Ingress: Co-opted Consort

Chapters

Co-opting Your Consort
Being Convivial With Your Consort
Coaxing Your Consort
Captivating your Consort
Conversing With Your Consort
Cajoling Your Consort
Corrupting your Consort
Capitulating Your Consort

Co-opting Your Consort

Blake took a step towards the fryer, wincing slightly at the pressure it put on his injured foot. His left foot was wrapped, held stiff, but it wasn’t enough to stifle the shocks of pain any time he applied weight to it.

Sighing faintly, he flipped a vegetable patty over, and then slipped the bun off the hot plate and onto a plate, beginning the arduous task of assembling a large vegetable burger.

The kitchen of the Allstar Brisbane Hotel was hot and humid, but Blake dared not take a step outside to cool off.

Members of the Australian Federal Police stood at the doorway. These weren’t regular beat-cops however. These officers clearly had some kind of SWAT training. Compact black SMGs were cradled in their arms, and they wore head-to-toe body armor including matte-black helmets usually only seen worn by officers responding to bank robberies.

Blake already knew that outside of the hotel, a mixed team of military special forces and regular police special forces were stationed in rotating shifts, guarding the most important being on the planet.

Celestia.

Blake hadn’t seen the princess with his own eyes. He had seen the footage of her stepping through the portal, with the royal guard in tow, but actually being able to even see her was a privilege few got to experience, even though she was staying just a few floors up in the hotel where he worked.

From what Blake had gathered from snippets of conversation and a few leading questions, Celestia had ordered that her presence cause as few ‘ripples’ as possible. Even the hotel she stayed at, she demanded that it stay open to the public. A slight concession had to be made on her part in that her floor was off-limits to the public and guarded at all times. But other than that, the hotel operated as normal.

Well, apart from the armed security service at every entrance and the frequent random security checks, confiscation of all but the bluntest of knives, installation of dozens of cameras, and several new workers he was sure were undercover operatives.

Blake limped over to a grill, flipping over a vegetable burger bun. A general order had gone through for every business around the hotel: No meat was to be cooked or served, for fear of offending the visiting dignitary.

It was pure luck, or lack thereof, that Blake was even there. Originally, he had worked at a warehouse on the outskirts of Brisbane, working for a shipping company. That was, until an idiot backed a loaded forklift over his foot. After six months of crutches and an operation to reset the bones in his foot, including a metal pin to hold them in place, and he was ordered to start finding a job by the company handling his recovery and reentry to the workforce.

Blake had felt railroaded into the job at the Allstar hotel, especially as the older lady handling his case had a friend in upper management there, and Blake had taken chef courses when he was younger.

It was barely a month into his new position when the portal had opened.

Talking ponies from another dimension.

It sounded like some kind of joke or prank. But Blake had seen them with his own eyes, at a distance, stepping out of the portal.

And now one was staying right upstairs.

“Seriously?”

Blake looked up at an argument that was starting right in the kitchen. One of the newer kitchen staff had a server’s hat placed on the bench in front of her.

“Seriously,” the guard said, grim-faced.

“She’s sent back every single person that was sent up there.”

“And now we have no one left,” the guard said with a helpless shrug of his shoulders. He leaned in, lowering his voice almost too low for Blake to hear, even though he was relatively close. “And you’re the last one we have here trained in diplomacy and non-disclosure.”

“Ugh, fine,” she said, picking up the hat and jamming it on her head. With a huff, she strode over to the serving tray that was piled high with salad and vegetarian meals of different varieties. She picked it up, composed herself, and marched towards the service elevator.

“Come in,” Celestia said, responding to a curt knock at the door. She didn’t turn away from the window, just watching the city and its happenings from a distance.

The door clicked open, and the new server entered, gently placing the tray down on the counter.

“How is your day going?” Celestia asked, not even turning to look at her.

“It’s… fine, Your Majesty,” the server said with a slight bow of her head.

“Why do none of you humans speak candidly with me?” Celestia asked simply.

The server gave an awkward motion with her hands. “That is not my place to say. Personally, I don’t enjoy sharing snippets of my personal life or day with my work colleagues.”

“Of course you don’t,” Celestia said with a sigh. “Tell Steven I wish to speak with him.”

The server paled, but nodded once. “Yes, Your Majesty,” she said with a bow, slipping out of the room and closing the door behind her.

A minute later, there was another curt knock.

“Enter,” Celestia said shortly.

Steven opened the door, stepping inside and closing it after him, standing with his arms crossed against his belly. “Is something the matter, Your Majesty?”

“The latest server you sent to me was unacceptable,” Celestia said, her voice as cold as ice. “I demand a new one.”

Steven arched an eyebrow, before giving a slight sigh. “Excuse my candour, Princess, but this is getting ridiculous.”

“I was not allowed to have my own servants enter here due to ‘security reasons’, so you will find me a suitable server if you have to enlist them from the general populace,” Celestia stated coldly. “I will not be spoken down to by trained drones. I find it offensive.”

“What are you looking for in a server, Your Majesty?” Steven asked, his voice gaining an edge.

Celestia stared down the road below the hotel, watching a van followed by a taxi navigating the winding road. “I wish to speak to someone whose idea of ‘small talk’ is not the minutia of diplomatic study!”

“Very well,” Steven said, bowing curtly and turning on his heel.

Blake looked up at the sound of a wooden spoon on a pan, being rapped smartly.

