A brown-on-maroon earth pony still wearing her animal team jersey greeted Spring Blaze with a wave as they crossed paths. “Nice job today, Blaze!” she said, swerving to avoid a freshly melted puddle.
“You too, Broad Leaf!” Spring Blaze said with a firm nod. And then he smiled. The chilly evening air—the chilly spring air, as of tonight—was perfect for cooling down after the hardest workout of the year. The streets were emptying out and windows were darkening as Ponyville collectively turned in for a well-earned rest.
However, sleep wasn’t on the night's agenda for Spring Blaze. This year’s Winter Wrap-Up had fallen on his birthday, and some good friends from the weather team had invited him to what they called an “after-party” that he was now old enough to be allowed into. So, after a short rest at home, Spring was on his hooves again and ready for whatever it was his friends were planning.
“What took you?” Autumn half-shouted.
Autumn Flare had a stocky olive-furred body, a red-brown-yellow striped mane to match his namesake, and one of the widest, most impressive pairs of wings on the Ponyville weather team. He was a Winter Wrap-Up powerhouse who made every job go by faster, and he had been a good friend since Spring Blaze’s first day in Ponyville.
Spring shook his head at that question, and answered a bit too quickly. “Just doing some drawing.” Then he cleared his throat and spoke up. “What’s going on in there? Is… is that the ‘after-party’ you told me about? Where’s the rest of the team?”
“I told them to go in without us. Besides, you only need one wingpony. No need for a whole squad.” At that, Autumn’s usually guileless grin turned just the slightest bit crooked. “You’re officially a big pony as of tonight, right? Come on!"
Before Spring could ask any of the hundred questions that sprang up in response, Autumn Flare trotted right up behind, placed the top of his head against Spring’s rear end, and started pushing.
Standing guard next to the door was a heavy-set green stallion wearing a formal vest and a pair of mirror shades. When he spotted Spring, he grinned. “Happy birthday, Spring Blaze,” the bouncer said with a nod. When he moved, his green plant team vest peeked out from beneath his neat black collar.
Spring waved back with an awkward smile. “Nice to see you, Whetstone,” he said, just before being pushed through the door and into the strobing darkness of the club.
The music had already been noticeable from two streets away, and inside, the volume level was downright violent. Spring Blaze felt each pounding beat with his chest instead of his ears, because his eardrums were busy being assaulted by a blasting synthetic wail, alternating between soaring harmony and grinding dissonance from beat to beat. It was almost pitch dark, but angry flashes of white and darting pools of colored light gave a chaotic, flickering view of how the room was filled from wall to wall with swaying, twisting, bouncing pony bodies. “Dancing” was a misnomer; the contents of the club were flailing and gyrating against each other as if the music was forcibly moving them like so many marionettes.
Spring Blaze felt Autumn Flare sidle up next to him, so close that their wings brushed against each other.
“Come on!” Autumn shouted in his ear, barely loud enough to be heard. Spring felt the heat of his friend's breath against the side of his face even though the air was so damp and hot that the walls themselves seemed to be sweating. "Let's get to the stage!" Autumn forged ahead, into the crowd.
Spring had attended untold dozens of parties in Ponyville, but as he squeezed through the churning chaos, occasionally bumping his head against Autumn’s side or wing in order to stay close, he realized that his heart was pounding with the intoxicating energy. A thought crossed his mind that made him chuckle: it was one heck of a way to commemorate his first night as an official “big pony.”
Autumn came to a stop at the foot of an incline in the wooden floor that rose to an oval-shaped plateau, along with a full ring of mostly stallions whose attention was on the mare who had claimed the small “stage” as hers.
As Spring took his place at the perimeter, the mare on the stage reared up and extended her hooves to the ceiling. Her dark mane fell in dramatic waves as she bent her spine backward, leapt into the air, and landed on her forehooves in a show of freakish strength and flexibility. The onlookers cheered, their voices in unison overpowering the music and causing more heads to turn and see the show. The dancer’s rear legs flew up and over in a neat arc, and then she hurled herself backward again, repeating her acrobatic stunt with perfect, fluid momentum. This time, when she landed, she lifted her forehooves and bicycled them in the air while throwing her head back and whooping along with her rapidly growing audience.
