowly pared her to the metaphorical bone that night, he’d been right. But there had been something else, too, in the course of that conversation she was now slowly realizing, and it was not in what he’d said, but in what he’d done.

He’d been in control.

Clam, collected, calculating, even distant, yet in no way cold. He had been in total control of himself, and her, that night. It didn’t matter how reluctant he might have been to use any of it, the simple fact was that he had had it, achieved it, with almost no effort that she could deduce. In fact he hadn’t used it, except to encourage her to be aware of her situation, to realize the consequences of her actions, and choose how she would accept the consequences of the choices she still had to make. In the end she’d chosen remain in the shed, to accept him, and the contract. Diamond smiled to herself as the conductor called out the upcoming stop. She remembered telling him when it came time for her to again pick her fate ‘I choose the contract.’ It wasn’t true; she’d accepted him that night, not the contract.

As the train settled to a halt Diamond rose and placed her saddle bags on her back, the coins in the left bag shifting and clinking as she did so. The package that had McIntosh had sent along with the letter and contract, Diamond smiled at the thought, had contained two-hundred neatly rolled bits, and after all her expenses and debts, and the one way ticket to Ponyville, she still had just over one hundred bits left. It had been tempting to splurge on herself with the windfall, but she had opted not to. Well, mostly not. There had been a little candy run she’d made, parentally approved of course, to Bucker’s Store with Mrs. Bridley’s three fillies for peppermints, redhots, and taffy.

Her saddlebags in place, Diamond made her way to the coach door, her head high and level, back straight, and her stride measured, proud and strong. A curtain of steam from the engine billowed by as she reached the door. For a moment she could see McIntosh waiting on the platform before the cloud obscured him. Undeterred, Diamond stepped from the coach door onto the platform, straight into the crushing arms of a massive raspberry and periwinkle quartropus.

“Ooooohhh, you’re back, you’re back, you’re back!” it shrieked with unbounded glee as it elatedly and powerfully tried to squeeze the living essence out of Diamond.

“Puh …” Diamond gasped for air against the ever tightening grip enveloping her.

“We were all so worried about you after you ran away, and your parents were so, so, so, sad, especially your mother. I was so worried about her, and you …”

“Pi …”

“And then you sent that letter, and …”

“PINKIE!” Diamond managed to finally call out, and the bruising grip abruptly ceased, the azalea amoeba withdrawing its pseudopods and reverting to its normal appearance.

“What?” the party pony par-extraordinaire quirped cocking her head to one side as if to ask ‘what’s wrong with a hug?’

Diamond just ignored the comment focusing instead on the big red form of McIntosh as her muzzle wrinkled into a scowl and her furrowing brow pinched her crystal blue eyes into gleaming daggers of deadly intent. Across the platform, the scarlet stallion drew his head back nervously, green eyes widening at her visible display of ire.

Easy there girl, a faint voice whispered from somewhere behind her ear, best hoof forward. If he’s the stallion you suspect he is there’s probably a reason, right?

Diamond relaxed herself, exhaling her rage in a soft breath that dissipated in the platform air with the last of the wisps of steam from the locomotive.

“Pinkie Promise, right?” Diamond offered with a soft and genuinely brilliant smile to the big red colt as he approached. She watched his own shock melting back into the gentle placid form that so many knew him for.

“Eeyu— ”

“Of course silly filly,” Pinkie cut off Mac’s reply, “as soon as he’d told us that he’d gotten a letter from you saying you were safe, I made him Pinkie Promise to tell me that if you ever mentioned when or if you might be coming back that he had to tell me …”

Diamond slowly tuned out the ongoing ramble of the party pony as explanations and qualifiers were spliced and added on to one another as the perky pink pony continued on and on. Diamond shot a pained glance at McIntosh silently asking ‘How do we turn it off?’

* * * * *

McIntosh took in the pained expression of exasperation Di gave him, and he felt for her. This was definitely not what the young mare was expecting on her return, most certainly not. She had told him in her brief final letter from Hooferville that she’d be taking an afternoon train back to Ponyville from Pretty Colt Junction, and would be arriving near dusk. She had also explicitly asked him in the letter not to tell anypony else that she was coming. Unfortunately, as Mac had already known, Di had been too late to buy in on that hand, as Pinkie had already extracted her promise from him earlier to tell her. But, he had made sure when he had learned of Diamond’s impending return to extract a promise from the pink party pony, prior to telling her, to keep the knowledge to herself, and she had.

Still, he couldn’t let Diamond’s silent plea for assistance go unheeded, and a quick glance up and down the platform brought him the information he needed.

“Um, Pinkie,” he began in a soft easy tone, “where are the foals?”

The pink pony’s plethora of perky prattle ceased instantaneously. Mac watched as a small muscle twitch made its way from the base of her tail up the ridge of Pinkie’s spine causing a subtle shift in her mane as the hairs at the base rose to attention. Pinkie always said of her ‘Pinkie Sense’ that it was something beyond her control, but this was the one ability that Mac knew to be an exception to the rule, and it was called ‘Find the Foals’.

Pinkie’s head snapped up, almost telescopically atop her neck, eyes wide and ears scanning intently as she panned the station platform before fixing on the location of the wayward siblings, and she was gone in a shot.

Diamond gave another small sigh of relief as she got to her hooves from where she’d been unceremoniously released from Pinkie’s welcome back hug and rapid departure.

“Hello, McIntosh,” she addressed him. Her voice was articulate and even, poised and purposeful. It was a pleasure to hear it again. But as she spoke, he could see a shiver ripple beneath her well brushed coat, her poise melting somewhat as her ears dipped slightly, tired more than anything, it told him. Her eyes held steady on his though, and through them he could see signs of the growth occurring within.

“No, no, no, you two,” Pinkie chided the twins as she walked by, her head lowered in reproach of the pair so her muzzle was in line with Pound and Pumpkin’s rumps as she herded the twin terrors of Sugarcube corner off the platform. “We do not try to mail our baby sister to Abu Dhabi, ever, no matter how cute they are. Kapiche?”

Diamond’s head turned as she and Mac watched as Pinkie marched the pair down the platform steps past him and Diamond. On Pinkie‘s back was a large cardboard box, and in the box none other than the most recent addition to the Cake family, Velvet Cake, rode like some eastern sultana atop a pink elephant. The crayon scrawl on the side of the box reading; “One little sister: To Abu Dha-”

The little, deep chocolate-red earth pony foal, with her two-tone silver and frost mane complimenting her golden honey-brown eyes, just glanced about smiling like the grand marshal of some parade, looking sweet as sugar and cute as a kitten. She was going to be a guaranteed heartbreaker when she grew up by almost universal concurrence. Of course, that was provided her older siblings didn’t accidentally succeed in mailing her to a foreign nation at some point.

“It’s good to see you, Diamond.” Mac turned his attention back to the mare in front of him, a smile of pleasure and relief in accompaniment of the words.

“Mac, I …” Diamond began, but Mac cut her off with a subtle but firm shake of his head.

“Not here, please. How about we talk over dinner?”

Mac watched as Diamond mulled the request a moment then answered, “Eeyip,” a warm and wily smile spreading across her muzzle as she spoke. Mac smiled back and gestured with a hoof for her to lead the way off the platform.

As they made their way from the station, Mac noted that Diamond slowed her pace and shifted her position, allowing him to come up alongside her and actually overtake her. Diamond adopted a close place of a neck’s length trail to his right side, as she seemed to try to hide herself from one side, shielded by his greater bulk from the setting sun.

“So what’s for dinner?” her voice was soft enough to carry only to him and he turned his head slightly to yield her greater attention. “I’d really love some of Granny Smith’s apple dumplings with oats and blackstrap. Oh wait, it’s Friday, Applejack usually does the cooking …, uhm, carrot and sweet potato casserole?”

“Nnope, and nnope.”

“Umm, Apple Bloom usually cooks on Thursdays, you’re usually out in the orchards every day until nearly meal time …, so I’m making dinner?”

“Nnope,” Mac gave a single chuff of amusement, “Granny and AJ left for Manehatten this morning. AB and the girls took the Crusaders on a campout over to Beaver’s Bend, and I’d be a right big fly collector of a meadow muffin if I were to make you cook dinner right after getting off the train.”

“Yeah,” Diamond interjected her bemused agreement, “you would at that.”

“I thought we might eat out tonight,” Mac finished as he leaned in to offer a friendly nudge to her ear with the tip of his nose only to have her shift away from him before he could, a wary expression in her eye.

“Actually, a hayburger and fries would be really nice right now.” Diamond brought herself to a halt as she spoke and glanced about cautiously at the area of town they were now in, “but Hayburger is on the East side of town and we’re … heading for the North side.”

“Eeyup,” Mac tossed his head confidently, flashing a grin of approval at Diamond’s deductive awareness so far. She was learning, it seemed, to look with her mind and not just her eyes.

“The only restaurant up this way is … the one at The Lucky Clover.”

“Eeyup.” Mac smiled and nodded as Di made the connections, though something in the tone of the last words didn’t speak of confidence in them.

“Well then,” Diamond’s voice took on a higher air to it, “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t spend all of the bits you sent.”

McIntosh felt his mental apple cart bounce hard in a rut at Diamond’s statement, but he held his composure and resisted the urge to facehoof. Did she really think he expected her to pay? He just looked at her blankly as she seemed to weigh the bottom of the bag with the end of her nose. He could hear the bits clinking, probably around a hundred if he was right.

“Hmm,” she sniffed without looking at him.

Sweet Celestia’s sorbet colored tail, Mac thought as he felt a phantom smack upside the back of his head, she actually did.

Still got some work to do there, eh Bucko? Came the voice from a devilishly dapper dressed, horns included, miniature image of himself in a black suit and opera cape now sitting on the left hame ball** of his yoke.

Aw shut it, ya horny goat-brain, of course he knows he’s got work to do. How’s she supposed to know stuff she hasn’t had a chance to learn yet? Retorted a voice from the right, where a second self image wrapped in a flowing white toga now sat, halo above its head.

Nut’s to that, all she had to do was bring the hot buns for the sausage party when she signed that contract. Ooh yeah, and what sweet buns they be ... The darksider exalted lasciviously, rubbing his hooves together as he did.

Um, Sam? The toga wearer addressed his counterpart uneasily.

What Ralph?

I think we’re pissing the boss off.

Both homunculi paused a moment and looked at their parent form with trepidation.

Eeyup, Mac mentally affirmed as the pair shot a quick glance at each other before diving out of sight.

“This should be more than enough actually.” Diamond’s voice drew Mac’s mind back into the moment.

“Nnope.” Mac stopped her.

“Oh come on McIntosh, Daddy never paid more than 180 for three of us, including tip. It’s not like it’s the Silver Cup tearoom in Canterlot. If we split dessert we’ll easily be under 100 for two of us.”

Mac watched as Diamond finished her explanation, sure of herself in her assessment. Mac had to agree, the math was sound, as was the reasoning. It was the pretext, though, that was flawed.

“Nnope.”

“And why not?” Diamond moved around to face him head on. He could hear the confusion in her voice as the timbre rose with it. He could also see the tension growing in her posture, along with the formative scowl on her face as her tail swished uneasily. “I hope you didn’t plan on getting me drunk and taking advantage of me tonight.” the near mare-grown filly off-hoofedly sniped at him, “I’m only drinking water if that was your plan, so it won’t work.”

When Diamond had started in Mac had been bracing for a prolonged storm of words. The ensuing tempest was shorter than he had guessed. Her body language still said ‘ticked’ though, but the steady gleam in her eyes and her even breathing said ‘I’m waiting to hear you out’. He needed to answer.

“Nnope.”

Mac watched as a wave of tension made its way from Diamonds withers to her rump, the muscles tightening to her increasing frustration, her frown of disapproval tightening into a taught line of displeasure. Mac watched the change pass over Diamond but it was in her eyes that the dancing sparks within finally exploded as her temper finally tore through her calm.

“Nnope? Nnope!? What in the name of Nightmare Moon is that supposed to mean you thick-headed, scruffy looking, applebucker!?”

Mac took an easy breath of the evening air, letting the calm pass through him as Diamond simmered silently in front of him. Her beautiful toned form was still trembling from the outburst as she stood there her eyes fixed to him, brilliant blue and diamond hard. The embers of rage were slowly fading, but still present, full of hot glittering emotion ready to catch fire at a moment. He knew he had her full attention as her breathing remained strong and even, and not hot and ragged from rage.

“It means, Diamond,” Mac began, channeling a deep soothing calm into his tone, “that I did not expect you to have to pay for dinner, not even half, and never did. I’m sure you have a number of other questions as well. However,” he paused to glance off-angle at the approaching sunset, recalling the date and noting the angle to the horizon as he did, “the reservation I made at The Lucky Clover is in about ten minutes from now, and I’d prefer to continue this conversation at that time.”

