They lay on the bed on their bellies with their forehooves hanging off the edge, a hoof’s width separating them. To Cadence, the distance seemed like a chasm, but Twilight needed it to feel safe while navigating risky relationship waters. She also knew that Cadence would rather be in contact and must have restrained herself.

She appreciated the gesture.

To reciprocate, she moved her left forehoof to hold Cadence’s. “What you were so worried about before, was it me?”

“Mostly. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I promised Shining I would be happy. Maybe I could go out and find ponies their true loves, but I did that because of what Shining and I had. Feeling romantic love caused my cutie mark to appear. I lived with it for so long that I forgot what it’s like not having it. I need it, Twilight. I need it more than anything.”

Twilight felt like she was missing something important. To look at the situation from a psychology standpoint tempted Twilight; its cool, impersonal way to evaluate things had provided her with a fallback in other times of crisis. She knew Cadence wouldn’t appreciate it in the way she did, so she tried the opposite approach.

“Are you worried about not being loyal to Shining?”

“I suppose I am. No,” Cadence said, narrowing her eyes, “actually, I’m not. Building a relationship with you would probably be more loyal to him than not, but it seems like it devalues both relationships by jumping between them so fast.”

“So, what, waiting some arbitrary time period prevents that?” she asked, and the feeling of missing something important grew. “If you wait a year, does that fix it? What about if you only wait a year less a day? What about one day less than that? Or one less than that? Maybe I should even be asking about waiting a century and taking years off that. I mean, after all, what’s a year to us?”

The question rang in Twilight’s ears. A mental connection snapped into place. Neither of them had to worry about watching the other waste away, an opportunity she hadn’t thought to consider before. It had only required Shining’s death to become possible.

Cadence cut her response short as Twilight’s ears shot up, twitching, before they flopped back down. Cadence nuzzled under Twilight’s chin and asked, “Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer but swallowed and tried to get her mind back on track. “Can you honestly say that you would love me if the situation had been better? Do you think the good times and the laughter we’ve shared would bring us together otherwise?” Twilight knew talking herself into something when she did it.

“Yes to both, Twilight. You’re an amazing mare. A bit high-strung at times, but amazing nonetheless.”

Cadence couldn’t miss the wash of love between them as Twilight nuzzled her back. She sighed and leaned to the right until her wing and Twilight’s touched.

“From small acts like sharing your favorite scones to big ones like getting me so much assistance for Ponyville,” Twilight said, nodding towards the cars with the workers in them, “you’ve been so generous to me while I’ve been here. And you’ve shown me so much kindness, too, with all that you did after I returned. Is that devalued by… what’s happened recently?”

“No, no, of course not.” Cadence moved her head so the back of her neck crossed over the front of Twilight’s, and she rested her cheek against Twilight’s. The shallowness of Twilight’s breath contrasted her racing pulse.

“And,” Twilight whispered, “you don’t think this could ruin the magic of our friendship?”

“It could only strengthen it, Twilight.” Cadence’s worries had evaporated from the warmth flowing through her.

Twilight drew her head back, and Cadence moved hers aside, turning to look back. Twilight met her with a kiss. Cadence melted into it, her eyes closing and her head tilting to the side as her lips parted. Twilight interwove her primary feathers with Cadence’s and took Cadence’s lower lip between her own, sending tingles down her chest. The kiss lasted fully two minutes before they pulled back and disentangled their wings.

“You know,” Twilight said, looking into Cadence’s eyes, “I always thought friends made for the best lovers — though I’m admittedly a little biased in that respect.” She giggled. “And now look at us, Friendship and Love… together?”

“As an expert on the subject, I believe I’m qualified to say… yes. But you can’t dangle something like that in front of me — what did you mean by friends making the best lovers?”

“Oh. Well, that is…” Twilight blushed. “Rainbow was quite attractive back in the day. So a few times with her. Pinkie was insatiable.” She hissed in a breath, remembering. “I had to get out of that after a month. I couldn’t keep up, and that was after I ascended.”

“Whoa. You’re kidding, right?”

Twilight shook her head and mouthed a drawn-out “No.”

“Wow. That mare… Still,” she said, “I feel like there’s an ‘and’ waiting.”

Twilight stared at her hooves. “Ardent Overwatch. I watched him rise to Major, and he caught my, well, my ear more than my eye. He took a multifaceted approach to his field, and he was so passionate about everything he did. I figured that, since I was the Princess of Friendship, I should be able to befriend my guards. He was amazing in so many ways.”

She stopped talking, and Cadence put a hoof on her withers while she waited for Twilight to continue.

“I found myself wondering what color our foals would be, and I couldn’t… All this,” she said, gesturing vaguely with a hoof. “I couldn’t. You’re the braver mare, Cadence.”

