Applejack wiped the sweat from her brow. She was embarrassed at how much there was. It glistened on the back of her hand. She shook it away for a fleeting sensation of cool in the heat and wiped the rest off on her cut-off denim shorts. She rubbed at her eyes, but this only added the sting of salt to the abuse already shining down from on high.
The heatwave was a real scorcher. Too hot to work, and that was a rare happening for any Apple, anywhere. Hands at her stomach, Applejack bunched up the fabric of her shirt and wiped at her eyes. It helped with the discomfort, somewhat. Still half blinded, she made for the shade of the nearest trees.
There wasn’t much that could be done on a day like this. Hands pushing hips, she leaned back far as she could and stretched. She popped back upright with a sigh and a jiggle. That called up a familiar ache, and she massaged sympathetically the undersides of each breast.
I’d been a toss-up. Wearing a bra helped, as it were, get a weight off her chest. Or at least support said weights better. On the other hand, a bra also helped unhelpfully with heating and insulating, which made for sticky sweaty itchiness. Applejack had started the day with a bra, as she usually did. She’d tolerated it for maybe ten minutes before hastily flinging it inside through an open window, and even that had only been a small improvement on her perspiration situation.
If the weather kept like this she’d worry for the trees, but for now they, and the grass, were loving it. Green things glinted as if Rarity had personally seen to polishing, primping, and stroking the ego of every single leaf.
Applejack snuggled herself up cozy against the roots of her chosen tree. She rolled her shoulders; the scratching bark worked wonders for her sweaty skin. The bum of her cut-offs picked up grass stain with each wriggle.
She settled into the classic lounging-cowboy posture and reached for the brim of her hat. Only out of ingrained habit though, because it wasn’t there. Damn.
Well, she had loaned it to Apple Bloom to take up north. Of course, this loan had included a solemn promise to treat it with nothing short of reverence and to absolutely, unyieldingly, assure its safe return. Applejack smiled at the memory. Her sister had received it like a coronation of sorts, with awe and wonderment and great responsibility.
Then the train had blown its whistle, the family had hugged and waved and shouted cheery goodbyes over the growing roars of the engines, and away they had choo-chooed. Up north to the Empire. Applejack, who’d travelled more than the rest of her immediate family put together had happily put herself forward as the one to stay and mind the place.
Now the water of the pond, that was feasible. Tangible. But she’d been yesterday, splashing and playing and getting more than a few glances roving over her two-piece. Especially when she’d wrestled Rainbow and Pinkie Pie had thrown herself into the fray and it had become a free-for-all of grabbing, shoving and dunking. After all that, there was a certain something inviting and restive about having this whole quiet place to herself.
The more she relaxed, the more she noticed the little things that got in the way of relaxation. A blade of grass tickled at the small of her back, just in the gap between where her shirt ended and her shorts began. She brushed it aside, but the motion made her realize that the cut-offs had ridden up ever so slightly. Wriggling, pulling, she worked them back down, an inch further down the roundness of her hips. Then she unbuttoned the shorts. Unzipped the fly. Ah, that was better...
Her fingers wandered, entirely of their own accord, down. Applejack’s eyes stayed firmly shut. To open them would be to confront what her fingers, entirely of their own initiative of course, were doing. She edged carefully around the thought, the motive behind it, never approaching it directly, moving slowly in case it spooked and fled. Some of yesterday’s glances had been...suggestive. Some had been more than that.
Maybe she’d done some glancing of her own. She thought of the swimming shorts the boys had worn, and her fingertip brushed against the first of her curly blonde hairs. Okay, she’d definitely done some glancing. No point denying that. And having the farm to herself certainly had other, ahem, restive qualities as well. For once in a blue moon Applejack had all at once, the time, privacy and the inclination to do...well, to do. Each one of those three was an uncommon occurrence for her. All three together hadn’t happened in a long time. There was a suggestion of heat under her fingers, one that had nothing to do with the weather. Fingers slid tentatively deeper under Applejack’s shorts.
Winona’s tongue slid rapidly over Applejack’s face. It smacked with wet audibility on her cheek, and the hot splat splat splat of doggy breath in her face had Applejack upright, flustered and cursing in all of a second.
“Okay. Okay! Yeah, I’m definitely up now. There goes that, uh, nap. Thanks. Good job,” the woman said glumly. She pushed the enthusiastic collie away. Winona, whom for all her nasal prowess could not detect sarcasm, felt satisfied and deeply fulfilled, and was enthusiastic as only a happy dog can be. She bounced around Applejack’s knees, and lolled her tongue as a hand distractedly rubbed the top of her head.
Applejack pulled her arms in through the sleeves, hesitated a moment, then slipped out of her shirt. A faint thrill coursed through her as the fabric tugged across her nipples and sweat-dampened skin felt the first kisses of the breeze. The shirt was as good a towel as any, and Applejack took to wiping her face with every bit as much gusto as Winona had employed beforehand.
She balled up the shirt in her hand. She looked down, though womanhood had seen to it that this was not straight down. Rather, this was curved down. A round down. Two round downs, if one wanted to get facetious. Applejack’s gaze lingered there, then she looked away and caught herself whistling. There wasn’t anyone around for two miles, but, well, she hadn’t let the girls out since, well, since before she’d had breasts to worry about letting out. It just wasn’t done.
Not that Applejack considered herself modest. She told herself this as she stepped from the relative seclusion of the trees to the relative openness of the farmyard. There’d been the occasional skinny-dip by moonlight, for instance. A tingle of nervous excitement, even something like daring rattled its way through her.
Applejack shooed the thought away. No. She had an upbringing which was high in knowing the facts of life at an early age, practicality, and fibre: both moral and floral.
She came from a large family. One of if not the largest families going. Matriarchal too. These facts alone suggested a tribe of women who well knew how to handle the man they’d struck a claim too. They tended to favour ones they could get hands-on with. Hands-on in the specifically plural sense.
Applejack had never been so enterprising as her cousins in this regard. She did have a tendency to grin at her dinnerplate whenever certain lengthy vegetables made their perfectly innocent appearance. She’d been caught staring thoughtfully at a cucumber, though fortunately that little incident seemed to have been largely forgotten. The only thing more embarrassing than letting your keen-eyed Granny inadvertently know you had a budding sexuality was that same Granny then toothily grinning and immediately calling to your attention this boy and that boy. All this of course she suggested by double entendres and euphemisms that had all the subtlety of a bull elephant trumpeting for his harem, and more or less had the same purpose in mind.