Spring leaned in to talk into Autumn's ear. “Is this what we’re here for?” was what he started to say, but before the second syllable left his mouth, the speakers drowned him out with five synthetic "D" sounds in rapid succession. The dancer started to trot a slow circuit around the edge of her island, bobbing her head with the escalating intensity of the treble. As she started her second lap, the music grew to a percussive rapid-fire of monotone D-D-D-D-D sets in a constant, frantic stream, and the heartbeat of the song accelerated to an aggressive quadruple time, and every light in the club went into a violent, synchronized strobe pattern as the dancer closed in on Spring--a pink foreleg dipped toward him, hooked him by the front knee, pulled him onto the stage--
She allowed him to stand face-to-face with her, breaking the flow of her dance for a few precious seconds. The lights, the music, the ponies surrounding them, everything was throwing itself into a manic, delirious build to a climax, but the dancer, seemingly unaffected, stared into Spring's eyes with a gaze as hard as sapphire.
The music suddenly cut to a sharp silence, and the club was plunged into opaque darkness.
“Hey there.” she said. Her voice was a low, smooth tenor.
The club’s pent-up energy detonated into a bone-rattling climax.
The cheers of the crowd were audible even over the consuming roar of the speakers sending out a blast so powerful that Spring thought he could taste it. He felt her warmth as she glided her head, then neck, flank, haunch, across his chest, finally flicking his nose with a vertical up-down flip of her tail. The crowd whooped. They had started to stomp rhythmically, a hungry boom boom boom beneath the pounding bass and the relentless treble, as the dancer settled into a grind against Spring’s chest.
“Uh--” said Spring Blaze.
Spring glanced around for where Autumn would be standing at the edge of the incline, but the lights made it impossible to see much of anything, let alone individual faces. He felt her lifting him into an upright stance, and he was staring into her eyes again as she guided him into a whirl, making him part of her dance and part of the music itself with her just-firm-enough grip. After three turns, she released him for just one and a half beats of the song, long enough to pivot a half-turn on two legs, reach behind her, and steady him in place by taking his hooves and holding them against her body. And then she was dancing with him, rolling and stroking her body warmly against his chest and belly with catlike fluidity.
“Wait--”
Spring Blaze’s partner either heard the protest or sensed it, because she reached up to loop her wrists behind Spring’s head, stretched her neck so that she could rub her cheek against his, and spoke to him in an intimate whisper.
“Don’t worry. Just leave it all to me.”
She dipped away again, letting Spring fall forward onto her back as she dropped to all fours. The crowd cheered again as she backed up underneath him, gyrating gently with her rum and sliding into a position with Spring mounting her...
Something lurched in Spring Blaze’s stomach. “No... I...”
She must have heard that, because she turned her head to look up at Spring’s distressed, shifting expression, and then frowned. On the next downbeat she bucked violently, like a rodeo bull, so hard that it sent Spring airborne for exactly one beat. When he came to a four-point landing, she was already on top of him in a lazy embrace, laying her forelegs across his back and locking eyes with him again. The sultry performance was gone, at least from her face, replaced by something like worry. She kissed him on the cheek, then pushed off of him, hard enough to force him to take a step backward--which almost made him fall into the crowd, because she had pushed him off of the stage’s plateau.
When Spring looked up, she was thrashing her head and tail and stomping a lap around the stage. This time, the pony she chose was stocky, olive-furred, well-muscled and every inch a desirable pegasus stallion, whose red-yellow-brown striped mane made for a striking contrast in the flashing colored lights as he was welcomed onto the stage. Something stirred in his chest as he watched the way Autumn's tail flicked with excitement--he could imagine the way he must be breathing hard, his breath coming in hot bursts, confidence and power rolling off his body with every shake of his head and stomp of his hooves.
