Pony Play

After two days you visit the blacksmith and quickly return to the cottage, a long metal chain with an iron spike on one end rattling over your shoulder. You set it on the floor inside the cottage and return the bucket to its closet. There's still just enough daylight to finish and leave tonight, but instead you look into the kitchen and remember:

“Take me to your world,” she asks you again in the evening, as you sit together in the kitchen, you peeling cattail tubers after she rinses them.

You jerk your head towards the bedroom, and she puts down her bowl of tubers and goes meekly to the bedroom. You set the peeler on the counter and sigh, knowing she is already obligingly tying her hindlegs to the lower bedposts.

You find yourself grinding your teeth. Her easy assumption of submission irritates you more each day. Does she think she's more damaged than you?

You meant to help her, to give her a place where she would not have to lead, not have to think, not have to speak. Why couldn't that be enough?

As you wash your hands of tuber peelings you think: Somewhere in her, she still has a will. You must prove it to her. For her own good. She needs you to break her fantasy, prove to her that she doesn't want to surrender herself completely. You're not thinking of your own needs at all.

Liar.

You follow her into the bedroom and tie the vines she was unable to. Then you fold her yellow silk handkerchief twice and gently tie it around her eyes. You tighten the vines further, until she whimpers once. You leave her there to search the yard for a stick just the right size. You return to the bedroom and hold it in front of her face, close enough that she can feel it with her whiskers.

"No talking," you tell her. "Bite down on this. We're going to play a little harder this time. When it gets too real for you, spit it out. But when you do, our game is finished."

She clamps her jaws around the stick like a puppy. You begin tickling her. But this time, you don't stop when she begins whining and jerking away from the feather. You continue until her muscles spasm at each touch. You stop and start, stop and start, unpredictably. The blindfold prevents her from anticipating the feather's touch. You continue until she is thrashing in her bonds and begins to sweat from the effort. Still she grips the stick tenaciously.

You climb onto her and stroke front-to-back, with the fur, from the hollow under her wing, over her hip, down the curve of her thigh and buttock, all seemingly one giant muscle. Her scent reminds you of dust and honey. You feel the softness of her hair and watch her face, and soon you are ready. But still you hold back.

You focus on the feel of her fur, summoning something ancient from within yourself. When it rises inside you to the level of your eyes you let go and it lurches to the front, shoving the rest of you roughly out of the way, setting urgently, violently to its business. You are carried along, grunting, forgetting words, forgetting yourself, forgetting her, not even looking at her. You don't need to: You are her, she is you, neither of you are anyone, you are both empty shells that open each other wide for a moment and let the ancient spirit that is life roar through the point where you meet.

Even when she stretches her neck toward the ceiling and a wail rises in her throat and whistles out around the stick like steam in a teapot brought to a boil, somehow she keeps her grip on it.

Some time later you find yourself clinging to her back, soaked in sweat. There are hairs on the ropes, and feathers, and fragments of feathers, on the bed. She groans softly when your movements shift her. The stick remains between her teeth.

You pause and wipe the sweat from your forehead. She still wears the same gentle smile. A pleasant sight, in ordinary circumstances, but now it only means you haven't pushed her nearly far enough.

You snort once, push thoughts of Fluttershy the pony from your head, and focus on the bright sweet-corn yellow of her body, the cotton-candy pink of her mane, the raw juicy texture of her flesh. You begin working over her body again, visiting all the same places but less in love, more in hunger, until you draw blood with your teeth and red welts beneath her fur with your fingernails. Tears leak from under her blindfold, but the stick remains firmly clenched between her teeth, muffling her cries.

You stop, take a deep breath, and think of doing other things to her, things you've heard about but never wanted to try. Things that disgust you. Maybe, if you did, you could find her limit, the border where reality dispels her fantasy. If you did that every day, maybe someday she would have had enough, and remember how to want to be in control. Maybe even soon enough that you wouldn't have to.

But you can't. Her weakness is stronger than yours.

She still grips the stick desperately, hopefully. You have to pry it from between her teeth, with your arms shaking and starting to cramp up. She doesn't know she's already won.