This hadn’t actually stopped Applejack from being watchful. She’d just gotten better at it. More subtle. If the swim shorts yesterday were anything to go by, than those same boys had since done some growing of their own. Both in the long term and the imminent short term, come to that. Particularly during and just after the moment the wrestling had happened. She hadn’t been able to stare much at the men over there and win against the women over here at the same time. That felt like a lost opportunity, but one her imagination was quick to fill in for.
Applejack shivered from a different sort of heat. Winona bolted ahead, barking incessantly. Legs thinking faster than her head, Applejack jogged after the collie with long, easy strides. She cupped her breasts in her palms when their ups and downs started hurting, even though under her rough hands the friction on her nipples started feeling a little too good. The little buds stiffened at the treatment. She could already feel a blush coming on, and the warmth of sunshine falling on her bare back was matched by a flush of warmth rising up from inside.
All this meant that, as Applejack rounded around to the front of the house, hands holding on in their own little areola-rodeos, Cadence got a very memorable introduction indeed. There she was, Princess of the Empire, scratching Winona behind the ears. Always a surefire way to send the collie into oblivious bliss, that was. She was wearing a petite little summer dress and looked the picture of innocence.
And there was Applejack stumbling to a halt, not feeling oblivious or blissful at all, and very definitively not wearing a petite little summer dress. She wouldn’t have managed to fit those girls of hers into anything called ‘petite’ anyway. She took it all in very quickly, matched Cadence’s pink, shoulder length hair and with flamingly-red cheeks. Applejack whipped open her shirt from the crushed up ball it had been and flung it over her head like a reverse dive.
This motion did mean that her shorts, already unbuttoned, dropped at roughly the same instant. The age old expression ‘closes a door, opens a window’ had never probably been applied quite like this before, and though Applejack squatted, grabbed at her pants and rose like a champ, Cadence had the look of someone who has noticed the window, seen everything on display, and maybe is humouring notions of making a purchase.
Guess what else Applejack wasn’t wearing? Exactly.
There were several muddled exclamations fighting for control of Applejack’s tongue. Good old fashioned cursing won out when, desperately doing up her shorts, the vicious little bastard got hair in its teeth. Applejack screamed bloody murder and promptly fell over. There was a series of pained, wincing ouches, a protracted moment in which her fingers dived desperately out of sight under the cut-offs. A final, much more cautiously executed zipping-up ended the crisis. Applejack let herself collapse back in the dirt.
“This is a hallucination, right? One of them mirage thingies you hear about in deserts?”
Cadence looked all around with a twirl. It was a sort of layered skirt-dress of a thing she wore. If it revealed anything, it was this: Cadence didn’t have much of anything to reveal. Patting her hands over her hips, chest and cheeks to check her own existence meant her hands took more or less a vertical ascent. “Everything checks out over here,”
“You certain?” Applejack lay in the dirt, her eyes shut, her lips the only part of her moving. “Because you know, too much sunshine. Dehydration. I coulda just stumbled and fell over. Hallucinated this whole embarrassing thing. Eeyup, I think I could argue that case.” Applejack huffed. “This whole thing really did just happen?
“Yes.”
“Damn.”
“That’s a bit odd as reactions go, isn’t it?” Cadence offered her small hand, but Applejack didn’t take it. “I quite like being actually here and not some mirage, thank you very much.” She put a fingertip to her chin. “Though I suppose being a figment of your imagination wouldn’t be all that bad...” There was something of a silky finish to the sentence.
Applejack groaned as she hefted herself upright. “Suppose that’s something, then. Silver linings in clouds and all that.”
“There’s no clouds today.”
“Right. Er, Care to come inside? Ain’t at all fit for a Princess, but I’m sure you know that already.” Applejack thought for a second. “And I’m doubly sure you know that expression.”
Cadence tapped her chin again and looked off into the distance with what could only be called playfully exaggerated consideration. “Yes I do, I’m quite sure it is, yes I do and yes I do, too. Lead on.”
Applejack’s hand made the tap water she poured for herself tremble in the glass. She gestured the cupboard and asked if Cadence wanted anything. Then she stopped. “I just offered a Princess tap water,” she said with blank realization. The woman let herself fall heavily into the chair opposite Cadence.
“Am I still allowed to accept, or...?” Winona pushed her head under Cadence’s palm as she waited on an answer. Applejack blinked.
“Er, yeah. Of course! I mean, yeah. Here ya go.” She watched the Princess drink. “I just gave a Princess tap water,” Applejack said numbly.
Cadence went ‘pah’ after she swallowed, and treated the larger woman to a teasing smirk. “And it was perfectly okay, thank you. I like what you’ve got going on down there by the way.” She winked.
Applejack paled noticeably. “Come again?”
“Your bush, Applejack. I-” but this was cut off by Applejack choking fitfully, thumping herself on the ribs high as she could without hitting nature’s fecund and quick-to-ache bounties. They jiggled from the exertion. They rose and fell as the woman caught her breath.
Cadence carried on like this had been a perfectly casual reaction to a perfectly acceptable statement. “I’ve been shaving it all for years, but that’s for Shiny’s tastes.” She giggled. “Helps him with tasting, too, which is nice, though I’d keep a little something down there if I could.”
The Princess scratched Winona’s chin. The collie laid its head in her lap and stared up at Cadence with soulful eyes. “Who’s a good girl? You are, yes you are!”
Too stunned to think, Applejack spoke. Something of the trader in her put out the words before she could take them back. Her voice was small. “And you’re getting something fair in return from him, I hope?”
“Mhmm.” Cadence pursed her lips. The lithe little Princess of the Empire smiled with awkward good humour. “Very fair. If I’m going to shave mine, he has to keep his. It just doesn’t look or feel right to me if there isn’t, you know, and it’s never been a problem for us because he’s rather quite-”
The Princess had started making the ‘this big’ gesture with her hands, but Applejack stopped her. Applejack pushed back her chair with a grinding of wood. She stood. She pushed in her chair. She exhaled. She inhaled. “You’re entirely, absolutely, utterly beyond-a-doubt sure I’m not having some kind of heat stroke right now?”