Diamond just stood there, the tension trembling inside her as Mac moved to step past her, before pausing.

“One more thing,” he moved his head in close to hers, his voice trimmed, soft and gentle. “I’m sorry I made you lose your temper, Sugarplum.” And with that he planted a soft peck on her forehead just below her forelock and turned back up the street towards the Hotel Restaurant.

* * * * *

Diamond’s rump hit the ground hard. Her rage, tension, and frustration draining away like the rush of a dam burst, washing the strength from her legs. All she could do was stare as McIntosh calmly walked on towards The Lucky Clover Inn.

You get back here you contemptible sack of road-apples! How dare you manipulate us like that! I’m gonna castrate you, you ass, and use your nuts for a hacky sack! The red horned imp stepped from between Diamond’s forelegs, head tilted down to place its horns aggressively at the fore, pawing the dirt as it did.

Well, I have to agree with you on that; that was rather rude. The halo wearer stepped from behind Diamond’s tail. Hardly the way to treat a lady, but maybe there’s …

Aw shut your cake hole you prissy pink powder-puff, he’s a penniless sack of mule crap and the whole town knows it.

Enough, both of you. Diamond stared down at her two ego imps, and You, Diamond fixed her attention on the darker half of the pair, corner. Now!

Rude, slightly, Diamond had to admit regarding Mac, but he was aware of it and she knew it, he apologized after all. He was just showing her he was still in control, just like the night in the shed. And once again, like in the shed, he was offering to help her, and now she had to step up and accept if she chose. Diamond got to her hooves, giving herself a shake and feeling her confidence growing again as she brought her head up, squaring her shoulders. She put her best hoof forward as she set off after him.

She caught up to him just as they reached the edge of The Lucky Clover’s outdoor patio.

“Ah ha, Monsieur McIntosh,” Haute Cuisine, the restaurant’s Ariégeois owner, beamed as he finished wiping one of the tables, giving a friendly duck of his head to the larger pony, “jeust in time. I have your table ready right here; and mademoiselle Diamond, enchante, as always.”

“Eeyup.” Mac gave Haute an assured nod as the smaller stallion approached the pair.

Diamond favored the restaurateur with a polite smile as he lifted her right forehoof and kissed her fetlock in the manner of his homeland, before embracing Mac and kissing him on each cheek in a similar customary greeting.

“Actually, McIntosh,” Diamond slipped her two bits into the conversation with a tone and smile charming enough to make a sapphire blush, “I believe I’d prefer a table in the back if possible, if you don’t mind.”

Diamond caught a twitch of a smile at the corner of McIntosh’s mouth as she spoke.

“Eeyup.” Mac gave his affirmation and a nod for emphasis to the suggestion.

“But of course, mes amis, I have jeust the table for you, please follow me.”

The table was located in a small demi-alcove behind the bar near the kitchen. A golden glow lamp in an antique windowed lantern shell hung above the table adding a warm flickering light to the setting. Mac waited for Diamond to be seated on one of the sapphire-blue cushions, a fleur-de-lis embroidered in gold in each corner near the tassel, before taking the cushion opposite her at the table while Haute went to retrieve menus for the pair.

Diamond just sat and looked across the table at the scarlet stallion as he kept his gaze fixed on her, neither saying so much as a word as they waited for the menus to arrive. She had to admit that McIntosh wasn’t all that scruffy, the big wooden yoke and somewhat unruly mane definitely gave him a sort of rustic scruffiness to him, but he was otherwise well groomed. He had a shapely head, thick neck, powerful shoulders and flanks, and a well groomed and brushed coat. He was the kind of stallion so many of the trashy heart throb magazines splashed over the cover at times. But there was more to him, Diamond knew, as he kept his emerald gaze on her. His eyes weren’t the hollow bedroom eyes of those cover colts; there was a heavy, powerful, presence to them. A presence she knew that was now looking deep inside her, gauging her, assessing her, and at the same time calling to something inside her.

“Drinks, my friends?” Haute Cuisine asked as he placed the menus on the table.

Diamond shook herself free of her reverie then replied, “Frostbite Falls, Fresh Glacier, please.”

“And for Monsieur?”

“Dos Equuis, if you would.”

“Of course.” The grey-cream Ariégeois nodded with a tip of his head.

The drinks arrived and Diamond placed her order, followed by McIntosh, who called the restaurant pony close with a gesture. Mac whispered something into Haute’s ear.

“But of course my friend.” The pony entrepreneur smiled at the big colt and quickly departed.

“So, what do you think Mrs. Bridley would have been making for supper tonight?”

Diamond started a bit as Mac initiated the conversation. She hadn’t expected that. She took a sip of her glacier water and placed the glass back on the table beside the remaining half bottle.

“I had asked her if she could make her baked spinach and whipped potato pie with roast corn and grilled turnip greens, with her blue ribbon winning pecan pie for dessert.” Diamond smiled back, as she calmly answered his most unexpected question.

“Sounds wonderful, sort of sorry we had to miss it.”

“Yes, yes it is.” Diamond elegantly voiced her agreement, as Haute’s son, Truffle Shuffle, arrived at their table carrying their meals; carrot and spinach ravioli served in a beet infused Alfredo sauce with alfalfa sprigs for her, and a grilled vegetable medley platter with herb and garlic sweet potato croquettes, and a side of red wine sauteed mushrooms for him.

Diamond smiled at the short rotund grey colt with the curly slate-grey mane, and thanked him. Her one time schoolmate merely tipped his head slightly in recognition with a small and strictly professional smile and returned to the kitchen, leaving Diamond feeling chilled. A rumbling ‘Mmm’ of approval from McIntosh as he took in a savoring whiff of the piping hot food drew her attention back to her dinner companion, and left the coolness to fall from her mind in favor of the savory aromas from the plate before her.

“I believe the next question should be yours, I’m sure you have several.” McIntosh offered the reins of the conversation to her before leaning down to take a bite of one of the croquets on his plate.

Diamond could feel the nervousness building inside her. He was right, she had a lot questions for him, and they were all swirling around inside her begging to be put to voice that they might be granted answers. So she went with the first thing that came to her.

“So, how is it that you plan to pay for dinner tonight?”

“Money, of course, Diamond.” Mac replied with a tone and small grin that seemed to knowingly ask ‘You don’t think I can, do you?’

“But you’re just a poor farm pony, you can’t afford this.” Diamond could have kicked herself right there for her poor choice of words, she could hear the foul little imp giggling from its dark corner of her mind. She was about to apologize for her faux pas, but Mac calmly answered all the same.

“Nnope.”

“Nnope?” Diamond echoed as the word caught in her craw. “What is it with you and ‘Eeyup’ and ‘Nnope’, why do you keep giving one word answers?”

Diamond’s heart was twitching nervously as McIntosh swallowed his mouthful of zucchini and peppers only to see him smile forgivingly back at her.

“Now that is a smart question, Diamond, and the answer is; because most ponies ask ‘closed questions’, questions that are easily answered as positive, negative, or unknown. A smart business pony learns to ask ‘leading’ or ‘open questions’, questions that invite answers that involve explanations that can be harvested for gainful knowledge.”

Diamond slipped another bite of her meal into her mouth and chewed the savory stuffed pasta as she digested his words.

“But you’re not a …” Diamond began, but suspended her question as she surveyed the immutable edifice of his face. She had been going to finish her question with ‘business pony’, but she realized that was both a closed question and likely wrong. He’d probably answer it with a simple ‘nnope’, she needed to ask a leading question, it’s what he wanted.

“Go on, Diamond.” Mac nudged her verbally as he set down his drink.

“I was going to say ‘You’re not a business pony’, but that’s both a closed question, and I believe wrong as well. You are a business pony. But how?”

“It’s a long story, but the simple version is I always wanted to be a business pony like your father, and my damsire.”

“Your damsire is a business pony?” Diamond interrupted in surprise, she’d always pictured the whole lineage of Mac’s family as rubes, hay-shakers, and bumpkins like his cousin Hayseed. Who was this business pony? She knew his mother’s name was Orange Bloom, but who was her father?

“Eeyup.”

Diamond flinched at the answer she got, as she realized the error of her closed question. But she didn’t dwell on it for long; she needed answers and knew the question to ask.

“So, who was your damsire, anypony I might know of?” she asked, her eyes fixing on him the way a cat fixates on a mouse.

“My damsire was J.C. Orange, by Bold Rind, out of DelMonte Royale.”

Diamond’s jaw nearly landed in her half finished meal. Her brain zigzagged back up and down the lineage she’d just heard. J.C. Orange had been a moderately well known stockbroker. Her father used the same firm, Rind, Juice, and Pulp, for his own market dealings. But DelMonte Royale, youngest daughter of The DelMonte family. Diamond was thunderstruck, the DelMonte family was one of the wealthiest earth pony lineages in all of southeastern Equestira, and McIntosh, as well as Applejack and Apple Bloom by extension, were blood relations! Diamond hadn’t felt this elated since the time when as a filly she’d first met Princess Twilight face to face.

“So,” Diamond paused as she took a sip from her glass pondering her next question, “if your mother’s bloodline has enough gold in it to make King Bullion jealous, how come you work at Sweet Apple Acres, Cornstalk Corner, and Golden Harvest’s father’s farm?”

“I like to see my investments pay off.”

Diamond cocked her head in curious disbelief at McIntosh’s answer. “Care to explain that?”

“Do you know who owns those farms you mentioned?”

Diamond shook her head; she assumed that the farmers did, like Applejack did Sweet Apple Acres.

“I do,” the big red stallion grinned at her, “or, more accurately, I hold the leases on them.”

Diamond’s jaw worked to try to form words for a few moments, but none came, and she eventually sought solace in her glacier water.

“Surprised?”

Diamond nodded as McIntosh continued to explain how after his parent’s deaths Granny Smith had considered selling off large parts of Sweet Apple Acres in order to raise capital to pay the hired hooves that needed to be brought in to work the farm, until AJ, AB, and him were old enough to carry the load. He went on to explain how he had devised a different plan with the help of Diamond’s father; A plan that involved land leasing for both agricultural and civic development. It had been tough to sell Granny Smith on it, especially when it came to simplifying McIntosh’s calculations and projections so the older mare could understand it. The Ponyville athletics grounds, the two adjoining farms, and a number of other venues were all on Apple land held by him and his family, and he worked his hump off on the farms to ensure that harvests were brought in to market for profitable sale.

“But what about your mother’s side of the family? The Oranges? Didn’t they help out?”

“Other than Ma’s younger brother Mosley Orange, her family had pretty much disowned her for joining the rodeo circuit and not becoming a society-mare like her dam and grand-dam wanted. Worse, was when after breaking her leg, she chose to stay here to work on the farm and marry my Pa. Granny said something about ‘apples and oranges’. Ma just said it didn’t matter, we’re all just fruit after all.”

As Diamond finished the last of her meal and wiped her muzzle with her napkin, she raised her hoof politely to McIntosh and was about to enquire about dessert for them only to have him shake his head in quiet dissuasion as Haute again approached the table, his head held high. Balanced on the end of the Ariégeois pony’s nose was a serving tray held high enough so Diamond couldn’t see what was being carried on it. With a fluid motion leading into a bow, Haute set the tray down on the table.

Diamond felt her eyes go wide as she looked at the tray. Before her was a baked Brie, smothered in a raspberry compote, drizzled in chocolate, and topped with fresh whipped cream.

“How …” Diamond gasped as Haute took the knife from the tray and cut the sumptuous dessert into serving portions delivering Di’s plated portion to her balanced on the tip of the knife with an expert server’s skill.

“One of Fluttershy’s little birds told me.” McIntosh grinned back, looking more like a giant red Cheshire cat than a pony for the moment.

“You’ll have to thank them for me.” Diamond smiled gracefully as she moved in and took her first bite of the savory dish. As the first morsel melted over her tongue she luxuriated in its flavors and textures, warm and cool, firm and creamy, sweet, tart, and bitter all at once. So many ponies brayed at length about Neigh York’s signature cheesecake, but this was every bit in Diamonds mind as good, superior in fact, as it was served warm as opposed to chilled.

Such a wonderful colt, Diamond thought before correcting herself, as she and McIntosh enjoyed their dessert in blissful silence. Stallion, he’s a stallion, the perfect stallion. It made what she wanted to tell him all the harder; so perfect, so gallant, and so much more she had learned. So much she felt she didn’t deserve.

“Diamond?!”

