An Apple Studded Diamond

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.”