Cadence pouted with cute, sweet innocence. It was an expression her small frame and delicate features were perfect for. “We could lay you down in bed and have me check you over, if you want?”
Her tone, on the other hand...
Applejack held up her palms. “Okay, no, backtrack there. Backtrack a whole lot. What is this? I mean, I appreciate a visit just fine, but you? Here? This?”
Applejack hesitated. She thought of Shining Armour, Twilight’s brother. Cadence’s husband. Unbidden memories of the cucumber welled up. Applejack glared. Cadence met it with a soft smile. Her small hands were still held in the gesture, and they dragged Applejack's eyes down. Specifically to the distance between them. Applejack relented. She leaned over the table with conspiratorial intent.
“How big exactly are we talking?” she said like a person driving a hard bargain.
Cadence’s giggle had a chiming quality to it. It was a happy sound. Musical. It wasn’t the sort of sound you could expect such salaciousness from. There was lip chewing interest there, though. It was the same kind of body language Applejack recognized in her own mirror on the rare, furtive early mornings or late nights where she hid in bed and thought very fervently about gardening for as long as she dared.
The Princess gestured again. A circle with one small hand, thumb and fingers. Cadence nodded with a knowing, much-approving smirk.
Nothing was making much sense to Applejack and the only way out she felt was to keep pressing forwards. She nodded with critical appraisal “That’s...” It was right about here Applejack realized she didn’t actually know what the standard issue male came like, but Cadence had held her hands quite far apart before, and that circle of hers was much too large for her thumb and fingers to actually reach one another...
A sensation not unlike falling made itself known in the pit of Applejack’s stomach, while a sensation not unlike rising made itself known slightly further down. The two feelings met somewhere in the middle and got tangled. She tried to hide all revelation of this development from her face. Cucumbers mocked her thoughts. A little sigh that was really an even tinier moan slipped past her lips. Red rose in her cheeks.
“That’s, uh, nice. Good. Good for him.”
“It really is,” said the Princess, and there was a certain inflection there that raised some alarm in the larger woman.
Applejack took the empty glass and busied herself with them at the sink. “So, uh, Cadence. What did bring you ‘round here anyway? You know,” she said, still mildly desperate, “I got family gone up your way-”
“Yes.”
Applejack could feel those bright eyes on the back of her head. Or maybe on the small of her back. Maybe tracing the wide curve of her hips, or teasing along the bit of sideboob Applejack had since realized was quite popular with the local boys when she was working the stall and had tested even further yesterday at the pond. “We met before I left, it was quite a pleasure.”
The way she teased out the word put Applejack on edge, but Cadence carried on without regard. “It seems they’ve found another family, the Snow Berries. They’re getting along very well. Lots of dancing and music. I think both sides are intent to prove some kind of relation.”
“You think there is one?”
Cadence shrugged. “They might just make up a relative or two to make it work out.” This got a chuckle from Applejack. “They say hi by the way. They’re sad that you couldn’t go too.”
The glass was sparkling, but Applejack washed it again anyway. “I been to the Empire plenty more times than any of ‘em anyway, it’s only fair I stay to mind the place when the chance for everyone else crops up.”
“Oh. Apple Bloom asked I tell you that the hat is good.”
“Glad to hear-” Applejack turned. She nearly dropped the glass when she discovered that Cadence was no longer seated. The Princess had stood and drifted to just under Applejack’s right shoulder. For her part, the Princess slipped a smooth arm past Applejack’s waist, took the glass and filled it. A few drips splashed Applejack’s shirt with sudden chill sensation. “Thank you,” said Cadence.
“For the water. Right. So,” Applejack said cautiously, tasting the word. “You came all this way to check in on me.” She had mixed feelings on that. “Appreciate the gesture but, isn’t it a little, I dunno, against royal thingies or something? Don’t you got people to do this sort of thing for you?”
Cadence sat and played with Winona’s ears. “Yes it is and yes I do.” She paused and glanced over. “Trust me, the chance to slip away from all the ‘royal thingies’ is amazing. You don’t realize how much I appreciate you being casual and relaxed.” She pressed her forehead to the collie’s own. Winona’s tongue lolled and tail picked up speed. “No formality. I wasn’t always a Princess, remember.” She thumbed at the unrelentingly pink hair the rise to Princesshood had given her with a ‘who-da-thunk-it?’ expression. “But they still insist that I couldn’t possibly do anything for myself. I should wave and kiss babies. Kissing babies is dull, Applejack. Very dull. Kissing was never meant for babies.”
She and I have very different understandings of relaxed, thought Applejack. She pulled up a seat, spun it around and sat on it back to front. Her arms folded over the backrest, her breasts pressed gently against it. She navigated her next words thoughtfully. “Well, I’m glad you wanted to come. Still ain’t sure why, begging your pardon.”
“None needed.” Now Cadence was clasping her hands in her lap. Very certainly in her lap, and very certainly clasped. She was fidgeting. “And while I could have had someone come to visit on my behalf, that’s not really any fun for me, is it?”
Applejack didn’t mean to laugh, and certainly not a thin, reedy laugh at that, but there it was; her nervous laugh. A rare experience for anyone who knew her. “You mean with the heatwave and the sunshine and visiting Twilight and-”
“Not exactly.” The Princess leaned forwards, her hands wriggling in the clutches of one another atop the white summer dress. Perfect little teeth tugged at luscious little lips. Applejack leaned back.
“You know the pond is very popular at the moment. I could take you down that-a-way.”
“Too bustling.” Cadence stared Applejack in the eye. “I was thinking more...casual. More relaxed.”
Applejack squinted as revelation dawned. “Are you seducin’ me?”
“Am I?”
Applejack might have sneered; she wasn’t sure. A snarl of mixed feelings flickered through her. “Yes. I mean no! Okay, yes you’re trying, and no it ain’t working. I mean, sheesh, I’m straight as a, as a...as a really straight person. And you’re married!” Wait, that should have gone the other way ‘round... “And you being married don’t matter because I’m straight! Wait, no, I mean, it matters that you’re married, ‘coures it does, but not like, oh...” Applejack dipped her face into her palms and shook. It was best just to stop rather than lose the last of her coherency. “Heat stroke would’a been easier than this.”