The sharp outburst of surprise and disbelief carried across the room followed by a clatter of hooves as the interloper rushed over to the table. Diamond flinched as she swallowed the last of her Brie. A glance at McIntosh told her he was as shocked as she as her mother skidded to a halt beside the table. Her father wasn’t far behind, moving quickly to keep up, but with cautioned concern.

“Oh my little pony,” the older mare sniffed through tears as she invaded Diamond’s personal space, wrapping her forelegs about her in a possessive hug, “you’re back. I missed you so much, my precious girl. I’m so sorry for what I said that day, I really am, please forgive me for being so callous. Please?”

Diamond had seen the tears of emotion in her mother’s eyes as the lavender coated mare rushed up to her. She could now feel them on her face as her mother’s cheek rubbed against her own.

Her mother’s grip eventually loosened, the elder mare drawing back slightly while still holding her forelegs about Diamond’s shoulders as she looked her daughter over with a smile of relief.

“It’s nice to see you too, mother, father.” Diamond offered her greetings to her parents with a detached calm. She had certainly not anticipated seeing them so soon. In spite of the lovely dinner Mac had arranged, a hayburger and fries at the Hayburger might have been a better choice for sake of current company as her father smiled proudly at her and McIntosh. His head moving as he took his time looking back and forth between the two of them. Her mother’s gaze was focused solely on her.

Diamond had expected to hear a polite confirming ‘Eeyup’ from McIntosh but her dinner companion held his silence. Though perhaps he had exchanged simple greeting with her sire, she couldn’t recall over her mother’s emotional greetings.

Diamond could feel the staring contest going on inside her between the two halves of her ego. It was an intense affair as she fought herself for the right words for the situation. The two psyche imps each waiting for the other to blink, and then it happened. Silken Sash spoke first.

“I’m so glad you two are getting along. I take it this means the contract is still on? You two make such a lovely couple.”

Diamond closed her eyes like she’d been slapped as inside her head the halo-wearer blinked. The horned imp raced to the fore, casting a bridle of rage around Diamond’s muzzle, yanking the reins of emotion hard enough to make the bit of anger bite painfully at the corners of her mouth.

Oh no you don’t, Diamond thought as she gave her head a single sharp flick sending the foul homunculus flying back into the dark reaches of her mind, and fixed her sights on her parents.

“The contract.” Diamond stood, pressing the words out with weight and authority, slipping out of the vestigial embrace her mother held her in. “I’m gone for a month after discovering your intentions by accident, and the first thing you have the audacity, or is it stupidity, to ask me about is about the contract?”

Diamond could feel the strength flowing through her, each beat of her heart empowering her as she purposefully stepped forward, driving her mother back onto her haunches. Her father moved in to keep his wife from toppling over completely as Diamond continued her iteration.

“Let me tell you about my decision regarding your precious contract. You can take your beloved contract and can both go out and piss yourselves dry on the damnable thing for all I care!”

Diamond stepped clear of her parents, in the direction of the door, certain that the whole of the staff and patronage of the restaurant had heard her willful outburst. She closed her eyes as she moved and turning her nose up over her parents to address McIntosh in a slightly more restrained tone. “McIntosh, please settle the bill and bring my saddle bags, you’re walking me home. I’ll be outside.”

Author's Note

* The spot where he’d received his cutiemark, and witnessed the deaths of his parents

** Hame - the ball topped prong on the upper part of a yoke of a draft harness

And Strong.

And Strong

The silvery face of Luna’s moon rose steadily on its nightly ascent, casting its soft white light across the Equestrian countryside. In the town of Ponyville, the silken silver blanket of moonlight draped the rooftops and entwined its embrace with the warm summer air that bore up the aromas of cut clover and field flowers. It was as beautiful a night as there had ever been.

And it was utterly lost on McIntosh Apple.

Every step he took as he left the Lucky Clover with Diamond Tiara following silently behind felt like an ever increasing weight pressing down inside him. It didn’t matter how pleasant the air was or how sweet the aroma of the flowers. He wasn’t there. He was where he always was in moments like this; back in the orchards, where great-granddad’s walnut grove met the Everfree, in the damp dying light of that wet spring evening, watching, as his parent’s died. He’d never forget as his mother lay there half buried in the rubble of the mudslide, as he promised her he could be ‘big’ and go get help … he never had a chance, she had expired there in front of him, her last words “Look Mackie, you’ve gotten your cutie mar …”

He’d gotten his cutie mark, and lost his parents. He turned his head, looking away from Diamond, and back at his cutie mark. The big green half apple that everypony knew marked his as a member of the Apple family. Nopony seemed to see the flaw in it the way he did. Yes it was an apple, but the seeds were wrong. The oblong brown seeds, though superficially correct, weren’t displayed like those of an apple, no apple cultivar showed a seed arrangement like that. At his core, he knew he was flawed, even if he was the only one that could see it. Flawed like all his endeavours. AJ might be the living heart of the farm, but he’d become it’s backbone that she used to support it. He had his investment business, but he had little time to see to it properly beyond the physical, and what profits he did make mostly ended up funneled back to the farm or family; Granny’s hip surgery, equipment costs and repairs, AJ’s latest financially overstretched ‘drum up business for the farm’ scheme. At least in the years since Apple Bloom had gotten her cutie mark, the costs of medical bills and property damage from wildcat attempts to ‘earn’ a cutie mark had dried up.

McIntosh sighed as he turned at the corner of Affirmed Way onto Alydar Street. It wasn’t much further to where Filthy Rich lived up at 11 Everfree Terrace, just a little way past Spooner Street. Once he delivered Diamond home, that would be the end of it; they could sign the dissolution papers in the morning ending the stud contract.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

Diamond’s sharp high call cut through the evening stillness, shattering McIntosh’s reverie into tiny painful shards like glass that dug deep into his psyche, deep into the recesses of his being where he could feel something stir, something he never wanted to feel again, dark and angry, the poison at the core of his apple.

“What?” he snapped as he whipped his head around to face Diamond, only to find the young near mare-grown filly no longer trailing by his side.

“Over here, silly colt,” the pink pony sang out.

McIntosh slowly turned and glowered in the direction of Diamond’s voice, to find the frost and lavender maned filly still standing on the opposite corner of the intersection on Affirimed Way.

“I thought you said you wanted me to take you home?” he rumbled, the ire in his tone growing

“And why exactly would I want to spend one more night under the same roof with the very ponies that all but sold my plot for their own benefit?”

McIntosh snorted in frustration at Diamond’s statement as he made his way across the intersection to her.

“And just where did you plan on me taking you when you said ‘home’ then?” He tried to keep his tone as flat as he could, but his irritation was hampering him as sure as a tangled harness on plowing day.

“I figured you might let me spend the night at the farm,” Diamond answered with a sweet nonchalance. “That is the Apple way? Isn’t it?”

Mac wanted to say something, but his voice and vocabulary failed him as his jaw clenched ever tighter, throbbing in frustration. It was true; hospitality was the Apple Family way, it always had been. Ever since his great-grandfather had been granted this valley by Princess Celestia herself and brought the Smith family here, they’d welcomed every new pony that settled here like they were family. He remembered AJ’s tearful confession and apology when she had realized her folly, when she had tried to deny Diamond Tiara that hospitality promised by their parents. It was fine if another pony refused to accept the offer, but it was a hideous sin to deny offering it. A sin confessed and forgiven, in warm hugs and wet tears, and now it was his choice.

“Eeyup.” He slid the word between clenched teeth as pleasantly as he could. Even the two halves of his conscience were silent on the matter.

“Thank you,” Diamond replied with a gentle smile before starting to turn back onto the path down Affirmed Way towards the outskirts.

“You know that the contract hasn’t been dissolved yet.”

“Awww,” Diamond turned back to McIntosh, a soft pouting look of hurt accompanying her words as she placed a well polished front hoof on his yoke. “I’m sure such a strong, noble gentlecolt like yourself knows better than to ask such a question of a young mare, especially after I’ve made my decision.”

Mac grunted a wordless and displeased agreement through his nostrils; he was spending the night on the couch it seemed. With grudging clarity, he set off down the street Diamond once more following behind.

* * * * *

Well, that went trottingly.

Shut it. I don’t want to hear it right now, Diamond hissed back to her conscience as she followed McIntosh down Affirmed Way. Even her good side could be annoying at times, Diamond had to admit, as they turned onto Count Fleet Court, which lead back through the Renaissance district on the south side of town. McIntosh had been silent ever since they’d left the restaurant, save their little exchange at the corner of Affirmed and Alydar, but something had changed there at the corner.

Since the corner McIntosh looked strained, like a pony under load, every step down the road he gouged the ground with his hoof as he moved it, his muscles twitching under his crimson hide like it took his every bit of his strength to stay on his hooves and keep going. His demeanor, though similar, was in stark contrast to how he had seemed between the restaurant and the corner. Then McIntosh had seemed deflated and distant. She couldn’t exactly blame him; he’d arranged a lovely ‘welcome home’ dinner and had seen it end far less favorably than it should have. Heck, even she was disappointed with how that ended, she had wanted to tell him so differently as to her decision on the contract. But when her mother had charged straight into the subject …

You let them know exactly what you thought of what they’d done.

I said ‘Shut it.’ Diamond reminded her conscience, only to have the cherubiform filly march itself down to the end of Diamond’s nose, snap a hard about-face, shove its battered halo forward on its brow with a hoof, and glare at Diamond in a manner far less friendly than she’d ever expect from her ‘good side’.

I. don’t. think. so. The little haloed filly bit the words off one by one for emphasis.

And why not? Diamond glowered back at her defiant conscience.

Because you’re not in control right now. The little pink ponyform psyche-sprite grinned back.

Yes I am! Diamond asserted forcefully.

Really? came the sharp smirking reply, sounding so much like her own fillyhood taunting voice.

Yes, yes I am. Diamond could feel her ire building she was being goaded by her own ego, again.

Then by all means, stop me.

Diamond focused her will on the task only to hear the growing hoots and cackles from where the other half of her conscience was rolling about atop her croup, laughing its flank off.

Not going so well? the haloed filly tittered. The infectious mocking laughter of the horned imp continued to rise as McIntosh turned onto the well worn cart path that lead from Ponyville to Sweet Apple Acres.

Diamond tensed her mental focus trying to form that sixteen ton weight of sheer will and squash the increasing cacophony. It didn’t work; she couldn’t muster the inner strength to. The more she tried the more frayed her will became and the louder the imp’s laughter became with each failed effort.

Why? Diamond moaned at the angelic phantom filly in front of her. Why you?

Because, the haloed hallucination smiled softly as it settled itself on its rump at the end of Diamond’s nose, you need me to tell you that you know what you did wrong, and that you know that to get back in control you need to fix it.

Internally Diamond nodded. She was lying to herself, and to McIntosh, about the situation and it was eating her inside. With a sigh of resignation she made her choice to end it, the mad hysterics of the imp’s laughter vanishing with the breath.

“McIntosh,” Diamond softly called to her companion, stopping on the path as she did. The night’s stillness and the looming trees made her feel small as she addressed the much larger stallion.

“What is it now?” the big red work pony grumbled back, “Did you change your mind? Do you want me to take you back to town and get you a room at the inn?”

“Nnope.” Diamond returned flatly causing McIntosh to freeze in his steps as she slammed the barn door shut on his ‘closed questions’. Diamond could see the bolt of angry tension dart up his spine, causing his crest to shiver.

“Then what is it?” the red pony snarled through clenched teeth as he turned his head around to glower back at her.

Diamond nearly fell back onto her rump as Mac glared at her as he spoke. If she had felt small a moment before, she now was sure she was fetlock high to a foal as McIntosh fixed her with those big green eyes. His eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, an unnatural brilliant emerald green with a power behind them that he was straining to hold back. A power that, while yet held back, still reached out and skewered Diamond through the core.

But Diamond stood her ground, even as she felt that force cutting through her soul, she could feel her own strength holding firm as she spoke.

“I…, I’m sorry, McIntosh, I … I lied to you.” Her mouth stumbled over the words making her sound less certain than she knew she was inside.

Diamond had expected a horrific explosion of green-eyed red fury to burst out of McIntosh and sweep over her as she finished speaking. It didn’t. Instead the big colt blinked erratically several times shaking his head as he did, the hot glow fading from his eyes like a green sunset.

“You… lied to me, Diamond?”

Diamond nodded sullenly.

“When did you do that?” McIntosh’s voice was deep and soft as he offered up his disbelief to her.

“At the Lucky Clover, when I told my parents what they could do with the contract.” Diamond dropped her head, staring initially at the ground in shame, and then lifting her eyes to watch for his reaction.

