Tonight, Lyra was playing dulcimer.
Usually, the dulcimer was an instrument that she considered simplistic, beneath her, but its very simplicity was the property that made it so relaxing tonight. Lyra may be the first pony in six centuries to be titled a lyre virtuoso, and the very first non-griffon and non-minotaur to ever master the 47 strings and seven pedals of a concert harp, but the second and fourth Tuesday of each month were days to limit herself to two hammers, rather than some six to ten picks and up to seven pedals.
Tonight was a second Tuesday, thus tonight the Doctor would visit on his twice-monthly attempt at impregnating Bon-Bon. And despite the letter of bad news that Bon-Bon had received three days ago, they hadn’t thought necessary to yet talk to the Doctor. After all, Lyra had received her own ‘good news’ letter that very same day, and it had taken her a single look at Bon-Bon’s crumbling face to absolutely chuck out her own childless life-plans and decide to chuck a few foals at her spouse.
Her performance to Bon-Bon continued for a long while, sometimes going through known melodies, sometimes just letting her instinct guide the hammers. Eventually, a bell added an off-tempo to the performance...
The doorbell
Bon-Bon jumped from her sofa and welcomed the stallion into their home even as Lyra picked up the off-tempo and wove a new melody based on the new rhythm.
And as always in her welcoming of the Doctor, she wrapped it up in less than a minute, before she put down her hammers, stood by Bon-Bon and both bowed at the stallion. They did so just like the well bred mares they were, with the knowledge that the rituals separated the visit from Lyra’s almost-brother Time “Whooves” Turner from the service visit from ‘the Doctor’, their service stallion.
Just as the ritual would have it, Time Turner returned their bow just as deeply. The three of them then stood back up at the same time and proceeded to the next step of the ritual: the doctor presented forward his hoof to Bon-Bon. He then looked just momentarily surprised when it was Lyra rather than Bon-Bon the one who then stepped forward, unwrapped the red ribbon from his foreleg and tied it around his neck, all while it was Bon-Bon the one who now removed his saddlebags and made herself scarce.
Wanting to go straight to business rather than fool with the foreplay that could come at this point, Lyra turned around and began going to the bedroom, but was then surprised when she wasn’t followed. Turning back, she noticed that he was still standing there, looking sadly at her.
“Don’t you want to talk about this, Lyra?” he asked. “I can take off this ribbon and then you can talk with your big brother Whooves.”
She didn’t reply with words: she jumped at him, nearly tore the ribbon from his neck and latched her arms around the neck of her almost-brother.
“Please, Whooves: I definitely don’t want to think right now that I’m about to be serviced by my big brother.”
“We could change that, Little Harp-flank,” he replied. “I could march to Town Hall and get you assigned to a different stallion. Name your pick, and I could pull a few favours...”
“Don’t,” she interrupted him. She then disentangled herself from his neck and looked him in the eye. “Don’t do anything like that, Whooves. You are the very first pony I told that I was gay. You are the stallion I asked to be my best pony at my wedding with Bon-Bon. You are the only stallion I could trust with doing this, and I’m just lucky enough that we have no consanguinity. So please,” she said, picking up his discarded ribbon and putting it on him again. “Our duties as ponies state that, in order to keep up the population of Equestria, every fertile stallion has to service at least eight mares, and every fertile mare must pop out at least two foals, in compensation for the 44% of mares who are born barren. Tonight let’s just be citizens Time Turner and Lyra Heartstrings doing their patriotic duty, rather than Harp-flank and her almost-brother Doctor Whooves.”
And with that, she turned around and retreated to the bedroom. And, to her complete lack of surprise, she found smack in the middle of the bed a lube syringe. Bon-Bon had surely left it there, knowing what Lyra hadn’t thought about: that she would be as dry as the desert.
She didn’t know how to use the syringe, but the service stallion did, and asked her to lie on her back as he expertly showed her how to use it.
During the application of the lube he apparently felt that she still had her hymen and told her that he could come back after she had it opened by a doctor, but she insisted he pierced it the old fashioned way.
The service stallion then put her on her belly, with her rear legs dangling off the edge of the bed, and carefully climbed behind her and guided his business end into her own.
He slowly pushed in, and deflowered her.
He began rocking, sliding in and out of her fast enough to be in a hurry, but not fast enough to make her whimper from her broken hymen.
Some ten minutes later his business end finally spurted inside her own and he climbed down. He offered her first turn on the bathroom, but she rather finished climbing on the bed and put herself on that “rump on the air” position that supposedly helped mares to have better chances at conceiving. He thus helped her by turning that five-minute hourglass that Bon-Bon had had on her bedside table, and went to the bathroom to clean himself.
Exactly five minutes later, she started cleaning herself, although not deeply: it would defeat the purpose of having been serviced.
And ten minutes later, she was on the doorstep, removing the red ribbon from her service stallion and winding it back on his forehoof, while Bon-Bon strapped his now much heavier saddlebags on him. It was all part of the courtesy: service stallions, especially those with full roosters like this one, had to take time from their own work and their own lives in order to provide service to mares. It was thus simple courtesy to tip the stallion for his efforts with their own, which in their case consisted on a load of confections from Bon-Bon and an IOU good for an informal lyre concert at a birthday party.