She leant back in her chair. At least, she’d meant to, but hadn’t she been sitting on it backwards?
Yes. Yes she had.
Applejack overbalanced and fell back with a startled shout. She fell heavily on the floor. She groaned and Winona barked excitedly. For a day of absolutely no work, this was sure taking it out of her.
Then there was the slim figure of Cadence, the face of concern. She squatted and held out a hand. “You alright?”
“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled Applejack. She was muscular and Cadence was not. Applejack had definite curves that Cadence did not. She had nearly a full foot of height that Cadence did not. This all meant that even with the slender woman pulling enthusiastically, it was Applejack’s own strength that got her back up. She patted and massaged her aching bum. Soft hands reached around and teased the soreness out from her shoulders.
“That’s...kinda nice actually. But you ain’t charming me. No offence.”
“Maybe, maybe.” said Cadence with a teasing lilt. “None taken, by the way.”
Delicate fingers pressed and pushed their way to the reddened back of Applejack’s neck. “You’ve done this before,” the farmer said, and tried not to think of the implications. The tangy scent of her own sweat embarrassed her; she hadn’t had time to shower, or even change this dirty shirt of hers, and she was in the presence of royalty. She tried not to recall that there was at this point very little that Cadence had not already seen. Applejack’s brain went on recalling that little incident anyway. Cadence had been smiling then. Sbe was smiling now, too.
Admittedly, ‘presence’ in this instance meant ‘getting a damn good neck massage’ which was probably a lot better than your typical presence. That was a definite silver lining to consider.
Soft fingers and softer palms worked deftly on the tensest places. They gently brushed Applejack’s hair away, it spilled down her shoulder and over her chest. Cadence’s voice was softer still. “How about we just agree that if you’re still sure you mean no, are really certain of it, than I’ll stop trying. That sound fair?”
That put a sour twist in Applejack’s already rattled mood. She turned and tugged herself away. Her hands came up in front of her. “I’m flattered you think, erm, so highly of me, but this is exactly the sort of thing a Princess can’t be doing.”
Cadence’s face hardened. “I get a lot of people telling me what I can and cannot do. I wouldn’t have expected you to be one of them.”
Applejack thought of Shining Armour. Twilight’s brother. This woman’s husband. She imagined being subject to angry looks and betrayed expressions, both of which were already edging their way onto Cadence’s features. “And don’t you think to magic me anything, I-” then Applejack’s words reached her ears.
Applejack regretted it instantly. “I’m sorry,” she murmurred. “I didn’t mean that. I know you...you wouldn’t. I’m sorry.”
A smile came back to Cadence, but it was a grim smile, like she’d just been punched in the gut and was adamant on being a tough guy about it. “I know. Apology accepted.”
There passed an awkward moment in silence. Well, not actual silence, because Winona whined for attention. Applejack scratched her under the chin.
They sat down, and something stormy in the air between them cleared. “I just don’t get this,” Applejack said. “You want to cheat, you, on your husband with me. With me of all people.” A sensible thought struck her. “I mean, I absolutely promise I won’t tell a soul about...er, something funny?”
Cadence was giggling. “Cheating? That’s what this was about? You think he doesn’t know?” The Princess wiped the stress from her brow with an emphatic ‘phew’ and shook with more giggles. “Knowing him, and trust me when I say I know my man, he’s probably fantasizing about this right now and doing everything he can to bluff his way through some meeting or other. And failing miserably,” she added with another chiming giggle. “He never can hide what he’s really thinking about. Far too honest.”
Cadence reached across the table and clasped Applejack’s rough hand in her own. Somehow the gentle treatment made the stronger woman feel fragile. Applejack stifled the urge to pull away. “I’m the Princess of Love, remember? There’s certain things I will do. And some things I just enjoy doing, because they feel really good.” she flashed a playful smirk before returning to seriousness. “Shiny understood that. I made sure he understood that. He proposed to me anyway, bless that man.”
The Princess smiled and leaned even closer. “We have certain compromises. Never with anyone he hasn’t met. Never without talking to him about it first. And I can tell you he was even more enthusiastic than usual this time.”
It was hard for Applejack to think of anything intelligible. Cadence’s hands were soft, very soft. Pillowy soft. And warm, and smooth, and...yes, she was definitely making dainty little circles on Applejack’s open palm. It was a faint sensation, but one that opened a hotline straight to the pit of Applejack’s stomach.
“I really am definitely straight,” Applejack murmurred. She’d have to remember the trick being done on her palm, but suspected it was one she’d never forget. It sent tingles coursing all up and down through her.
“Were you ever in bed with a man?” Then Cadence pouted with thought. “Not that the bed is strictly necessary. Or even a room, though I do recommend one.” The Princess smiled with something that might have been called ‘recollections of pleased embarrassment’, and Applejack knew beyond a trace of a doubt that there was a story or two there.
It hadn’t distracted Applejack from the question, not quite. She wracked her memory and, well, there’d been that one time, but no...He’d been a boy but she’d only been a girl then and it’d just been some nervous kissing behind the barn and she’d let him touch her breast - under her shirt but outside her bra - and he’d had a nervous grin and she’d been worried at the time he’d be too rough with them but actually he was too gentle, too nervous to do anything more than feel that they really were there under his fingertips and he’d gone bright red but there was never enough privacy around the farm and the sounds of work and voices nearby had scared him off and Applejack had taken matters in her own inexperienced hands that night but hadn’t found the crashing release she’d heard about from listening in on her older cousins and fell asleep full of frustration and eventually learned to not think about it much at all and to deal with feelings when they arose and aroused with an eminently practical, practiced and passionless manner and somehow now time had passed and now she was here, a young woman still basing her experience of anatomical delights on the vegetables she had on occasion nervously fondled but never actually done anything with except for that one time where she’d given one very lucky cucumber a couple of firm, slow strokes along its length just to see what it felt like and it’d felt a little bit good and a little bit right but mostly it just felt ridiculous and she’d never done it again.