“Nonsense,” Cadence said as she pulled Twilight into a hug with her wing. “I’m truly sorry for that. You loved him.” It wasn’t a question. “How long ago?”

Twilight sighed. “Thirty-three and a half years in… four weeks.” She shuffled around to roll to her side and wrapped her forelegs around Cadence. “I can get behind this, though.”

“I’m glad,” Cadence said, smiling. “Is there anything you’d like me to do for you?”

“Mmm, no, not really. I would like to finish telling you the story about Pinkie and the laughing gas. Where did I stop, again?”

“It turned mostly to mumbling after the drag race.”

Twilight tossed back her head and laughed. “Oh, you’re going to love what happened next.”

Surrounded by a weather team and a few guards, Cadence and Twilight soared over a cloud bank outside the edge of town. They rode the thermals over the farm that had belonged to Carrot Top, preparing themselves to release the water to the thirsty soil below. Earlier in the day, they had paid a visit to Rainbow Dash, who had given further pointers to Cadence — along with boasting that she could do weather work better than either of them.

Twilight, sporting a new, streamlined mane cut, directed the operation; the normal weather team hierarchy gained a new top position with a princess around, particularly when that princess valued precision.

She called out directions that the others followed exactly until the cloud conformed to the shape of the farm below them. Cadence hovered over a section of cloud above a pond, as Twilight had told her to do. Moving the massive cloud had taken both a gentle touch to avoid ripping it and raw power to move the many pools’ worth of water. Stopping it had been an equally delicate procedure, one that they had begun at the halfway point of the trip and only finished at their destination.

In a way, it reminded her of using the heart — both were huge, primal forces over which she had mastery. Given where Twilight had been forced to position her, she accepted that her level of expertise for this didn’t match her other abilities. She already wanted to improve it, not just because she had made a helpful impact in a pony’s life but also because of how Twilight had talked about it.

The storm began under Twilight’s watch. In a pattern designed to minimize runoff, the pony and her wingmate in the first of ten sections sent a pulse of magic down through the cloud. Seconds later, the sound of rain reached first that team then Cadence. They used that interval to gauge how long to wait between pulses. After the ponies in the first section had sent out a dozen pulses, the ponies in the second area followed the same procedure, while those in the first section pulled back their output to a drizzle. By the third pair, Cadence decided it was not unlike a musical round.

She fell in love with the idea. With her turn approaching, she mentally prepared, not wanting the song of the rain to be ruined. She imagined that Twilight was not beside her but at some unknown point below her. If her magic wanted to reach Twilight, it would have to spread out.

She counted down until she needed to begin, and when the time came, she flicked her wings up and sent a wave of magic skyward. She fell a short span toward the cloud’s surface, and as she fell, the magic curved out and down — almost umbrella-shaped, Cadence thought. She touched down on the cloud at the same time as her magic, but she sprang back up to repeat the process. Twilight, smiling beside her, put only minor effort into her portion of the work. One of the monitors signaled her that Cadence’s efforts were producing torrential downpours.

After the second time through the sequence, the monitors took on a second role: producing lightning. Each time they dove through the cloud, they accumulated a charge and directed it to the ground with an ear-flattening crash. When they resurfaced, a mixture of smoke and steam rose from them, and they grinned with feral delight that permeated the whole group.

Time became something measured in beats on the drum of the cloud, in strikes of lightning, in cycles of light and hard rain. The cloud’s density also measured time, and when it fell too low, time ran out. It had given all the rain they had designed it to produce.

As the others divided up the spent cloud and brought the pieces away to other projects, Cadence turned to Twilight. Though the work had not been physically demanding, their breath came rapidly. Cadence looked around for more clouds and, finding none, asked, “May we do that again soon? Please?”

“Pegasi usually store excess clouds over Froggy Bottom Bog, and I’m sure nopony will mind if that gets a little more wet.” She grinned wide. “Let’s do it.”

They took off like a couple of arrows and left bursts of light in their wake. At the speed they traveled, the trip took only minutes. They angled to the largest cloud in the area, one that could support a few cloud homes.

Floating above its surface, Cadence waited for Twilight’s signal and, at her nod, began the rhythm again. At the apex of Cadence’s leap, Twilight impacted the cloud, creating a one-two beat not unlike a heart’s. Their magic suffused the air as they continued, building up a charge that begged for release.

Twilight gained altitude and rolled over backwards in the air to point herself at the ground. Throwing herself into a spin and closing her eyes, she tucked in her wings and pierced the cloud, which parted easily around her. Her inner ear let her feel her altitude, and as she neared the ground, her eyes and wings snapped open, pulling lightning from the cloud and arching it off her feathers.