McIntosh tipped his head thoughtfully to one side the expression on his face calm and considerate as he seemed to carefully weigh out the situation on some complex mental balance.

“Nnope.”

Diamond felt her shame fall away as she cocked an eyebrow at McIntosh’s minimalist reply.

“But you heard me tell my parents.”

“Eeyup, I heard you, and I don’t think you were lying. I think you genuinely told your folks what you thought of this whole ordeal. You may have been a little louder than was needed, but you weren’t lying, not for a moment. I told you in that first letter that it’s your choice to end this contract, and that you have my support, whatever path you choose. And if you need a place to stay while you get back on your hooves, you have my friendship and hospitality if you need, no strings attached. And I’m sorry about that comment regarding the contract not being dissolved yet. I was wrong to have said it.”

Diamond could practically feel the weights of her conscience, one homunculus across each ear, bug eyed and slack jawed. Had he just said what she thought he did? Yes he had, she was certain he had.

“Thank you,” she sniffed. “I’m sorry I spoiled the lovely dinner you arranged. If my parents hadn’t been such royal scat-piles I was hoping to have found a better time to tell you.”

“Diamond,” Mac’s voice took on a roll of gentle thunder as he took a step towards her, “your parents are not anything that low. They love you very much, so much that they’d choose to play the villains so that their beloved princess might find salvation somehow.”

Diamond wrinkled her nose at Mac’s words, as if trying to find the whiff of a lie in them, but unable to. There was still, though, something out of place. No chance it could all have been an act.

“At the spa, the day I ran away,” Diamond stepped to within a hoofspan of the crimson colt’s muzzle as she spoke to him, focused, confident, direct, “I heard my mother, ‘filly or colt, it really doesn’t matter to us, so long as Diamond doesn’t get the business.’ You can’t tell me that my parents weren’t plotting to replace me with our foal.”

“Nnope, I can’t. I never agreed with what your Daddy wanted to do with that contract, morally. But I could see the pain if they had to lose you, no pile of bits could ever replace their only foal. The decision was to save the company, in order to save you.”

“But what my mother said at the spa. It proves I was just a means to an end for them, all they wanted was a new foal to replace the bad one.” Diamond verbally parried and cut back at McIntosh, her words trembling with emotion as she fought him verbally and herself for control within.

“I regret not putting it in the letters I sent you, but I didn’t know how you’d take it if I did, so I left it out. Perhaps now I shouldn’t have.”

“And that is?” Diamond slid her words out smooth and sharp as she regained her self control, her anger in check but ready to be thrust out at a moment’s need.

“What your mother told Lotus and Aloe before Silver Spoon opened the door that day.”

“And that is?” Diamond offered again, guardedly this time as she stepped back with a hind foot as if bracing for the impact of Mac’s forthcoming statement.

“‘The gender doesn’t matter. If Diamond can’t grow enough to eventually take the reins of the company, then, filly or colt, it really doesn’t matter to us so long as Diamond doesn’t get the business.’”

Diamond’s mental guard crashed to nothingness as she deliberately tucked her hind legs under herself and set her rump on the ground.

“But… but that night in the shed. You said I had lost it all, you lied to me.” Somehow, as she spoke Diamond wanted to feel anger towards him for his lying, but all she felt was a sad sense of confusion. He hadn’t lied to her then, she was sure. But if that was the case then, this made no sense now. As she mentally wrestled with the incongruities of what she'd just learned, Mac came over to her and placed a hoof of sympathy on her shoulder.

“Just because something was lost then, doesn’t mean it can’t be found again later. There are very few things that when lost, are truly gone.”

With his last sentence, Diamond noticed he had turned away from her, looking back over his shoulder towards the Everfree Forest beyond the farm. His eyes were damp with tears wrought of painful memories she knew not what of, but maybe someday he’d tell her.

Diamond leaned forward and let her head rest on the heavy wooden yoke about his neck as he took a moment to recover himself.

“Let’s go home, McIntosh,” Diamond finally sighed as both of them seemed to have recovered from their emotional exchange, “I could really do with a warm bath after this day.”

“As you wish,” Mac rumbled distantly as the two ponies set off again towards Sweet Apple Acres, Diamond trailing by a neck but holding close to her warm, red coated companion.

Diamond could see the change again in McIntosh as they followed the well traveled path back to the farm. Somehow, he seemed lighter to her, more like he normally was each day. It was as if the phantom burden that he seemed to have been struggling with since she had diverted him off Alydar Street and down Affirmed Way had been left with their emotional baggage back along the road.

“McIntosh,” Diamond put thought to words as they walked, “could I ask you a question?”

“Eeyup,” came the expected reply.

Diamond smiled, there really wasn’t much need for more of an answer than that as she forged ahead.

“A personal question?”

“Eeyup.” Again, a simple answer to a simple question. Diamond gave herself a faint nod of satisfaction for having anticipated his succinct response to her ‘closed question’.

“Why didn’t you and Miss Cheerilee ever get married?”

Diamond watched the big pony stallion for a reaction to her more open inquiry. Her heart had skipped a beat when she finally asked the question that had been worming its way up the back of her tongue since they had passed the schoolhouse not long after their little ‘meeting of the minds’ just outside town. She’d almost expected to see his temper flare back to life, but her hope for a more civil response from him bore fruit as he just tilted his head away from her in contemplation before returning a calm weighed response.

“We couldn’t come to an agreement over my contract.”

Diamond lost a half a pace against McIntosh’s gate as the answer caught her off guard. “You wanted Miss Cheerilee to sign a stud contract with you? Why in the name of cloven hoofed stupidity would you do something that daft?” Diamond all but physically struck him over the head with her astonishment and disbelief. Every pony in the school, and possibly the whole town, had thought the farmer and the schoolteacher had made a near perfect couple. Sweetie Belle was so certain of it she had started a secret ‘wedding pool’ among the other students, which Snails had won in the end by picking ‘not gonna happen’ instead of a wedding date.

“Nope.” The deep baritone of Mac’s reply rooted Diamond’s thoughts back to the present. “I didn’t ask her anything of the sort, Diamond. We were talking about a proper wedding, blanket ceremony* and all. But I felt I had to be honest with her and tell her about wanting to honor my parents and the contract they’d signed for me. After that things seemed to cool between us. I guess having spent that time doing her higher education in Canterlot she was less inclined towards my wanting to keep up family traditions.”

“Ahh-ha.” Diamond gave a quiet huff of surprise as yet another odd piece about this great red riddle seemed to fall into place as she proceeded to reason aloud. “I could see where that might be a problem. I don’t think I’d be too happy knowing my coltfriend was supposed to be having foals with a filly almost young enough to be my own foal.”

The stifled noise that came from McIntosh as they reached the main gate of the farmyard sounded like the sorriest excuse for a whoopee cushion she’d ever heard, or a deeper version of the sounds she remembered hearing from Snips and Snails during a lesson on the Equestrian legal system years ago, when Miss Cheerilee had mentioned the Equestrian penal code. McIntosh’s choked snickers continued, unabated, despite his best efforts to subdue them, eventually bursting out in a rolling torrent of full on laughter.

Diamond cocked her ears and furrowed her brow at McIntosh’s unexpected response. She’d been serious about what she’d said, yet he was laughing like Pinkie on April Foals Day.

“What’s so funny?” Diamond quipped in irritation, giving McIntosh a few moments to recover his composure as he leaned against the white rail fence and gatepost. She never liked being laughed at and this was no exception.

“That you …” Mac paused for air amid chuckles as he continued his explanation, “thought your contract … had been the reason … Cheerilee and I never got hitched.”

“It wasn’t?” Diamond scrunched her brow further and tipped her head. Just when it seemed she was fitting the puzzle together the picture changed it seemed.

“No, it wasn’t,” McIntosh admitted having sufficiently recovered his composure, his voice still carrying a mirthful lilt to it. “The contract in question, my contract, was signed by my parents when I was two. A good ways before your parents were even married.”

Diamond just looked at him. There was no hint of a lie to what he’d said she was sure. But…

“Then what about my contract? You’re the only colt in your family.”

“Your ma and mine were expecting at the same time, and my ma was as firm certain as the good earth that she was having a colt, only thing is …”

“She had Apple Bloom instead.” Diamond finished for him in shock of the revelation as Mac nodded his confirmation before being overcome with another bout of laughter.

Diamond snickered for a moment as she contemplated the implications of her and the schoolyard rival that their parents had hoped would be the colt of her dreams. Diamond wanted to feel hurt, or angry, or something otherwise foul, but the great rolling tide of laughter gushing from McIntosh as he draped a foreleg over the fence for support seemed to smooth her negativity away. How many times had her own plans and ambitions come to naught, she wasn’t sure, and Mac’s laughter was infectious.

As she gave in to the heaving of her chest and joined McIntosh in his revelry of laughter, the red stallion began to quote a poem between guffaws.

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' mares

Go off angley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!

The words seemed for whatever strange reason to fit the moment as she reeled her head in the all consuming bout of laughter that inundated the two of them. Gradually the exertions of elation took their toll as the sweet night air brought an increasing dryness to her throat and ache to her sides. She needed a drink, and knew just who and what to ask for. Catching her breath, Diamond looked to McIntosh as he too was finally winding down.

“McIntosh,” Diamond asked softly as she took a deep breath and steadied herself on her hooves, “would it be too much trouble to get a cup of fresh cider? I’m getting rather dry from all that laughing.”

“Not at all, I could use a sip myself,” Mac returned as he too straightened himself up.

“Good,” she smiled as she stepped past him through the gate into the farmyard and turned for the barn-house, “you can bring it to our room while I take a shower, Sugarstud.”

She gave her long lavender and frost tail a broad swish in his direction as she did. Even as she reached the door, she could make out the shocked expression on McIntosh’s face still reflected in the window as he sat dumbfounded beside the gate.

Her timing had been perfect.

* * * * *

McIntosh sat there beside the farmyard gate and watched, transfixed in senselessness, as the barn-house door closed behind the near mare-grown filly. His jaw hung slack and his eyes bugged wide with shock. It was inside his nasal passages though, that tiny hot electric sparks of sensation flared to life darting up the neural pathways banging on his thought locked brain, begging for recognition. The only response though, came in the form of a phantom hoof knocking roughly upon his poll.

Hello! McFly! the dark half of McIntosh’s conscience taunted him. She practically threw herself at you. Now get off your ass and make like a tree and get some wood!

I believe, a more eloquent and articulate voice inside Mac’s head interrupted, the correct version of that phrase is ‘make like a tree and LEAVE!’ A mighty psychological buck accompanied the last word, sending the dark-sider sailing off into the night, to wink out somewhere in the distant shadows.

Unfortunately, the white clad haloed homunculus sighed as it settled down and stretched itself out, facing front belly down over the top of Mac’s crest and forelock, he will be back, at some point.

Eeyup, Mac agreed as he reclaimed his faculties.

However, as my less tactful and articulate counterpart was trying to point out. You seem to have gotten the knickers pulled over your eyes.

But, she told her parents... Mac began to reason with himself.

Ah yes, she did at that, and you know she wasn’t lying about it either. However, she also seems to have gone and apologized for misleading you about something if memory serves.

Eeyup, Mac acknowledged as the frustration seized gears of his mind began to turn again.

She also meant for you to bring her back here when she said to take her ‘home’...

Eeyup.

… used the inclusive plural possessive, not singular exclusive, when referring to the foal and the bedroom..

Eeyup.

… and has been wearing perfume, covering her scent, and carefully keeping herself downwind of you since she got off the train, to hide the fact that she’s in season.

Mac could feel his positive self talk stirring something inside of his chest. He could feel his pride welling up, yet he couldn’t feel at ease about letting it go free …

But what if it’s all just a coincidence? What if she really meant no? He gave mental voice to his own self doubt.

The haloed self image sighed in frustration, resting its face squarely in the frog of one hoof before addressing its larger self. Would you quit trying to drag defeat from the jaws of victory for once, please? There’s one sure way to find out the answer, and you damned well know what it is. So get up off that great, green half-apple ass of yours, go get that flask of cider, meet her in the bedroom, and ASK HER!

Mac swallowed hard, stood, and headed for the work barn and the entrance to his ‘reserve cellar’.

Ten minutes later he was sitting beside the dresser in the master bedroom. The flask of cider he had chosen from his private reserve had been opened and poured into one of the two cups he’d brought from the kitchen. It was from a fresh batch he’d recently produced; apple, of course, with a touch of strawberries. His clinging uncertainty hadn’t permitted him to pour the second cup.