How did a woman say all that? How did she say all that when faced by Cadence? “Not as such, no,” Applejack finally said. The Princess had the most understanding look Applejack had ever seen on a person and felt the strangest feeling, a sort of three-way tug of war between defiance, relief, and shame.
Cadence patted Applejack’s hand. “I thought as much.”
Defiance and shame teamed up against relief. “Did you now?” she growled.
Cadence didn’t rise to it. “Running your own farm. A family to look after.”
“Don’t say it like those are bad things. I wouldn’t trade that away for anything.”
“No, no, of course not. But there’s not a lot of you time between all that, is there?”
You could look at this Princess with her ridiculous pink hair and dainty dress and playful motions and think her rather quite ditzy. It wouldn’t be hard. It was the truth. But it wasn’t the whole truth, because below the hair and above the dress and behind the playful motions were a pair of eyes. Keen eyes, and behind those was a mind, a mind that took what it saw and thought about this stuff and noticed things.
This worried Applejack. She put her fist on the table and sat up straighter, being sure not to bang anything on anything. “You’re right. There isn’t. And I’m okay with that.”
Cadence sighed. “You shouldn’t have to be. That’s what I’m trying to get across.”
Winona leaned on Applejack’s shins and stared up at her master with doggy hope. Love me? the soft furry pressure asked. Something broke in Applejack. It might have been the ice. Applejack caught herself smiling, even if she wasn’t sure why. She patted the collie distractedly. “You’re not going to start trying to mash me and some poor feller together and hope the naughty bits line up well enough, are you? It’s just that I get enough of that from Granny.”
“I was thinking of something a little more immediate.” Cadence grinned. Not smiled, Applejack noticed, grinned. The Princess ran the tip of her tongue over her immaculate lips. “Tell me you’re not even slightly interested. Slightly curious. Slightly hopeful?”
Applejack wasn’t bad when it came to a staredown, but having a good stare was necessary to any royal, even an overly soft one like Cadence. Honesty won out, and Applejack glanced away with a huff. Besides, she got the feeling this stare was undressing her. She’d seen this one before, but never from a woman.
“Fine. I am.” She held up a finger. “A small bit only, you hear? A. Small. Bit. I am very much keen on the, you know...” she blushed and looked anywhere but her hand, which was a fist bobbing up and down over the chair next to her. “Just so we’re clear on that.”
Cadence giggled. “Yes, I think I remember you mentioning that once or twice. And when I remember to care about labels, I’m content to call myself mostly straightish too.”
The Princess made a fist near one cheek. It rocked towards and away. When it was nearer Cadence pushed her tongue against the opposite cheek, and when it pulled her tongue did too. She made the expression with gusto, all the while giving Applejack the sauciest look she’d ever seen, anywhere.
The farmer’s mouth opened. It shut. It opened again. Applejack blinked. “And there’s something I’d never thought I’d see.”
Cadence wiggled her eyebrows. It wasn’t the usual sort of expression one would expect from dainty looking little woman, seeing as it typically only sprung from the bigger, wilder eyebrows of men who’ve just made a raunchy euphemism and think themselves clever. “Not the only thing I’m sure you’ve never seen before either.”
Applejack blushed and chuckled, but on the whole she actually found herself relaxing. Once you readjusted the mental image of a Princess in lieu of this saucy, sassy little minx of a woman named Cadence whom incidentally was also a Princess...well, the world started making a bit of sense again. Provided you didn’t analyse it too closely. “I’m sure you do,” said Applejack.
Cadence kneeled next to Applejack. She pulled Winona’s head between the breasts she did not, in fact, possess. She put touched her chin to Winona’s nose. The collie gave a manic, delighted wiggle. “What do you think, doggy? Do you think she should give it a shot? Yes you do, yes you do! Good girl!”
Winona spun and yipped. “Winning over my dog is underhanded and below the belt and you know it, and shucks if ain’t working anyway.” Applejack shielded her eyes, shook her head with chuckling disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, I really can’t, but fine. You might get your shot, Missy Princess ‘I’m so sure I can bag you and bang you’ Cadence. Might. Only maybe,” she said, and iterated this with a sternly waggled finger. “Give me a few minutes to shower and change and by then I’ll have made up my mind.”
“Very good!” Cadence sprung straight up. She followed Applejack up the stairs. She followed Applejack into the bathroom. If this hadn’t already gone so far past normal Applejack would have been embarrassed about the general untidiness. Half-full shampoo bottles trickled ooze and mostly-melted bars of soap lay forgotten in the corners of the ceramic.
Cadence made a show of stepping in the room, onto the tiles and towels. If Applejack wore spectacles she’d have lowered them an inch and stared incredulously over the rims. As it was, she had to make do with a Look. Applejack folder her arms under her ample breasts. “Now that’s just brazen of you.”
Real concern flickered across the Princess. “Too brazen?”
Aw, what the heck, Applejack thought. She’d gotten changed around her friends before, hadn’t she? Admittedly, her friends had never shown any notion of anything like this. The way Cadence’s eyes roved over her was distressing, but flattering too. “Nah, you’re fine,” she said dismissively.
Well, that was it, wasn’t it? ‘But flattering’. ‘But’. A part of Applejack growing in strength and confidence was very interested in seeing how far ‘but’ could really go.
Cadence seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “It’s just you and me,” she said hopefully.
“Winona too.”
“I’m sure we can trust her not to tell anyone.” The smile faded. “You know you can trust me the same way, right?”
“I...I suppose I can. Yeah.”
Applejack’s shoulders were broad. Broader than most women’s, and she turned them for modesty’s sake as she slid out of her shirt. She pulled it overhead and flung it to join a heap in the far corner.
Cadence’s hands were soft on her bare back. Somehow warm and soft and cold and soft at the same time. Always soft, it was the only definite part of the sensation when everything else was mixed and tingling with Applejack’s confusion.
“Tell me to stop,” Cadence purred. “And I will.”
Applejack didn’t. She didn’t say anything. Her hands hung as loose fists at her sides, only her neck moved with Cadence’s gentle insistence.
The Princess wasn’t attractive. Okay, no, the Princess was definitely attractive in her own way, but she wasn’t attractive to Applejack. Not as a slim woman. Heck, not as any kind of woman at all. Applejack found an unexpected satisfaction in this revelation. It was a confirmation in some small way of her self-perception, her understanding of herself.