She knew that Pip Squeak would be having his birthday next week, and ~~Whooves~~ the Doctor cared much more than the bare minimum for his various fillies and colts; which was the very reason why every mare wanted him and he kept a dozen mares’ rooster: the maximum permitted. They did call him ‘The Doctor’ because he made good wherever he went...
With nothing else left to do, the Doctor left.
Lyra kept staring at the door for a small eternity, until Bon-Bon came and slapped her awake, then pulled her into a searing kiss and kicked her out into the night with instructions of going to her brother’s home and giving him a hug.
Lyra still took a few more seconds to fully react, but when she did she started running to her brother’s home.
Ever since she had delivered two of those “blood analysis” letters to Lyra and Bon-Bon’s house, three days ago, Derpy had half-expected this: her husband had come back from his service appointment, then had sought her and begun softly weeping on her shoulder.
She left him for a moment to make sure that the front door was unlocked, then came back to him and softly guided him to the couch in the living room. Knowing Bon-Bon, she knew that... {BANG!} ...Lyra would be over shortly, and not in the mood to wait at the door.
And surely enough, Lyra came in as an utter mess, looking like she had galloped the whole way here and with a river of tears rolling down her face.
Derpy had the presence of mind of taking to the air an instant before brother and sister crashed in the spot she had just vacated. They immediately began squeezing each other, weeping bitterly on each others’ shoulders.
They would not separate at all that night. And Derpy would never try to separate her husband from his almost sister, sixth-degree grand aunt, best friend and confidante. And especially not after brother and sister had been raped by patriotic duty.
Bucking for apples, and for Apples
Applejack was trying to focus in her apple harvest routine:
Step one: “place baskets around the tree”
Step two: “give a good buck to the tree”
Step three: “pick up baskets”
Step four: “rinse and repeat”
Thing was: step two usually required an Earth Pony to focus, which was something that Applejack was currently unable to do, which in turn had her wasting hunks of time on the usually unnecessary step two-and-a-half: “pick up the apples that your lack of focus made fall outside the baskets.”
It wasn’t until she came to a Grand Alexander tree and then managed to get more of the jumbo apples on her head than on the baskets that she finally accepted defeat, let herself collapse and let her mind roam.
Just this morning, she had received the replies to those drops of blood she had sent on the mail last week. And while her own had been ‘good news’, Applebloom’s... hadn’t.
And well, it was good news for the Ponyville branch of the Apple clan: it wouldn’t be like the Apple orchards at Trottingham some twenty years ago, when the four Apple mares living there all failed to ever get pregnant, and had to eventually accept a very fertile Orange mare moving in with six Orange foals. Well, not like the Apples were in bad relations with their sister clan, but it still hurt to loose an orchard to the city dwellers.
Anyway: Applejack now knew for certain that she would be able to pop out Apple foals to keep up the Ponyville farm. That was okay, as her lifeplans had always included trying to have her legal minimum of two foals. What her plans hadn’t included had been for her to not stop there: Applebloom had always been much more marvelled by foals than Applejack, and Applejack had been hopping that Applebloom would be the one to fill the house with little ones.
What would Applejack do now?
Well, for starters she would have to go and get herself into a stallion’s service schedule. And that wouldn’t be easy for her: the Apples had been the founders of the town, and with their luck of having at least a stallion per generation, pretty much the entire town was too close to blood to be good. Just her Papa had some thirty foals, and her Grandpa had closer to fifty!
But she would need a big, strong stallion for her to pop out some good Apple foals. Too bad that Big Mac, the strongest pony in Ponyville, happened to be her direct brother.
So... Snowflake...?
Applejack rapidly shock her head free from such motion: he sure was a mighty piece of eye-candy, and in fact the protagonist of many of her late-night fantasies, but Snowflake wasn’t naturally strong. He was rather a nutter who kept popping muscle stimulants, and as rumour had it, his business end was so small and so underdeveloped that he was unable to even make it work half of the time. Besides, his four foals to date were all subpar: the two retards Snips and Snails, the severely underweight Featherweight and Peppermint Twist, who had been born with leporine lip. Too bad for those foals, but Applejack was far from desperate enough to get subpar blood for her clan.
Well, she could always march into City Hall and pay five bits for a list of stallions with open spots and no consanguinity with her. It would then just be contacting them and getting in agreement for a spot on a service schedule.
But, of course, that would take her being married. Unmarried mares could not get themselves legally serviced. Well, that would just take having a word with Big Mac: by his own word, he was in no risk of falling in love with any of the mares he was currently servicing, and with no other prospects, he was in little risk on missing on a love marriage. After all, normal marriage was little else than a legal declaration between two ponies that they would both care of the foals birthed by the number of mares in the relationship. Applejack had hoped for a love marriage, just like any little filly, but she knew how rare those were: Lyra and Bon-Bon last year, then the Cakes the year before that, then Derpy and Time Turner four years ago. Thus, she may marry her brother.
But then: what about Applebloom?
After thinking about it for a while, Applejack thought about a different approach: she could talk to Applebloom, then wait the four years left until Applebloom was legal to marry, and if Applebloom didn’t have marriage prospects, she would marry her. Hay, perhaps she could check how the flower sisters had done it and then the three Apple siblings could all marry each other!
Finally with a plan in mind, Applejack could stand up again and finish her daily chores as usual.
Author's Note
After seeing how the chapter had come out, I thought about renaming it “Sweet Apple Banjoes”, but refrained by considering it too revealing. Besides: YUCK! THAT’S NOT HAPPENING!