The whole of the time since Diamond had left him there at the gate, as he’d gone to retrieve the cider, the cups, and bring them to the bedroom, he’d been trying to get his calm under control. He’d tried to think of all the teachings of Miyagi-sensei, the Ishiumajutsu** instructor that his parents had sent him to as a badly bullied schoolcolt. Somehow none of the old Neighponese pony’s wise words seemed to fit right now. He had opened the bedroom’s window in hope that the cool night air might help ease his tensions. A few deep breaths of the calm night air and the gentle rustle of the leaves in the orchard helped.

The sound of the bathroom door opening and closing caused his pulse to suddenly quicken. With the soft approach of the hooves in the hall, and then the click of the door latch to the bedroom, Mac felt his body chill with the rush of cold adrenaline that seemed to pour into him. Yet as Diamond entered the room, with her posture relaxed, her mane and coat still slightly wet from the shower, and her hindquarters wrapped in a damp towel, she seemed so… vulnerable.

Mac smiled gently at the young mare, hiding his nervousness with hospitality, and motioned to the cider on the dresser top. He watched as she approached the dresser, but not before pausing to push the door shut with a hind hoof, the sound of the latch fitting the striker plate felt like an earthquake inside him.

A quick survey of the cups and cider brought a quizzical look to her face as she tilted her head and cocked a brow at him.

“Just one cup? Why?” her voice seemed slightly hurt at the connotation of what she noted of the arrangement. “Weren’t you planning on joining me?”

“I …” his words caught in his throat. There were too many to come out at once. There was a question he needed to ask, yet he couldn’t remember it. His eyes darted about the room trying to find something that might remind him of what he had intended to say as Diamond sat down on the floor and pushed the one filled cup towards him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she cut off his wordless rasping attempt at an explanation as she took the filled cup in her hooves and took an elegant sip from it, pausing to savor the cider a moment, “I think we can share this one.”

* * * * *

Diamond accentuated her words with a relaxed and genuine smile as she offered him the cup, and he took it, softly covering her hooves with his as he lifted the vessel and drew a small draught of the sweet nectar from the cup before allowing her to place it back atop the dresser.

“McIntosh,” she began, her soft blue eyes gently latching onto his own rich emerald pair, before a flinch of modesty caused her to flick away, “I have something I need to tell you.”

“Mm-hmm.” His wordless reverberant reply brought a wave of comforting warmth to her.

“I’ve made a decision about the contract.” She turned her gaze back up into his as she shed her last remaining doubts with a calming breath.

“Alright.”

“I made my decision three weeks ago when I wrote to you and asked you to come and meet me in Hooferville this weekend.” Mac’s head bobbed kindly in acknowledgement, but he didn’t interrupt Diamond as she continued. “I wanted to be able to tell you there, face to face, what my decision was, and when you couldn’t be there, I knew I had to come back here. So that I could tell you that I choose to honor the colt that saved me and that if he wants me to honor the contract I will, willingly.”

“You don’t need to.” Mac smiled at her, expressing himself with easy warm words tinged with regret as subtle as the hint of cinnamon had been in the cider. “You’ve shown that you can grow. You can be a better pony. You don’t need to do this to earn back your family’s legacy. You don’t—”

A gentle pink hoof placed on his muzzle brought a halt to his protestations.

“I know I don’t have to,” she let her hoof slip from his lips down to the heavy yoke he still wore around his neck, caressing it lightly, “but, I can choose to. We can choose to, if we want to. Our foals, our choice, not mine, not yours, not anypony else’s. Ours, if you’re willing to choose it with me.”

For a long moment Diamond watched the depths of Mac’s eyes as her words sank in, and a spark took shape.

“I am, but what about the contract? Are you saying that you love me?”

Diamond hadn’t quite expected all of what he’d just said, but had for part of it at least.

“I think it might be a little early to call it that,” Diamond could feel the warmth of her blush in her cheeks, “but, I’m willing to wait and see what might grow given the appropriate time, attention, and care. As to the contract, I thought a smart business pony would be able to see the potential advantages of it, at least to start with.”

Diamond scooched in closer to Mac placing both front hooves below his yoke and began pushing the heavy restraint up over his head until it landed on the floor with a profound thud. No longer impeded by the intervening wooden barrier, Diamond stretched out her forelegs, closing her eyes as she did, and pressed herself chest to chest with Mac, letting her neck rest against his, feeling the powerful beat of his heart against hers. In response Mac dipped his head to rest his jaw on her poll, his forelegs sliding over her withers, completing the encapsulating hug she’d began.

Diamond nestled deeper into her stallion’s embrace, savoring the power and comfort she found with it. Slowly she moved her muzzle up to trace her lips gently along the length of his neck and jaw, his own nibbling their way down from her ear to cheek to meet his own in her first full on kiss with a colt.

A tightening ache in Diamond’s nethers began to spread a warm dampness into the forgotten towel wrapped around her haunches as the pair parted lips, nearly breathless, having plumbed the depths of each other’s muzzles for the first time. Finally sated, if only for moment or two, Diamond took in the longing look in Mac’s eyes, knowing it was echoed in her own as they contemplated a renewed effort.

“Mac,” Diamond headed off McIntosh’s attempt to renew their muzzle meld with soft voiced words she needed to say. “Do you remember, back in the ‘Love Shack’, when you told me why you chose to agree to the contract? Because you said you saw something in me?”

“Eeyup,” Mac affirmed, stealing a fleeting kiss from Diamond as he did.

“I see it too now, and tonight I saw something else. I saw a stallion of immense potential, a potential he hides behind a shroud of commitment, obligation, and shyness, even if it would be a greater help to him and his loved ones to let it out. I want to help you achieve that potential. To help you, the way you helped me.”

Mac nodded silently as she watched a tear of warm ‘liquid pride’ make its way down the side of his muzzle. Diamond plucked it away with a touch of her lips, tasting the salt of it as she smiled in assurance and confidence.

“Now,” she practically purred to him, deftly slipping a hoof down the side of his belly as she spoke, skirting the edge of his sheath close enough to cause him to shiver, “what say we deal with some mutual obligations?” Diamond shot a glance over to the wide, soft, bed that stood nearby, pulling Mac’s eyes along with her.

The rising prominence of his stallionhood told her he had his complete attention and agreement. As she stood, her forgotten towel slipped loose, the sodden fabric filling the room with the aroma of her arousal. A flick of her tail helped carry it to his nostrils as she flagged for him, letting him see her wet, winking, netherlips as she sauntered to the bed and skinned back the covers.

Mac was on her in an instant lathered and lusty, rampant and ready, but she brought him to a halt. Rolling onto her back so his momentum pushed her back onto the bed, she lifted a rear hoof against his belly stopping his attempted entry with his tip bobbing helplessly at the threshold of her moistened mareness.

“Mmh, Mmh, Mmh,” she tutted at him seductively, “no wham, bam, thank you mare, this time. I may still be the learner in many things yet, but in the bedroom, I am the master. Now,” She shifted her tone to a more commanding amorous form, patting the empty space on the bed beside her, “come to bed, I want to share my innocence with you properly, and pleasurably.”

* * * * *

Mac backed off and trotted around to the other side of the bed, one wary eye still on Diamond as the young pink mare stretched out on her back showing him her all, neck to nethers. His own throbbing arousal bounced as he moved, slapping mercilessly against his belly as if to unnecessarily remind him of its presence. As if somehow he might forget.

“Innocence?” Mac murred in puzzlement as he seated himself on the edge of the bed, before rolling out onto his back in imitation of Diamond’s own position. “What about before? The shed?”

Mac couldn’t forget the sweet sensation of that night in the shed as he’d savored his first filly. The tightness of her marehood as he’d sleeved his stallionhood slowly into it, so tight, so warm, so unforgettable. Yet he wished he could forget at times. Forget the pain he had caused her in his lust blinded eagerness to fill her with his hot seed. He’d given her his leg to bite on to stifle her screams and shun his sister’s sour wishes for vengeance, but still he had been poor a stud as to have the doctor shame him two days later practically implying he might as well have raped Diamond.

His gut turned in shame at the thought. He hated violence, hated the taint of it. His father had told him that the mare that chose to bear his foals deserved to be shown the utmost respect for her choice. He hadn’t honored those words very well it seemed that night.

“McIntosh Apple,” his reverie of misery slipped away as Diamond gently took his left fore-hoof and laid it across her belly as she nuzzled warmly at his neck, “you are the only stallion in Equestria who could have taken my virginity, but managed to give me back my innocence. Thank you for that. And now I want to share that with you.”

“But the last time … I hurt you. I want to … erhm …” he swallowed the word in modesty, but could see in Diamond’s smile she understood what he meant, “but I don’t want to hurt you either.”

“Then don’t worry about that,” Diamond whispered in his ear, easing his trepidation as she began to guide his hoof around her belly. “Let me show you how to please me instead.”

Mac could feel the smile on her lips against his neck as she finished. A moment later he felt the scritch of her teeth as she began to nibble gently at the very same spot as she slowly guided his hoof lower. She tilted it this way and that to tease her small teats with the hard edges, roughened frog, soft pastern, and long hairs of his fetlocks, cooing and whimpering affectionately as she provided a guided tour of her intimate areas. At last she brought him to her dripping marehood, triggering a fierce shiver of pleasure as she slid his shaggy pastern over her twitching folds and pressed it to her stiffened sexual stud nestled within.

As she lead him in the touching, Mac was focused on her eyes. Intently he watched the sparks of pleasure jumping and flickering in their depths with each warm shiver that she gave as she progressed with the ‘lesson’. His throbbing maleness was not wholly forgotten either, its painful, swollen, aching prominence drawing soft nudges with the fetlock and strokes from the pastern and cannon of Diamond’s other foreleg.

A gasp of pleasure escaped her lips as Diamond locked her thighs firmly around his dabbling forehoof, pulling it tight to her quivering wetness as another full body shiver caused her to let go a hot breathy groan of fixated pleasure. He could feel the dampness though his coat down to the skin beneath.

Her eyes had fallen closed as she wrapped her focus around the sensations of the lesson. He moved in cautiously, her muzzle’s parted lips his goal as she ran the tip of her tongue slowly around their edge while she had her mind elsewhere, only to be deflected by a sudden, stronger wave of motion.

Diamonds eyes went wide accompanied by a mighty gasp. Her already strangulating grip on his hoof held firm while the hotly aroused filly’s back arched wildly as she wrung her hips back and forth furiously against the bedding. He had to press his hoof even harder to her tender gate to keep her motions from separating his hoof at the coffin joint, and was greeted with a snarling “Yyyessssss,” as a third shiver brought her back to a more relaxed posture.

Mac touched his nose lightly against Diamond’s, giving it a light rub. He could feel the deep, powerful, smooth breaths as they moved through her flared nostrils as she settled herself. Cautiously he prepared again to attempt to steal a quick kiss. Her eyes flew open as he initiated the smooch, her head turning slightly and her tongue bolting between his lips like a crazed squirrel through a knothole. She caught the back of his crest with a pastern and pressed the kiss deeper as his tongue lashed back, twisting and turning in a wild chase between their jaws.

When in Roam… Mac, for a moment, began to rationalize, but abandoned his head for his heart with a shrug, simply enjoying the hot willing mare pressed tightly against his barrel.

Her foreleg released his crest allowing the pair to part with a heated gasp, and as Mac drew back the swirling scents of the room poured into him. A fiendish smirk played across Diamond’s face, her upper lip twitching slightly as she gave his heavy stallion scepter a teasing stroke from sheath to dripping tip as she finally relaxed her grip on his captive hoof.

“Mmm,” Diamond sighed as she used her frog to paint his tip with pre, “you are a good student it seems,” Mac nodded once adding a quick kiss to his agreement, drawing a naughty smile from Diamond in return as she continued, “and good students deserve to be rewarded.”

Diamond slipped a soft pastern behind his prominence and drew it down, teasing her teats with the flared head on the way to her warm, wet, mare-well. Her other hoof slid between his shoulder and the bed sheets as she silently directed him to move atop her, pressing her to the bed as he covered her belly to belly.

His cock slipped effortlessly into her rippling silken depths, eased by their mutual fluids. It was as if her channel was trying to pull him inside her. Mac shivered as he came to rest, his medial ring just inside diamond’s winking maredom. He had been watching her face, eyes to eyes as his maleness had merged with her feminine space, his belly moving slowly across her aroused teats. There had been no sign of discomfort, no pain, no reluctance or doubt. Only the glittering of her blue diamond eyes as soft and warm as the space he now filled inside her.

Mac savored the warmth of his young lover. This seemed more right, even as his turgidity trembled inside her, its task not yet complete, as the muscular ripples of Diamond’s sex cinched their grip ever tighter about his shaft.