Applejack’s skin, the muscles underneath and the vertebrae deeper still: these didn’t care so much for revelations. They were getting good treatment and liked it and were writing up positive reviews and sending them south. “I still want to have a shower,” Applejack whispered, though the rush had melted away under those fingertips.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Cadence whispered in turn, her voice tiny and close, closer than it’d been. Closer than anyone’s voice had ever been, perhaps. Applejack could feel the hot breath play across her hair. The heat made Applejack shiver. Just like everything else, today was a world turned upside down.
She took a step away and the touching stopped, but she’d only done this to get her cut-offs. When everything got weird, Applejack decided, the way through it was to go through it. Head on. Thrusting her thumbs down the sides she wriggled her way out of her shorts. When she turned, just enough so speak over her shoulder, her hand came up and covered her breast.
“I shouldn’t be this nervous,” she said, “But I am. You being a married woman don’t help that none, even with what you say about this being alright by him.” The image of Shining Armour being, ahem, ‘alright’ with this was not an unwelcome one. She recalled Cadence’s gestures and felt a pang of heated envy in her gut.
Cadence drifted closer. Her fingertips traced along Applejack’s ribs, moved further forwards and clasped her in a delicate hug. “You could imagine I’m a big single man, if that helps?”
Something in the enunciation made Applejack laugh. Her body shook with it, she could feel Cadence’s slim body rocked by her own. Dainty hands crept an inch closer to her navel. “That’ll take quite the bit of imagining,” she said.
Applejack could recall getting hit in her muscular stomach. Various impacts, sometimes a football or something in the work of the farm. She’d certainly fallen on it a good few times. Actually that wasn’t the case at all, because her boobs always hit ground first and frankly that hurt a whole lot more anyway. But still.
A tender caress? She wracked her memory for one, a softness of fingers moving lower and lower. But no, this had never happened before. It was all new. Of all the emotions Applejack felt guilt was the most unexpected, and the most bitter. Guilt that this was a selfish thing she was enjoying, selfish through and through. She couldn’t have turned around and done the same for Cadence. Well, she could have done, but she didn’t want to, simple as that. Applejack cut herself short. Angst was for other people. Cadence had come here, hadn’t she? Cadence liked, you know...this, didn’t she? Applejack chased after the feeling of guilt, it surprised her to realize it was a tired old thing, a habit ingrained from the farm. Think of others, do for others.
Cadence’s fingertips traced the edges of Applejack’s navel. The tip of a pale finger pushed lower and met the tip of a blonde hair. She heard a little sigh of approval from Cadence. Being selfish and enjoying it was hard, Applejack decided. But she could give it a shot.
The larger woman fought against an oncoming nervous chuckle and lost. “Like what you’re, uh, finding?” Who was this giddy, nervous, uncertain girl that was speaking with Applejack’s mouth? She barely recognized her. It was a girl that belonged with yearning and cucumbers. Applejack’s thighs clenched and released spasmodically.
Cadence purred contentment, a purr that Applejack felt more than heard. “Do you realize how sexy you really are?”
“I know I’m fair decent looking. Turn a few eyes,” Applejack murmurred. Cadence pulled gently on her hip and turned Applejack slowly around until there was nothing left to hide. The Princess smiled as she shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I mean you. Yourself. Applejack.” Cadence pouted. “You’re not much of one for romance. How about this?” she said, and Applejack gasped.
After everything so slow, so cautiously slow, the sudden thrust of Cadence’s fingers into Applejack’s short and curlies was a shock and a half. The Princess grabbed a handful and tugged playfully. Embarrassment flew red in Applejack’s face. She had for years this vague, unexplained impression that being an attractive woman meant shaving everything. She’d actually always meant to do that, but when was there time or privacy or a good razor, and where was the courage to put said razor down there of all places?
At least Cadence seemed happy down there. The little woman gyrated, even thrusted against her. Applejack took a deep breath, one she very much needed and not least of all for the shivers trembling inside her. Cadence played the wiry hairs through her fingers.
There was...there’d been...ah, yes, shower. A shower. Because she needed one. Probably needed a freezing cold one at that, but she suspected that Cadence wouldn’t approve of that at all. Applejack laid her hands on the Princess’ shoulders, and as she stepped away gasped at the tug of small fingers still holding on to their illicit handful.
Cadence reached her other hand around Applejack’s back, coaxing her forwards with the softest of pressures. Little details made big alarm bells ring. The look in Cadence’s eyes, the pursing of her lips, the way her feet wiggled and went up on their toes.
For the first time she could recall today, this strange, strange day, Applejack resisted physically. It was pitifully easy. She was big and Cadence was not and wasn’t the sort to use force anyway. Applejack’s hand came up between their mouths. Palm flat, fingers up. Stop.
“Not that,” Applejack said severely. She groped for the words she needed. That Cadence’s puzzled, worried look needed. “This is lust,” Applejack said, patting Cadence’s down-under hand with her own. Applejack shivered when a small finger brushed against the edge of something warm and moist. “And I feel just about brave enough, and, uh, the other thing enough, to try that one. But up here, kissing, that’s not lust. That’s...the other thing. Your thing.”
Cadence pouted teasingly. “Kissing can be lust too.”
“Just don’t, okay? Please?”
The Princess nodded. Her nose and her lips lead her away from Applejack’s own, lead her down along the curvature of neck and shoulders, lead her to the fullness of Applejack’s breast. The Princess sniffed with all the apparent pleasure of a wine connoisseur, but this only reminded Applejack that she smelled nothing of wine and everything of sunbaked sweat.
This, Applejack reckoned to herself, was just part and parcel of why she liked men. At least, she liked the mental image she had of men, their silliness and so easily bruised egos. They knew how to work with their hands, and have fun with them too, though Applejack’s actual experience was limited to a few acquaintances from town and the occasional hired farm hand, both groups on which she’d gotten pretty well practised at glancing at.
But Cadence was no man. She was about as unmanly as anyone could be, and now her tongue was scraping along Applejack’s areola with slow circles. The Princess’ other hand had come up and was pinching and tugging the opposite nipple playfully; the farmer could already feel it stiffening in response. Lower down Cadence’s palm rubbed her, slow and sensual, sliding over coarse hairs and smooth pinkness, and the Princess purred and purred.