He turned his back on the stage and headed for the door, weaving his way back through the chaos, alone this time.
Lovely weather on the day after Winter Wrap-Up was always a guarantee. Warm, breezy, partly cloudy with a chance of brief showers. It was Spring Blaze’s second favorite day of the year, and that was why he was doing game-design work outside at one of the cafe’s tables, instead of locking himself in his room and refusing to let anyone in under any circumstances. The best of both worlds, he reasoned--this way he could sit and be absorbed in his personal work without missing out on the weather. For now, though, his charcoal and sketchbook were sitting inert on the table while he contemplated the rough surface of his fresh alfafa sandwich.
“Hey.” Her voice was a dark tenor, low and rich.
His throat tightened as he looked up. Even though he knew who he would see, meeting her brilliant blue eyes still made his gut twist.
“... hey.” He lowered his head and picked up his sandwich in his teeth.
“You’re the birthday boy from last night, right? You have fun at your birthday party?”
Spring Blaze took a moment to chew and swallow before answering. Then he gave a long, exaggerated shrug. “It wasn’t really my birthday party, was it? It was a Winter Wrap-Up party.”
“It was your birthday and you were out to have fun,” she said. When Spring looked up, he saw that she was leaning on the counter and resting her cheek on one hoof. “Besides, it’s a pretty cool coincidence, having the start of spring happen on the day you were born."
She shrugged lazily. "Besides, I really did want to dance with you. Was all set to have you be the one I took home, too.”
Spring leaned away from the table and folded his forelegs across his chest. “Yeah, well, I’m not like that. I’m not into... that kind of thing.” The words came out harder than he meant.
She raised an eyebrow. “Into what? Sex?”
“No!” Spring snapped back. “I mean the party! The whole... thing! It’s all so pointless. I don’t want to do it that way. I’m better than that.” He realized that he was glaring. He scooted back toward the table and reached for his sandwich.
She grimaced at that, but she didn’t take those dark blue eyes off of him. “Better, huh?” she said, as if she had never heard such a thing before, and needed to contemplate it. “There something wrong with what all your friends and neighbors were doin’ in there? Seemed to me like they were havin’ a lot of fun. Everyone lets that energy out somehow, honey.” She was smiling, not angry, by the end of her statement. In fact, she even managed a surprisingly genuine laugh.
Spring rested his hooves on the edge of his plate. Suddenly, defending his position against this mystery mare was more important than eating his sandwich. “Well, I don’t,” he said, still glaring. “I draw for my game, I play the drums, and I work hard for the weather team. I don’t need to do that stuff.”
Again she appeared to contemplate Spring’s words.
“An artist, huh?”
He nodded firmly. “I’m going to develop a game. In fact, I was doing some good concept work right before you showed up.” He pointed to his notebook.
She nodded slowly, then gestured toward the notebook. “May I?”
He mirrored her gesture, more forcefully. She reached for the notebook, picked it up, and opened to a page near the middle.
"Who's this guy?"
She placed the open notebook back on the table.
“His name is Captain Ironshod," said Spring proudly. "He’s going to be a major NPC. That's short for 'non-player character.' It means--”
“He’s wearing bondage gear,” she interrupted, leaning forward to look closer. Then she gave a low whistle. “And just lookit the muscles on him...”
Spring grit his teeth. The glare came right back, and he barely kept from shouting. “It’s armor, not bondage gear! The straps are for--ugh, you wouldn’t get it.”
"He looks kind of like the stallion you were with last night," she said. "Except even more buff. And with leather straps."
Spring opened his mouth, then closed it when the proper expression of outrage wouldn’t come to his lips.
"Don't worry,” she said, still smiling. “You're a good artist. And that stallion you were with was pretty sexy. He told me all about you."
The silence lingered as the dancer shook out her mane, scooted her chair back from the table, and made to leave. She placed her hoof on Spring Blaze’s shoulder as she walked past, and then she was gone.