“Uh-uh-uh, no fair cheating,” Diamond whispered lasciviously with a quick peck of his lips, her front hooves slipping overtop his cutie marks. “No half measures, all the way in, Sugarstud.”

Mac could feel his eyes going wider as Diamond pressed him deeper into her. He was certain his eyes were about to drop from their sockets as her fertile furrow came to rest against the mouth of his sheath.

“I… *gulp*… are… uhnngh…” He wanted to ask her if she was okay, if he was hurting her. Mother of the Sisters he didn’t want to hurt her, but her marehood’s grip had become tighter than he’d ever have thought possible, and his faculties for speech were strangled from the press of sensations.

And then it happened.

A teasing touch of her tail tip alighted as she graced him from testicles to tailhole. He remembered the look on her face, delicious and devious as she’d done it, heavenly. His eyes crossed, uncrossed, recrossed, and finally rolled back in his head. He felt his back and neck tighten as he pointed his muzzle heavenward and whinnied madly as the scalding sensation of release poured down his backbone, under his tail, and through into Diamond’s depths.

* * * * *

Diamond snuggled down against the soft dry bedding; it had been a gift from her parents, just as the strong, well crafted frame that held it had been a gift from Mac’s own family. Drowsy relaxation crept over her as Mac drew the covers over their flanks and settled in behind her, his body warm against hers as the gentle night air from the open window kissed the sweat from their hides. Morning would come soon enough, and there were chores to do, sure enough, and bedding to be washed and hung out. Mac had covered the soggy plot puddle that they’d made on the other side of the bed with a couple of pillows after rolling her over himself onto the drier half.

Diamond smiled at the thought. It had been a good night, she’d peaked three times, two small and one substantial, as she’d taught him how to touch her with his hoof, to draw out her pleasure before entering her. She’d had one more decent climax after he’d penetrated her, but not before he’d boiled over the first time. Diamond smiled inside as she recalled after he’d come down and tried to withdraw, she’d hooked her hind pasterns behind his hocks and held onto his flanks with her fores informing him that she was not letting him go until she’d had her own climax with him inside her, and she didn’t care if she had to wring every last drop of ‘appleseed’ from him to do it.

She’d gotten her wish, and harvested a second bushel of that hot seed into her waiting ‘apple basket’ shortly after.

Diamond’s left ear twitched from a breath from McIntosh as he slipped his neck across hers. She turned her lips up to meet his in another kiss as he laid a hoof over her shoulder. She moved it down from her shoulder to her belly, his pastern resting just above her teats. That’s where she always felt a lover’s embrace should be in bed. Silver had certainly never complained about it.

It was weird, she thought, to think of her womb as an ‘apple basket’, but then maybe not. She considered his stallionhood hers as much as she considered her sex to be his. She pondered the philosophy of sexual co-ownership as she drifted off, wondering if she was indeed falling for the big red colt whose strong heartbeat and steady breathing even now were lulling her to sleep. In her final conscious thoughts before fading, she made her realization: she’d let the contract stand until they were certain, that she was his and he was hers. She was falling for him, she knew, and had been ever since she’d chosen to become

An Apple Studded Diamond.

Author's Note

* In true earth pony weddings the stallion and mare exchange, and drape each other with, elaborate blankets as part of the ceremony. The mare in the heraldry of her husband's family, and he in that of hers. Symbolically this serves to show the adopting each other into their respective families. In rarer cases only one blanket is used, with the receiving pony being adopted into only the one family. (This was the case with Mac, AJ, and Apple Bloom's parents, as their mother, Orange Bloom, had been largely disowned by her family for going against her parent's wishes.) A young pony, most often a colt, (fillies being selected as flower-girls) is chosen as the blanket bearer to carry the blankets during the ceremony until the exchange take place.

** Ishiumajutsu - (path of the stone horse) - a Neighponese martial science developed to hone the physical and mental focus of the practitioner along with emotional control. Mac is an accomplished adept, but has never quite gotten total control of his inner self. Maud, on the other hoof, is a certified master.

Breeders Note: (Hey it's one of these again :pinkiehappy: ) This is my take on natural, or pasture, breeding. In this type of arrangement as opposed to the more typical controlled 'live cover' used in most modern horse breeding, it is the mare who is in control. She may be turned loose in the same pasture with a prospective stallion, but if she doesn't want to, she doesn't have to breed with him. The mare does this literally by just walking away from the stallions advances if she decides she doesn't like him for whatever reason. If the paddock is small enough a stallion might be able to trap a mare and force a mount (and risk getting hoofed in the junk for his trouble if the mare really takes offense). Otherwise only if the mare accepts the stallion will she proceed to flag her tail, roll her hips back and present her self to him, and allow him to cover her.

It is Hereby Agreed

It is Hereby Agreed

The golden liquid in the shot glass wobbled as its vessel came to a halt again after being restlessly shifted back and forth across the deep-stained, highly polished surface of the heavy oak desk for the ump-teenth time. The brown hoof that guided it retreated again for the moment to touch the letter that had been read and re-read so many times in the last hour and a half. The first shot of apple brandy had gone down quickly enough for Filthy Rich. The second was taking far longer to reach his mouth.

The well-to-do business stallion looked over at the Canterlot Crystal decanter, formerly three-fourths filled. It was now less than a fifth so. The intervening dozen or more shots of liquor had not passed his lips in their disappearance. The fate of the brandy was clearly present in the room in the form of his beloved wife, Silken Sash, who now lay sprawled on a fainting couch in the corner of his study, deep in a liquor infused sleep.

The cause had been the preceding argument, which had been heated, tearful, sour, and pointed. The truths laid out had been hard, but undeniably real. Every problem, every alternate solution that had been tried had seen another ounce of liquor vanish into Silken’s muzzle. The argument had finished when Silken herself had been finished and retreated to the fainting couch in defeat.

That left Filthy Rich to himself to finish laying the pros and cons of his impending decision on the scales of reason and to see where the balances of fate swung for good or ill. With a sigh he laid his head on the polished surface of his desk as he scanned his private home office. The bookshelves that lined the walls were the same rich brown as the finish on his desk. They were lined with books: business management, finance, accounting, economics, business records from three generations of Rich’s Barnyard Bargains, and histories of Ponyville, Equestria, and his own family.

It was family that this was about. It was what had driven Silken to her limits. If this had been just about business, bits, inventory, or such, he’d have had a decision made long ago and not had need to involve his wife. But it wasn’t, it was about family, and that made it necessary to bring in Silken for her two bits to be weighed in the decision.

Her arguments had been predictable, emotional, and limited. He so hated always playing the Legal Councilor of Tartarus in such matters, and this time it stung him dearly for it. The weight of the emotions that he had to hold back in order to see a course of action in this matter had pained him dearly, but it had to be. His family’s whole legacy and standing in the community depended on his impending decision, and one way or another its was going to make him a villain to somepony, and he knew exactly who one of them was for absolute certain.

Sitting himself back in his chair Filthy Rich brought his front hooves together beneath his chin and collected his thoughts a moment before reaching down to the bottom right drawer of his desk. The drawer slid open softly as its owner reached in and withdrew a locked, handle topped box in his mouth, placing it on the desktop before him. Flipping the latch with the tip of a hoof, he carefully sorted through the contents until he located the specific seal he sought, and withdrew the clasped parchment and laid it aside. The box was then closed and latched and returned to its drawer as the brown stallion settled back in his seat.

Ridge, my old friend, Filthy Rich thought wistfully as he looked at the carefully folded parchment laying on the desktop before him, the bright apple-green wax seal embossed with the same fruit, I did everything I could to see that Sweet Apple Acres' legacy was safely passed on to your heirs after the accident. Now, I’m going to have to ask them to help secure mine.

Slipping the parchment with his colt-hood friend’s family seal attached into his business collar, Filthy Rich drew the shot glass back towards himself one final time. Locking his lips around the rim of the glass, he tossed his head back letting the sweet alcohol concentrated cider drain into his being before returning the glass to the hardwood surface.

His fortification ritual complete, the brown business pony trotted out from behind his desk to where Silken Sash lay in her induced catatonia. He leaned over the violet gray mare he loved with the white mane and tail shot with highlighting pink streaks. A tear of regret rolled down his muzzle as he placed a soft kiss on his wife’s cheek.

“I’m sorry my dear, we both knew that this was the likely end. Sleep well, I know how much you hate losing arguments.”

It was so true. Silken Sash, loathed losing arguments of the manner that she had just engaged in. Not so much as for the lost debate, Filthy knew as he quietly drew the door closed behind him. It was how wroth her head would be with her later that she so loathed losing.

* * * * *

… 218 … 219 … 220. The big work pony let out a sigh as he reached the end of the furlong and hung his tired self over the fence rail as he reached for the canteen hung on the nearby post. There were days that the heavy scarlet work pony could almost come to curse Princess Celestia and her life-giving sun and today was one of them. Plowing a field in late spring under the full view of Celestia’s sun was one of his least favorite things in life. He’d rather do such work early in the morning with cooler air to avoid looking and feeling like he did right now. His coat felt like is was a half-size too small right now, and sweat rolled down his scarlet hide giving him the appearance of having been flayed raw. His cutie mark by contrast looked like a massive freshly cut granny smith apple with juice beading on the inner face, almost tempting enough to take a bite from his own flank for.

Emptying the contents of the canteen into his maw and over his head, the eldest son of Apple Ridge and Orange Bloom cast a glance over his workspace. It was near noon and he was almost done this half-acre. He really did prefer the cool of the morning to do this, but had started late due to some bad weather earlier that morning resulting from a schedule shuffle by the local weather boss in order to get to an air show on time.

The sight of a brown earth pony in a business collar and tie trotting up the road towards the main Barn-house caught the big red stallion’s attention.

“Good Morning McIntosh,” called Filthy Rich with a polite wave.

“Eeyup,” Mac responded in kind to his ‘Uncle’ Fil. He was probably the only one of the three Apple siblings that could remember their father’s longtime friend telling them to call him that. Applejack had been too young and Apple Bloom hadn’t even been born yet when ‘Uncle’ Fil had been a regular social visitor to the farm.

“You aren’t lying to me now are you Mac?” The brown stallion raised one eyebrow in amusement at Mac’s response. Most ponies wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

“Eeyup.” Mac grinned wryly back.

“Weellll then,” the business stallion whickered chipperly, “maybe I can help improve that.”

“We’ll see.” McIntosh noted as his father’s closest friend continued on to the barn-house.

His reprieve over, McIntosh set to turning the plow to the next furrow. It was two hundred and twenty paces to finish the next furrow. Mac’s mind ran the math for the work ahead of him, furlongs, furrows, his best pace, temperature, exertion, watering, he had probably another forty to fifty minutes ahead of him. It also meant that he’d need another canteen of water or two and that meant …

“Hey big brother!”

Problem solved. Thought the scarlet stallion as the sharp pitch of his youngest sister’s voice announced her return with the last two canteens he’d sent her to fill for him. Since earning her cutie mark, Apple Bloom had gained almost a hoof and a half at the withers. Still slighter than her sister, the strawberry maned filly was nearly a mare-grown.

“Hey, y’r self Apple Bloom.” Mac spoke to the little olive blonde filly as she trotted up and hung the two filled canteens on the next fence post. “Would y’ mind fillin’ up that last canteen fer me? It’s hangin’ thar on the fence post.”

“I think that c’n wait a bit big brother,” the youngest apple chirped out, excitement becoming evident in her voice, “Granny Smith want’s y’ up at …”

“YEEE-HAAAWW!”

The sound of the two siblings elderly grandmare’s excitement carried clearly across to the fence of the field where the two siblings stood. For a moment the two looked at each other as if silently asking ‘what’s that about?’ before Apple Bloom decided to finish what she’d been telling her brother.

“Anyway brother, they all want ya up …”

“WHAT!?”

The two siblings again exchanged questioning glances as the voice of their sister Applejack unmistakably made its way to their ears. Apple Bloom canted her head and shrugged at her brother who cocked an eyebrow in reply.

“Guess we’d best go find out what’s gone and got Granny so all fired happy an' stuck a burr un’er yer sister’s saddle.”

Apple Bloom looked at her big brother with a half-grin that asked ‘are we really sure we want to?’ before replying with a simple. “Eeyah…”

* * * * *

Reaching the farmyard, Mac stopped to stick his head in a rain barrel and give himself a quick rubdown with a towel before heading in. Apple Bloom just simply trotted in without pause. Reaching the dining room table she found Granny Smith, the elderly matriarch of Sweet Apple Acres, grinning ear to ear and shaking Filthy Rich’s hoof as she patted him robustly on the withers assuring the business pony, “Ah’m sure as cider’s sweet he’ll agree t’ help ya.”