This was so wrong, Applejack realized, and part of her had known this the whole while and just hadn’t wanted to have it proved right. What was surprising was why it was all wrong. It wasn’t the phantasmal chidings of her upbringing, or anything like that. That would would have been better.
No. It was wrong simply because it didn’t feel right. There wasn’t the flutter in her thoughts, or the wiggliness in her knees, or even the wiggliness in her knees when she fantasized about going down onto said knees, flashing a cheeky grin up to a man who know just how lucky he was, his cucumber eagerly sticking out.
Not that she felt nothing. The body tended to be less picky than the mind, after all, and Cadence absolutely knew her stuff: the quivers in Applejack’s body would attest to that. Applejack was curious, and maybe a little resentful even. I have boobs! A tiny, childish thought cried out. And you don’t, and men like boobs more’n anything and your flat as the ironing board so how come you’re dripping with experience from both sides and getting women (including me...) to do this sort of thing and you get a husband with a great big cucumber and a cherry on top?!
Whereas the only thing I got is a silly old habit to still think of ‘em as ‘cucumbers’. ‘It’s not fair’ lurked around the edges of her mind, but Applejack refused to let herself think this or feel this or even acknowledge it. That wasn’t her way.
“You alright? You’re not very...here.” The honest sincerity in Cadence’s eyes was too much to match. Applejack glanced away.
Then she stepped away too, and this time the Princess’ deft little fingers didn’t come along for the ride. “I don’t know. This ain’t nothing like I’ve ever done before. Sorry.”
And there it was, an apology floating in the air between them. Apology for what? For not melting and mewling in the Princess’ hands? For not being a woman who’d signed up for the bedroom rodeo and came first? Or coming second, she wouldn’t even mind, they said you had to train up your man anyway?
Applejack stepped into the shower, and as she did so the motions and the air made her realize that Cadence hadn’t been the only one dripping. The larger woman stopped for a moment. She reached down and yes, definitely yes, down there was slick and wanting. She pressed two fingertips against where it was most sensitive and felt the familiar old frustration tingling inside her. There was something grim and bitter and funny in all this, she knew. She sighed and huffed out a few chuckles under her breath and flicked on the water.
As it always did, it started with a hissing torrent of cold. Every sexual shiver in Applejack was shattered by it. It was a rickety old shower head, non-detachable (a tragedy Applejack was ignorant to), and it shook spasmodically when the tap was turned up.
Chill water plastered Applejack’s hair to her sides and to her back. She tensed every muscle she could, willed herself to not shake or let her breath catch at all before the water warmed. Cadence had stepped back, but even so the occasional manic drip ricocheted just right from Applejack’s skin and onto that immaculate little dress. The word Applejack would have put to the Princess’ expression was acceptance. Maybe resignation.
“I’ve been a thoughtless fool, haven’t I?” Cadence said.
Applejack clenched her jaw against the cold. “A bit.”
“Maybe being a Princess is rubbing off on me too much. I’ve become accustomed to getting what I want.” There! That was that first suggestion of warmth as the hot water sluggishly began to overtake the cold. The cold water always hurt. Applejack brushed at her swollen, aching nipples. She thought she could feel a last trace of Cadence’s saliva there, and this she scrubbed casually away.
To Applejack’s surprise, Cadence smiled a thin smile. One with fixity of purpose. She rolled up her sleeves. The ‘I’m ready to get down to work!’ look Cadence had, not just fixed across her face but fixed across her everything, her pink hair, her posture...it was really quite silly. And endearing. She reached bravely through the water and grabbed the soap. “One last thing for me?” she asked hopefully.
Applejack gazed long and hard into those eyes. No...they couldn’t become casual lovers. But they could remain serious friends.
She smiled. Sometimes friends could be saucy. “Might as well slip out of that then. You’ll get soaked otherwise, hear you me.”
What followed was the shedding of Cadence’s clothes, and we will not mention how she fumbled excitedly against the ties and the buttons, or how she had to wriggle out of it like a snake from its skin. We will pay no mind to how her silky socks were tugged and stretched and tossed to the heap to mingle with the common clothes, and we will pay absolutely pay no mind to how unseemly, how undignified, indeed how very close to stumbing Cadence was indeed in her undressing enthusiasm. The breasts she didn’t quite have nonetheless flushed with a blush of rosey pinkness, one matched in her cheeks and, with a quick glance from Applejack downwards, down there as well.
It was an interesting bit of trivia for Applejack to notice that, far as she could tell by the thin fluff making a comeback around Cadence’s womanhood that, yes, the pink hair was natural. There was hardly room for the pair of them in the shower, but once you didn’t mind touching, a bit of squishing even, it was doable.
“Turn around,” Cadence commanded playfully, and Applejack obeyed. “It’s not dirty if I’m holding this bar of soap,” she explained.
Cadence really enjoyed cleaning. At least, she enjoyed cleaning in instances such as this where the difference between that and foreplay was as substantial as a soap bubble. Applejack was content enough with the former case to tolerate Cadence’s little lapses into the latter. This was like having her hair washed after all, where she tended to close her eyes and try not to moan aloud... Except obviously it was that exactly, just with a lot more to moan about. And she could moan all she liked, if she wanted to. She didn’t, but she could. It was a very nice freedom to have.
The Princess’ hands, slick with soap, slid around Applejack’s hips. They rubbed and scrubbed, upwards and downwards then ‘roundwards as well, like her whole body was a book written in braille. The smell of cleanliness rose with the steam as Cadence’s hands descended with the soap. They slid between Applejack’s legs.
To the Princess’ credit, she didn’t make bathing Applejack into a pretense for masturbathing Applejack. Flimsy as it was, there was a boundary. One Applejack had set. It satisfied her to no end to see Cadence restrain herself and respect that. She seemed to be thinking the same thing. You could hear her chewing her lip with arousal.
“You would make such a terrible tease.” Cadence paused. She reiterated. “You are a terrible tease.”
“My house, my rules,” the larger woman chuckled. “Do my hair? Shampoo’s just behind ya there.”
Applejack had long hair, and Cadence had long fingers. The combination of the two, in heat and water, steam and shampoo was wonderful. Applejack let out some of the moans of pleasure she’d been saving up.