She gained altitude through the rain and punched back through the cloud to settle back into the rhythm. Cadence couldn’t take her eyes off her as steam rose from her coat and wings, couldn’t help but stare at the elated smile on Twilight’s face.

Under their hooves, the cloud grew whiter, fluffier, and more charged as they worked it over. They both felt that it wouldn’t reach the perfect level of saturation it had for Twilight, so they pushed it to the limits of what it could sustain before Cadence slammed through it and fragmented the cloud. Spreading her wings to arrest her fall, she used them to provide a path for the lightning to jump between clouds.

A flap brought her up to the section on which Twilight stood. She stood there, steaming slightly and trembling, for a moment as her jaw hung open. “That was amazing. Just like you are,” she said, brushing a primary under Twilight’s chin.

Twilight giggled at the touch before extending her opposite wing and lacing her feathers between Cadence’s. Their wings subconsciously made slightly different adjustments to the eddies in the air between them.

Cadence shook. “I feel giddy!”

“Oh, oh yes, it’s like a runner’s high but even better,” Twilight said, nodding.

Lifting her forehooves and draping them over Twilight’s neck, Cadence said, “Twilight, I’m going to take a risk and ask if I may proposition you.”

“About wh—?”

The kiss silenced her, and Cadence fell to the side, dragging Twilight with her. She pulled back and waited.

Twilight stood over her and blinked twice. “Um… yes. Definitely yes.” She bent to give Cadence another kiss, this one deeper and longer. Cadence’s lips parted, and Twilight took the invitation, slipping her tongue between them.

Cadence drew her wing back from Twilight’s and ran her largest primary up and down Twilight’s side, slightly lower each time. As she did, Twilight’s breath came shorter and faster, and when she stretched to trace down the curve of Twilight’s haunch to her inner thigh, Twilight broke from the kiss with a gasp. Cadence reached down with her other wing and brushed both of Twilight’s inner thighs.

Closing her eyes, Twilight squirmed and felt her pussy lips sliding over one another. She realized she had grown incredibly wet at the light touches deliberately avoiding her vulva. She found where Cadence’s neck met her chest and nibbled her way across it, the short hair tickling her. Cadence twisted her head from side to side, and Twilight felt muscles and tendons shift under her ministrations. She let them lead her lips up Cadence’s neck and to her jaw, where she nuzzled under her chin. Cadence saw Twilight’s horn bobbing at the tip of her snout as too tempting a target to resist, so she laid her tongue on it and began to lick.

Twilight squeaked at the touch. A mewling sound escaped her, arousing her all the more. Cadence worked her way down Twilight’s horn, wrapping her tongue halfway around it, and drew a series of whimpers from her. With the hard shaft moist, Cadence pressed her lips up against it and rubbed up and down a few of the spirals. The tingling from her lips built and built until she couldn’t stop herself from shivering in anticipation. To tease Twilight, Cadence tickled a feather over her swollen lower lips.

Twilight moaned at the touch and sank to her front knees, bringing their chests into contact and leaving her mouth beside one of Cadence’s ears. “Please, I need more. Pleee—” Her plea cut off in a squeal when Cadence granted it by bringing up a forehoof to grind lightly against Twilight’s pubic mound.

The cry made Cadence’s ear twitch towards it — it sounded high and loud and, above all, beautifully feminine. Cadence had only heard sounds like that come from her own mouth before; to make somepony else do that excited her with its newness. She did it again. Twilight screamed over and over until she bit down on Cadence’s mane to stifle herself. Cadence pouted and stopped grinding.

Breathing heavily, Twilight unclenched her jaw and said, “Y-you’ve got to let me do you, too. This isn’t fair!”

Cadence laughed and lowered her hoof. “Don’t let me stop you.”

After kissing Cadence on the cheek, Twilight pushed herself up and turned to face Cadence’s slit. Lips parted slightly, it glistened with moisture that she knew she wanted to taste. She lay down on Cadence’s belly and slid back, rubbing her nipples through soft fur, until Cadence’s tongue pressed into her. She, in turn, licked down Cadence’s slit and spread her apart.

Twilight licked at the inner lips, tracing them with her tongue. The heady aroma intoxicated her, pulling her to delve deeper, which she readily did, wiggling her tongue farther into Cadence’s vagina. Waves of pleasure from her hindquarters drove her to ever greater depths.

Cadence made sure to brush her chin against Twilight’s clit with every lick, starting at the top and working her way down. She stopped briefly at the bottom to stimulate Twilight’s perineum by rubbing her teeth over it. Cadence’s forehoof dug into the cloud as Twilight used her magic to spread her wider apart, and she moaned. The tingling field covering her loins left her writhing and her eyes rolling back.