By contrast, Applejack, who was sitting across the table, simply stared agawk at the other two ponies, eyes drawn to pinpoints.

The littlest Apple was about to shake her sister from her daze and ask her what was going on when her big brother trotted into the room.

“Ah, good. McIntosh y’r here.” Granny Smith beamed gleefully at the arrival of her grandson. “Filthy, here has a business proposition fer ya, and a fine sweet one at that.”

“Actually, son,” the business stallion spoke as he straightened his tie and slid a partially folded sheet of paper across the table in McIntosh’s direction, “I would be very grateful if you would consent to help my family with an undertaking of a most important nature regarding the future financial and social welfare of both our families.”

Apple Bloom could hardly see what was on the page before her brother picked the page up on one hoof, reading it at a height she could not easily reach. She had seen the opened green-apple seal of the family farm.

“I agree in principle," Big Mac began his reply with firm assuredness, "but I’d like to add addendums to alter terms of clauses one, nine, and eleven. By double, half, and changing the primary custodial stewardship during minority. Otherwise we can proceed directly to implement the option of clause thirteen.”

Apple Bloom didn’t know what her brother was talking about as he finished speaking and passed the page back across the table to Diamond Tiara’s father, Filthy Rich. Her brother’s hoof was so large she could barely see anything of the paper as he moved it across the table. What she did see were the words at the top of the page …

It is hereby agreed, in accordance with Equestrian law …

By Them

By Them

It wasn’t quite hot enough for the mid morning air in Ponyville to shimmer, but the sky was bright and mostly clear as Fluttershy trotted over the Eastern Bridge heading towards the market square. The fine weather served as a testament to the organization of Ponyville’s weather captain Thunderlane. Sure, Rainbow Dash had been more ‘dynamic’ about things, but she was now the Executive Officer of the Wonderbolts, and living her dream. Thunderlane made a good replacement, though. He was a dedicated, organized, and very responsible stallion.

Fluttershy sighed to herself. When she thought about it Thunderlane sounded an awful lot like another stallion she knew, a stallion she considered a very good friend. Yet her shyness had always kept her from admitting it to anypony other than herself, especially to him.

Thinking of things like that, stallions and such, was awkward. Like the time she’d lost her virginity back in Cloudsdale. It had been a year or so after she’d gotten her cutiemark, but before she’d decided to abandon her cloud home and reside groundside permanently. It had been a vain attempt on her part to overcome her horrid shyness.

Rainbow Dash had been withdrawn from school to work under a private flight instructor hired by her father, after having been teased mercilessly for claiming to have accomplished a Sonic Rainboom. That had left Fluttershy all alone, deprived of her closest, and really only, friend. Being dreadfully shy was one thing; not needing social contact was another. She had tried to come out of her shell little more then, practically forcing herself to interact with others, and one colt had almost immediately taken notice.

Fluttershy gave a small sad sigh; it truly had been folly to get so involved at that time. Whirlaway had charmed her, disarmed her, and deflowered her in due course. He had then left her, all the while bragging how he’d covered the shyest mare in school. The emotional fallout of their affair was what had eventually cemented her decision to move to Ponyville and the safety of the ground.

It had taken a lot of courage to eventually realize the folly of her past. Pegasi were hot blooded to put things mildly. They were passionate flighty ponies, with emotions that soared as high as the clouds they called home. Still, having been asked by Applejack to lead off the teasing of her brother at the handover reception for the stud contract, that had been somewhat unexpected.

Some of these old Earth Pony traditions were, as she was finding out, every bit as wild as the St. Paddock’s day parade in Blarneigh that she’d gone to with her parent’s one year. To lead the tease was basically to be declared the ‘best mare not picked’ or ‘top contender’. But Applejack was a friend, and so was her brother, and if there was one thing she’d learned from all these years in that particular group of friends, friends helped each other, so she had agreed. What she hadn’t expected to do was to get so swept up in the moment of it that night. The music, the dancing, the food, the cider: it had been a fine time.

She’d seen Rainbow Dash and Thunderlane flirting in the manner pegasi were known to. Actually, it looked more like egging each other on, really, but Fluttershy knew Rainbow long enough to know how Rainbow worked. The barbs had been sharp, and the comebacks quick, but neither Thunderlane nor Rainbow had been particularly vindictive about it, nor had they taken their eyes off each other.

A sudden soft furry kick to the back of her left ear snapped the butter-yellow pegasus from her torpor. Fluttershy stopped in her tracks and blinked hard a couple of times as she stared at the post she’d nearly walked into. A sharp drumming of a hind paw on her withers brought her head around to look at the source, where a white rabbit looked sternly at her from it’s perch behind the back edge of her flowing pink mane.

“Oh, I’m sorry Angeline, I guess I got a little lost in my thoughts.”

The white rabbit doe just folded her forelimbs across her chest and gave Fluttershy a scathing look.

“Now just a minute young lady.” Fluttershy’s voice picked up a note of chiding resolve. “Just because your father could get away with that doesn’t mean you can.”

The white rabbit’s attitude wilted immediately at the reproach.

“It’s okay, Angeline, I miss him too, but you need to try to be your own person, not some imitation of others.” Fluttershy smiled back at the little doe who immediately perked up at the comment. “Now, what say we get that shopping done, and get it all back to your brothers and sisters, before I go meet up with Rarity and Twilight this afternoon?” The little rabbit broke into a large smile as she ducked into her mistress’s left saddlebag and withdrew the rolled parchment that contained the morning’s to do list.

“Hey thar, Fluttershy.”

The sound of her friend’s warm welcome brought the pink maned pegasus’s head around the other way.

“Oh, hi Applejack.” Fluttershy smiled back at the orange Earth Pony as she trotted over to the Sweet Apple Acres barrow stand in the market. “How did the clean-up go? I’m sorry I didn’t get to the brunch that day. I was feeling kind of under the weather after the night before.”

“I’m sure you were,” Applejack retorted with a chuckle, “and it was right nice of Rarity and Twilight to see y’ home when they did. Otherwise, y’ might have found y’rself waking up with one o’ mah cousin’s thinkin’ y’ was Mrs. Fluttershy Apple.”

Fluttershy blushed and ducked her chin slightly causing her mane to draw closed like a set of pink curtains hiding her embarrassment as Angeline stroked her mane reassuringly. She had once thought of herself as a possible Mrs. Apple, but she could never bring herself to approach the stud with her feelings.

“Was I really that bad?” the butter-yellow mare squeaked from behind her curtainous coiffure.

“Aw shucks no, Fluttershy, I was just funnin’ ya. Though, with some o’ mah cousin’s, the latter part might have been on their minds ‘n’ all after all that cider an’ such. Y’r still a famous model an’ all t’ some o’ them.”

Fluttershy swallowed hard at the thought of repeating her folly with one of Applejack’s cousins. It was her deepest shame to have given up the filly that Whirlaway had gotten on her. It was an act of kindness as well. A gift of a better life than Fluttershy could have given her as a single mare in a strange village. It was sheer fluke that she even knew the gender of the foal. She had given birth blindfolded and the filly removed immediately there after, a piece of her heart along with her. If she ever let another stallion cover her again, Fluttershy was adamant, she wanted it to be the right stallion for the right reasons.

“Oh.” Fluttershy smiled through her embarrassment at her overreaction, adding a dignified light society chuckle to finish. Applejack’s sense of humor and delivery could sometimes be too matter-of-fact for Fluttershy’s tastes at times. Still the farm pony with the dancing green eyes full of laughing pride was the brimming well of confidence that Fluttershy wished she could be.

“So where is Diamond Tiara? I thought you were going to have her running the stand now that she’s living at Sweet Apple Acres?”

Fluttershy watched as the shining glimmer faded from her friend’s eyes as a pallor of stern reality took hold on the earth pony’s features.

“Big Mac took her to the doctor’s this mornin’.” Applejack flatly stated.

“Really?” Fluttershy chimed in her querying response, “Is she okay? Do you think she might be pregnant already?”

The genuine truth, as Fluttershy knew, was conception could be quite rapid if the mare was fully in season. There also was a spell Twilight had told her of that some unicorn physicians could use to detect the fertilized zygote within a day or two. Though Fluttershy was not exactly sure if any of the unicorn staff in Ponyville had that manner of specialist among them.

“I really hope she is. The sooner she has them foals, the sooner she’ll be on her way.” Applejack mused flatly.

“You think so?” Fluttershy commented uncertainly.

“Eeyup.” Applejack grinned as a different kind of light began to dance in her eyes.

* * * * *

“All right, roll over on your back my dear.”

The white cover paper of the exam table crinkled and crackled under her as she rolled onto her back, belly up. The room smelled faintly like disinfectant solution and the barest trace of lemon to Diamond Tiara. That is to say, it smelt like a physician’s office, just like every other she’d been in. She knew Big McIntosh was waiting patiently, as was his manner, down the hall in the reception area.

“Hmm.” The pale white-blue unicorn mare mumbled as she focused her concentration. Diamond Tiara watched as the physician’s horn took on a soft pink aura about it, matching the color of the mare’s eyes in contrast to her cobalt blue mane with it’s silver-pink stripe. Then the pink pony felt a tingling sensation on her belly slowly circling closer to her …

“Himph.” Diamond let out a soft whimper as she felt a dull ache deep in her lower regions.

“Ah-hmm.” Dr. Lily Soft acknowledged as she kept her spell progressing lower and deeper.

“OW!” Diamond finally flinched as she felt a deep pain down in her intimate regions causing her to double up and roll on her side to shield herself from the probing medical spell. The pain faded along with the aura about the doctor’s horn, as the physician motioned for Diamond to sit up.

“Would you care to hear the good news, or the bad news, first?” the medial pony offered.

“Uhm,” Diamond contemplated her answer before finishing, “could McIntosh come in and hear this too? I think this kinda involves both of us, on at least one part.”

“Yes, I suppose it does.” Dr. Soft agreed as she moved to the wall-mounted intercom, “Nurse Tenderheart, could you send Mr. Apple to exam room 2-A, his marefriend would like him to join her.”

“Of course.” The reply came from the speaker.

A few short moments later there was a light tap on the exam room door, which the physician proceeded to open revealing a concerned looking McIntosh.

“Am I in the right place?” the big red pony asked bashfully trying to avoid eye contact with anything save the ceiling or floor.

“Yes Mr. Apple, your marefriend asked that you be present for the results of the exam.” The medical mare assured McIntosh as she gestured for him to enter the room before closing the door behind him.

Diamond wanted to say something to the effect of that she wasn’t his marefriend, just his contractual broodmare, but her stomach was churning so nervously as she sat on the edge of the exam table, she held her tongue instead.

Dr. Soft had talked to Diamond at length before beginning the physical part of the exam. Her sexual history with McIntosh, her estrus cycles, any previous sexual contacts, what kind of suppressants she’d used previously during her cycles. So many questions and Diamond had tried to keep her word to Mac and tell the truth. She did, however, skip the parts about her and Silver when they were younger, but admitted to her follies with her two previous apprenticeship supervisors. She’d told the doctor about her and Mac’s decisions regarding honoring the stud contract drawn up by their families. How they’d agreed that just the traditional basics were good enough to do the job, no need to linger longer than necessary.

Diamond was slightly ashamed of herself at that last part. It had been her attempt to barter favors with McIntosh in the bedroom that had been the basis for their perfunctory sexual relations. She didn’t see any reason to make herself sound like a harlot to the good doctor, sex for money and such. Oddly, Diamond found herself feeling rotten inside for it, like she was debasing herself by simply spreading her legs and letting Mac go at her plot.

Yes, Mac had said that he didn’t mind such a private little deal just between them in the bedroom if it made her feel better about it. At the time, it sort of had made her feel slightly better about it, but after just two days, though, she was starting to doubt herself.

“So, what will it be first, my little ponies; the good news, or the bad news?” The soft voice of the unicorn physician pulled Diamond from her slow submersion into her own self pity.

“Bad news, please.” Diamond replied as she slipped off the exam table, after exchanging a quick glance with McIntosh who was sitting on his haunches in the corner near the end of the table.

“Eeyup.” Concurred McIntosh as Diamond moved over to where he sat and planted herself in front of him, the big red pony resting a reassuring hoof on her withers.

“Well, Ms. Tiara.” Dr. Soft began, “You’ve got a bruised cervix and vulva, and a couple of small tears in the vaginal wall near the mouth, probably related to the tearing of the hymen. Overall, if you didn’t tell me that you were engaging in consensual intercourse I’d dare say that you’d been forcibly violated young mare.”

Diamond was about to say something in the defense of Mac and herself, but the doctor didn’t pause long enough as she immediately turned her attention to the stallion.