“I am so wet right now,” Cadence said.
“Well you are standing in a shower,” Applejack huffed, but for reasons unknown this only made Cadence burst into laughter. “I miss somethin’?”
Applejack could feel the smaller woman shaking behind her. “You missed a lot of things.” The Princess’ voice gave way to a few more chortles, and then Applejack lost herself in the niceness of hands working through her hair. “Done your hair now,” Cadence announced.
“Thank you,” said Applejack curtly. “It’s lovely.”
Cadence wasn’t shaking less, Applejack realized. She was shaking more. “You alright?” She remembered that all those things, all those little tingles and twists and leaps and knots she wasn’t feeling, Cadence was. The Princess was veritably trembling.
Cadence struggled with her words, as if to let her tongue slip might be to suddenly find it tracing a beeline to Applejack’s slit. “When I bumped into you,” she said hastily, “you hadn’t been expecting anyone?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re not expecting anyone now?”
“Same again.” Applejack turned around. It was awkward business in the confined shower, but she managed it. Cadence’s hands clenched and unclenched in trembling fists. The Princess moaned, then giggled nervously. Cadence didn’t have much at all in the way of breasts and her hips weren’t much more, but they wriggled. The insides of the Princess’ thighs squirmed against one another.
Applejack slowly put one and one together. It added up to one. One critically horny Princess, that is.
“Best take my bed,” Applejack said with a sigh. “I’ll make a little something for lunch. You want, what, ten minutes?” And here’s something I’d never have imagined happening in a million years she thought, but it was becoming a routine. This was what, the sixth impossibly unimaginable thing today? Just keep moving forwards and don’t get in a fuss over things: that was key.
Cadence’s fingers were teasing fitfully along the edges of her labia, touching and pulling away, touching and pulling away. “An hour?” the Princess asked in mounting desperation. Her eyes were full of pleading. Not unlike Winona’s could be at times when she really wanted something, and there was a mental image Applejack never ever wanted to consider again.
She relented. Turned the shower off. Threw her towel at the squirming Princess, who with one clutched hand woefully misapplied it with earnest rubbing.
“Hey! I still gotta use that too, I don’t want to be smelling like your girly bits!”
“Sorry! Sorry!” Cadence rubbed herself down, barely dried herself at all and ran out of the bathroom. She took a right turn. Applejack panicked.
“Other way! Other way! Mine’s the end one!” The right turn would take Cadence to Granny’s room, and that was a crisis and a half. Applejack would rather go into exile than try to explain that sort of catastrophe. She already could imagine the yellowed old teeth, grinning. She shuddered.
Cadence’s feet thundered back the other way. Without slowing or stopping the Princess of the Empire ducked into the bathroom, stole Applejack’s hairbrush with the hand that wasn’t already fervently busy elsewhere, uttered a hasty thanks and vanished down the hall.
Applejack thought about hairbrushes for a moment. Thought about their handles. “I’m going to have to burn that later,” she said flatly. “About time I got myself a new one,” she added, but was already privately thinking on which brushes might have the best handles.
Dripping and naked, Applejack looked about. So, Cadence had rushed off with the towel as well. A door slammed with hasty need at the end of the hall.
She slipped on the dirty shirt she’d had on before and sighed. Still better than walking in on that, she decided.
She was a bit angry at Cadence. She’d walked onto her land and been so self assured about this, that, and the other, not to mention these little things like hair brushes and towels. But Applejack was also kind of amused at the whole thing, because even if you couldn’t make sense of anything you could still laugh at it and certainly wouldn’t forget it.
Applejack slipped on her shorts. She was still wet, and her hair was making a damp, uncomfortable trail down the back of her shirt, but hey, suddenly she had an hour of hot sun to sort that out, didn’t she? “Come on, Winona. We’ll just pop a few steps outside, will we?”
Cadence’s shrill cry, a gasp and a shriek; these things rang out. And they didn’t stop, either. “Okay,” Applejack mentally corrected herself, “make that a coupl’a hundred steps outside. Past screaming distance, anyway.”
Nearly two hours later Applejack braved the front door and found a very drained, very satiated, very naked Cadence passed out on her bed. Shaking her head and sighing, the larger woman threw a blanket over her the smaller one for decency. But not before she’d watched the sleeping Princess for a minute and, quite to her own surprise, gingerly touched a fingertip to Cadence’s puffy, glistening womanhood. She gave it one feather soft brush of her fingertips. Cadence sighed and turned over in her sleep, and just as quickly Applejack got herself busy and washed every single last piece of her clothing from around the house.
Come hell or high water an Apple fed their guests, and wasn’t that something awkward. Neither woman could meet the other’s eyes, but likewise they couldn’t stop smiling. They were like girls with a Secret. Cadence hurried out quickly after and, at the end of the week when the heat wave had broke and the family returned. They brought a gift from the Princess.
“A big crystal, I think,” Apple Bloom explained as she dove onto the couch and tussled with Winona, who was ecstatic about everything. “I dunno what exactly. Everything’s crystals up there. Nobody’s opened the box. Miss Cadence said it was for you. Ain’t that nice of her? Finding time to visit us and think of you, even with that royal matter she had to take all of a sudden.”
“Yeah,” Applejack said distractedly. “Royal matter.” She and her coffee scrutinized the box. It was tightly wrapped. It was rectangular. Very, very definitely rectangular. With a length and a width and a girth, er, height. Even accounting for padding and such... Applejack’s eyes widened imperceptibly. “Crystal, you say? Polished, that sorta thing?” she asked, but Apple Bloom only shrugged.
The gift box had a very smug expression, one that dared Applejack to open it. She wouldn’t of course, not in front of her family because that wasn’t just roulette, that was roulette extreme.
“She said she even got Shining help her pick it out,” Apple Bloom added innocently, but by this point Applejack was already choking on her drink. She spilled some on herself and felt the sting of heat as it trickled down her breast. She’d have to change her shirt. Maybe even go for a shower.
She stared at the box thoughtfully. She picked up the box. A lot could happen when you went for a change and a shower.
Author's Note
About halfway through writing this my hands were mauled by dogs, I kid you not.
...well okay, it was just one dog. But the point stands.