Her turn to squeal came when Twilight began to suck her clit, flicking it with her tongue as she did. Cadence’s wings flicked open and closed as her self-control vanished under waves of ecstasy. She reached up and put her forehooves on Twilight’s cutie mark then pulled down. Shivers, a sure sign that Cadence was close, coursed through her as she nuzzled Twilight’s slit with her soft nose.

Cadence’s breath caught in her throat as Twilight rolled her clit between her lips. Her insides clenched and relaxed as her moans turned to giggles. Her grip on Twilight loosened as the orgasm swept through her, leaving her head lolling to the side and her chest heaving. All her tension flowed out of her, as did a trickle of vaginal fluid that Twilight lapped up.

Twilight rose and turned, grinning down at Cadence and licking her lips. “You taste so good, Cadence.” She drank in the sight of her spent lover. “And you’re so beautiful, too.”

“You didn’t finish,” Cadence said, touching one of Twilight’s forelegs.

“That’s okay. I knew how much you needed this. I’m just glad I got to be here for you.”

“No,” Cadence said, propping herself up, “I need to see you climax. I need to hear you scream my name. Now… lie back and let me work my magic.”

Twilight did as she was told and reclined on the fluffy cloud as Cadence rose, a blue glow surrounding her horn. A matching one enveloped Twilight’s clitoris, swathing in it an sea of heat and coolness, tingles and numbness. Twilight threw back her head and moaned, overwhelmed instantly. In Cadence’s mind, a phallic shape grew, and Twilight’s clit began growing, widening, lengthening to fill her fantasy. All Twilight knew through the fog of pleasure coming from her crotch was how much she wanted it to continue and how much she needed more. She threw her own magic behind the spell.

Cadence gasped at the excess magic — it more than doubled the growth of Twilight’s cock, and before she managed to end the spell, it reached all the way up Twilight’s barrel to her chest. When Cadence cut the spell, the energy Twilight had given it fed back into her body, leaving her a trembling, shuddering mess of pent-up need.

She looked to see why Cadence had stopped, but a thick, dark purple penis blocked part of her view. Her mouth hung open, and her pupils dilated.

She hesitantly brought up a forehoof to brush it then groaned at how sensitive the new flesh was. “I-I think I like this spell.”

Cadence kissed Twilight’s moist slit and gathered the fluid onto her tongue. Licking up Twilight’s shaft, she lubricated the entire length with her saliva and Twilight’s juices. It required several trips, each leaving Twilight arching her back and squirming. On the final one, Cadence licked up to the tip before looking up and pulling Twilight’s lips to hers for a kiss. She tasted herself, and she liked it.

She realized, as Cadence pulled away, that by stretching just a little more, she could reach the head of her penis with her mouth. Tentatively, she leaned more, licking her lips.

“You know you want to,” Cadence said.

Twilight opened her mouth wide and sank onto the glans of her penis, and she let out a muffled groan. Cadence wrapped her lips sideways around Twilight’s shaft and slid up and down it while grinding a forehoof against Twilight’s slit.

Rocking her hips, Twilight forced more of her cock into her mouth. Her nostrils flared as Cadence lay heavily on her, and she continued thrusting, now with soft fur to provide more friction. Twilight’s pulse thundered against Cadence’s belly, and knew Twilight must be close.

“Come for me, Twilight,” she said, drawing her gaze. Cadence caressed Twilight’s cheek. “Come for me.”

Twilight’s eyes and wings fluttered as she finished, thick, sticky juices spilling into her mouth and down her chin. She pulled off of it, gasping, and stared at Cadence, who kissed her. They shared Twilight’s bitter yet sweet load and took turns licking off the rest that oozed from Twilight’s cock.

With a sigh, Twilight sprawled on the cloud, stretching out all her limbs as far as they could go. Cadence rolled off her barrel onto a wing, and she nuzzled Twilight’s neck.

Trying to get her breath back, Twilight asked, “Is thank you the right thing to say after something like that? Because… wow…”

Cadence smiled. “I don’t see why not. After all,” she said, “I’ve always thought that love is the greatest gift. So thank you, Twilight Sparkle. I love you.”

Twilight placed a kiss on Cadence’s nose. “I love you too, Cadence.”

“We should probably get cleaned up and head back,” Cadence said with a frown.

Twilight hugged Cadence to herself and shook her head. “If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that spending times with friends is valuable. I’m not going to lose this until I absolutely have to. That can wait. Now… now is for us.”

Author's Note

Thanks to my editor, Cynewulf.

If you want to read the non-clop version too, and I hope you will, you can skip up to the different part by simply using ctrl+f and searching for “May we do that again soon? Please?”