“And you, my good stallion,” the doctor’s tone took a harsher tone as she addressed McIntosh, “should be ashamed of your treatment of your partner.”

Dr. Soft shifted her berating to both Mac and Diamond as she continued. “I have no idea about you fillies and colts these days. You seem to think that if you shove the biggest object you can up your anatomy that the orgasms just fly out on their own, or some nonsense like that. As I can imagine you know the painful truth of that little myth now.”

“Eeyup.” Mac nodded as he hung his head in shame above Diamond’s own, Diamond just hung her head and mirrored her partner’s nod.

“And the good?” Diamond ground out through her tightening jaw. It was a bad enough time to get berated on a regular basis by McIntosh’s sister Applejack. Getting lectured about her sex life at the moment was not precisely making her day right now.

“I’m not through with the bad yet, young mare.” The doctor batted aside Diamond’s statement with a wave of a hoof before pointing it at her. “Although I’m not sure if this would actually qualify, as bad. When your mother brought you in for your pre-mating exam I told you to quit using those estrous suppressants, I seriously doubt you followed my instruction.”

“And what makes you think that?” Diamond bit back indignantly.

“Because if everything I was told a month ago was accurate, you should be ovulating by now, but you’re not. My examination indicates you’re two to three days away from ovulating. That means either the information I was given wasn’t accurate, or you didn’t go off your suppressants right away. Now which is it.”

Diamond swallowed and shrank back against Big Mac who’s hoof remained steady on her withers.

“I didn’t go off my EZ-heat right away, I was mad at my parents for pushing me into this and …” Diamond trailed off in dejection. It was true, and with Mac here there was no use in lying about it. But once again she had stumbled over her misplaced pride and fallen for it. The stroke of McIntosh’s hoof on her withers reminded her she wasn’t alone either.

“So am I ever going to be able to have foals?” Diamond whimpered sullenly, “or am I going to be sterile like my mother?”

“I don’t believe so, while your late ovulation and bruised cervix won’t allow you to conceive right now, the condition is by no means permanent. If you really want to get pregnant I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to in future. But for now you need to refrain from any form of intercourse and allow your body to heal. Also, no more estrous suppressants.”

Diamond smiled weakly with relief at the future prognosis.

“I would also recommend, that you two might want to examine your sexual practices, belly to belly might be more advisable than traditional style right now. It provides the mare more control of penetration and allows better communication between the partners. Also, as long as Mr. Apple has joined us, I’d like to examine his equipment for possible injury, so Mr. Apple, hop up on the table on your back if you would.”

Diamond turned her head to look up at McIntosh as the doctor set about straightening her office a little, only to see him staring blankly in the direction of Dr. Soft, a wide-eyed expression of fear locked on his face.

* * * * *

“Long and thin goes too far in and doesn’t please the ladies. Short and thick does the trick and brings forth the proper babies? Oh, please, tell me she didn’t actually say that.” Silver Spoon was putting a lot of effort into trying not to simply burst out laughing at the comment. After a morning spent attending court with Princess Twilight, the revelation of the doctor quoting an old Shetland tavern rhyme about sex was just too funny.

“Eeyip.” Diamond Tiara smiled back as the pair walked along on their way to the Ponyville Spa. “And Big Mac apparently has the best of both as it seems.”

Ooohh, Silver shivered inside herself at the thought of the big red stallion pushing his firm meaty mounting tool inside her friend. Her own estrous cycle only added to the sensations rising from her deep innards. The fact that her best friend had literally won the cock-lotto and was being bedded for he last couple of nights was so romantically novel. More accurately it was more like the romantic and fantasy novels she so loved to read in her spare time.

The silver-gray nearly mare-grown filly smiled at her thoughts as they turned to the image of Lieutenant Pilum Argentis, who had been her assigned escort for the last month in the Crystal Empire. The crystal colt had a silver sheen coat that complimented her own and his mane and tail were such a lovely shade of silvered aqua. Silver sighed, and he was so polite and knowledgeable too, he’d been a pleasure to be around for those four weeks. She made a mental note to ask Princess Twilight to ask her pegasister-in-law, Princess Cadance, to have Pilum Argentis assigned to their security detail on their next trip to the Crystal Empire. Yes, absolutely she should.

“You’ve got to tell me more, Diamond, I mean I know you didn’t exactly get to tell me the whole deal at the morning-after brunch. So he was a big soft romantic in the ‘Shack’ and gave you a wonderful first time. You also said you two talked a lot before getting down to the deed. I mean really, what did you talk about, positions, experiences, did you mention that time at band camp?” Silver paused as she heard her friend’s hoofsteps fall silent.

Silver looked back as she came to halt. Diamond had stopped a few lengths further back and was staring at the ground, her head uncharacteristically low.

“Oh, come on, Diamond, what’s the hold up?” Silver chided her longtime companion in a high-toned mocking manner similar to how they used to torment Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo. She pranced in place in an exaggerated dressage form for emphasis.

Her parents had insisted she take the classical dance lessons as befitting a good properly cultured filly. It did have its good points; posture and emphasis of poise were two of them. She was even giving Princess Twilight pointers on the form to improve her presentation posture. Honestly, a princess with a slouched posture was soooo unbecoming it wasn’t funny.

Silver trotted back towards Diamond. Silver preferred to leave her follies in the past if she could. Yet she’d tried to make amends where she could. That had been Princess Twilight’s counseling. Silver remembered how after Princess Twilight had accepted her for her diplomatic apprenticeship it had been made perfectly clear that she was going to have atone for her earlier misdeeds towards the younger sisters of the Princess’s friends.

How fitting the young diplomatic pony found it, that the first tests of her apprenticeship would be to snuff the smoldering embers of discontent that she herself had spread in her own ignorance. Silver had to acknowledge the Princess’s wisdom in the matter, and things had worked themselves out, though it hadn’t been easy. There had been a lot of animosity to overcome.

A small sniffle from Diamond caught Silver’s ear as she approached. Having only one close friend for most of her life, Diamond had been closer than anypony to Silver. Close enough, Silver mused nostalgically, that the term ‘lovers’ wouldn’t be far amiss in many cases. They’d shared so many sensual firsts together, it was hard for Silver to see Diamond as less close even with the increasing time Silver was spending with her duties assisting Princess Twilight.

“Come on Di, we’re wasting time here, and I want to hear all the juicy goods about you and Big Mac before Princess Twilight and her friends show up, I mean none of them have ever touched a stallion before.” Silver wheedled at her recalcitrant companion.

Seriously it was true, she’d been present for some girl talk with Twilight and most of her friends at some point in the last year or so. Princess Twilight and Rarity were rather unicorn traditional on matters of intimacy. Rarity shared a love of a certain romance series that Silver had also read, but like Princess Twilight was determined to maintain her maidenhead until her marriage. The fashionista had, however, dropped hints that there were ‘personal ways’ around such problems with the right tool for the job.

Pinkie Pie simply didn’t discuss such things beyond a certain point. The pink pony’s upbringing was very, very, traditional, with both her sisters being paired to contract studs themselves. Pinkie’s view was what happened behind closed doors was between the ponies on the other side of the door. Fluttershy largely just politely avoided the subject; except to reference her animal friends and foal sitting experiences. Silver had seriously doubted that the yellow pegasus even had the will to participate in the teasing at the reception the other night, but the facts spoke for themselves.

Rainbow Dash, that was a pony of a different color, Silver Spoon had found out. The current Executive Officer of the Wonderbolts was quite firm on that she didn’t have a problem with colts, and actually thought several were really quite hot, but had never been with one despite the fact the pegasi were quite open about their sexuality. However, the fact that another mare couldn’t get you pregnant, well that opened up a whole world of possibilities the hot-blooded mare had claimed. After all, Rainbow had pointed out, getting pregnant had put a crimp in her mother’s Wonderbolt career that she’d never overcome.

Of course that left Applejack, and while Silver Spoon’s relations with Apple Bloom were respectful and civil, they could hardly be called warm. Applejack on the other hoof was pure ice. It wasn’t an oppressive grinding iceberg-like coldness, but the orange mare had kept a frosty demeanor about her when Silver was present. It did extend to the point it perturbed Princess Twilight some, causing the young alicorn to mention it to Silver in private. Silver had however learned that the farm pony was just as frigid towards the colts as she was to her, but was staunchly ‘traditional’ by her own proclamation. It made Silver want to flutter her lips every time she heard it.

“It’s a lie, Silver.” Diamond lifted her head slightly as she spoke.

Silver cocked an eyebrow behind her glasses at her best friend’s statement. A lie? What was a lie? And why, by Celestia’s horn, would Diamond lie to her?

“You mean he just went right in when he got into the shed the other night?” Silver drew her head back in disbelief, at Diamond’s statement.

“No, Silver,” Diamond turned her head aside as she scraped her hoof along the dirt aimlessly as she answered. “Mac didn’t mount me right there. He talked a lot before he covered me.”

Silver could hardly believe her ears as Diamond started to recant the story she’d been so giddy while sharing quick details of the previous day. All the same she kept her ears focused on her friend as Diamond began to slowly start walking again.

“Mac’s not the best in bed either, he tried at first, and it was okay, but the more we did it the more it hurt, and I didn’t help things by not going off my EZ-heat right away either.”

Silver scrunched her muzzle at her friend’s revelation. Talk about raining on her romantic visions. Diamond was certainly being a dry plot about this. It was sounding like the Stag King of Dragonstone Island; he bedded his wife once a year and she gave him but one daughter and many stillbirths. Silver could feel for her friend, she’d fooled around enough in bed with Diamond to know that while slightly selfish and pushy, if you could get Diamond hot in the plot she could be very … passionate. Diamond also hated the concept of ‘owing’ Silver an ‘O’, and like the Lions of Casterley, Diamond always paid her debts, in bed at least.

“So, what did you two talk about?” Silver brushed against her friend in a gesture of support as they kept walking.

“Making choices.” Diamond answered flatly.

“Like 'how do you want to do it' choices?” Silver wasn’t quite following Diamond’s line on this. It was a breeding shed, Diamond had been laid out to get covered, the choice seemed simple, mounting bench or roll in the straw. If you kinda liked the stud, roll in the straw, if not, just let him do his thing from the bench and be done with it, right?

“Other choices, about me and him.”

“Is he a colt cuddler?” Silver was finding her friend’s responses bothersomely uninformative.

“No, it not that. I don’t know, he’s nice, and strong, and thoughtful, and all, but …”

“So he’s not perfect, and he’s clumsy in the sack, and you feel weird about basically being told to get your plot plowed by the older brother of the pony whose muzzle you spent so many years rubbing in their own manure.” Silver had to do something to stop Diamond from being such a downer, and right now the flat facts were all she could come up with as they approached the spa.

“You need to relax right now. Any pony in your situation would be a little weirded out. So you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to go in there, hop in some warm mud, dry out in the sauna, get a good rub down, and forget about the whole thing for the next little while.” Silver brought her front hoof to her chest as she paused to take a cleansing breath like Twilight had shown her.

“You’re right Silver.” Diamond perked up as she spoke, “I am getting myself wound up over nothing. I’ve just encountered a setback. It’s not like Mac’s a bad colt, either. In fact he’s really a great stallion. It’s just there’s just so much I didn’t know until two days ago.”

“See,” Silver grinned at Diamond, as they headed up the front walk of the spa. “It’s like Princess Twilight told me once; things aren’t so bad with good friends to help you through.”

“Yeah,” Diamond smiled back, before leaning closer to Silver and whispering in her ear, “and it’s not like he’s all bad in bed, he’s actually a pretty good plot licker for a novice.”

“Oooh, so it wasn’t all manticore crap.” Silver smiled back at her friend in anticipation of both a warm mud bath and some hotter bedroom details as she reached for the door and opened it for her friend.

“… filly or colt, it really doesn’t matter to us, so long as Diamond doesn’t get the business.”

Silver Spoon watched her friend’s eyes go wide and the smile crash from her face as Diamond’s mother’s voice greeted their ears from the opening door.

“Oh, Tarnish …” Silver gasped.

Author's Note

Breeder's notes: Yeah Diamond wasn't really ready for Big Mac, and neither was Mac ready for Diamond. It's not the best arrangement to cover a maiden mare with an equally untried Stud as it increases the chances of injury. Injury issues can cause the mare to shy from future breeding and risk rendering the animal unable to breed.

Fortunately, McIntosh here is a kind hearted fella and want's to see to the best upkeep for Diamond.

Now ain't that too bad I had to go stab her in the heart anyway.

And now I plan to run her out on a rail, and some pony won't be happy about that. :eeyup:

Checkov's Gun - Macneighavellian. (Chapter 6 - To Beget a Foal)