“Everyone! Everyone!” Steven called out across the kitchen. “Attention please!”

Blake sighed, turning slightly to face the pompous older gentleman demanding everyone’s attention.

“I’m looking for a volunteer from the regular staff to serve Princess Celestia her meals,” Steven said smartly, looking from face to face.

There was a ripple of murmurs, but nobody volunteered.

“Come now, don’t be shy. It’s not onerous. You’ll just have to take her trays of food to her, nothing more,” Steven tried to reassure, hands held out placatingly.

One of the females piped up from in front of a saucepan: “Is that why everyone else who’s gone up there has been fired?”

Steven frowned slightly at that. “If nobody volunteers, someone will be chosen.”

“Is that how volunteering works around here?” Blake found himself asking, before immediately regretting having said anything and turned back to stirring the gravy.

“You,” Steven said, eyes narrowing slowly. “I think you’re our first volunteer.”

“Like hell I am, I’m just here to cook,” Blake said, holding up his spoon and pointing at it. “Nothing in my contract says ‘take orders from pompous’...” He made a motion with his hands to convey the last word of the sentence he wasn’t quite game enough to say out loud.

Steven arched an eyebrow. “Either serve the princess, or I’m going to rescind your security clearance.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Blake said flatly, eyes narrowing.

“Try me,” Steven said, his tone silky soft, giving the slightest of smiles.

Blake stared at him for several long moments, before scowling and turning off the hot plate he was at. “Fine, whatever. I’m sick of working here anyway.”

“Good man,” Steven said, making a motion with a hand. “Take the tray and put on the uniform. I’ll brief you while you get changed.”

Grinding his teeth, Blake went as directed, opening a cupboard and pulling out a neatly-pressed server uniform that looked like it should fit. He ducked into a corner of the room that had been set out as a ‘privacy area’, where he could get changed. It was also known as the ‘strip booth’, the place where the guards would usher random employees for what seemed to be thrice-daily strip-searches.

As he started to strip out of his clothes, Steven stepped up to the curtain. “When you address the princess, you will refer to her as ‘Your Majesty’, or ‘Your Highness’, as is befitting a female ruler.”

“I understand the basics on how to speak to royalty, Your Highness,” Blake said, as he tugged on the shorts of the uniform, starting with the shirt.

There was a momentary silence on the other side of the curtain, before Steven gave what sounded like an amused snort. “Mind you watch your temper with the princess. You will answer all of her questions as succinctly as possible without portraying our entire species in a bad light.”

“Don’t talk about the true stuff, then,” Blake said with a deep frown.

“No, don’t deliberately talk about the bad things,” Steven stressed, his tone turning icy. “Do not negatively spin things to demean the human race. Celestia has received information from somewhere that we are war-mongering assholes hell-bent on destroying each other. This is not conducive to any kind of partnership between our races.”

“In 2001, a bunch of psychos flew some planes into buildings because their imaginary friend doesn’t like capitalism, so the recipient country went over and glassed half the country while interfering with their government and going after all their oil,” Blake said, pulling the curtain back, straightening his uniform a little bit. “About sums it up, right? We are a bunch of war-mongering cunts.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t put it to the princess so bluntly,” Steven said, frowning deeply.

Blake shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But it’s clear that using kid-gloves on her isn’t working so well or you wouldn’t be asking for ‘volunteers’ to go serve her.”

Steven’s eyes narrowed slowly, and he looked Blake up and down once. “I hope you never get into politics.”

Blake laughed, picking up a tray and giving a neat, sarcastic bow. “That makes two of us.”

“Enter,” Celestia said calmly at the rap on the door.

Blake cringed slightly, almost dropping his tray as he fumbled with the door, fighting against the hydraulic piston that wanted to close it for him. He staggered into the room with a slight huff, panting and placing down the tray on the counter, which was laden with tea and different kinds of biscuits. He leaned against the wall for a moment, taking the weight off his bad foot just enough for it to relax, a soft sigh of relief leaving him.

“Are you injured?” Celestia asked carefully, not turning around.

Blake’s eyes met Celestia’s own in the reflection on the glass, and he shook his head. “No. Well, yes, but I’m getting better, slowly.”

Celestia frowned slightly, and then turned slowly to face him. Her mane and tail were flatter than usual without the wind to lift them, but she was still quite imposing.

Blake felt somehow diminished in her presence.

“You do not have a name tag,” Celestia said simply.

Blake looked down at his chest, and then gave a quiet curse. “I uh… I was enlisted recently. They haven’t had time to get me one yet.”

“'They'…” Celestia said, the slightest of smiles tugging at her lips. “As you bear no name tag, what is your name?”

“I’m Blake, Your Highness,” he said, giving his best attempt at a bow while keeping his weight off his foot. “I brought you tea and biscuits.”

“I can see that,” Celestia said candidly, looking him up and down carefully. “How did you injure yourself?”

“Can I… Can I speak uhm, candidly?” Blake asked awkwardly.

Celestia waved a hoof. “Please, do so.”

“An idiot where I used to work backed over it with a forklift,” Blake said bluntly. “Broke a bunch of bones in there and the docs had to put a pin in it so that the bones would heal properly.”

“Should you not be resting?” Celestia asked carefully.

“I rested for weeks. I was getting fat, decided I needed to get back to work,” Blake said with a wry smile.

Celestia canted her head slightly to the right, and pink eyes narrowed at him slowly.

Blake squirmed uncomfortably as it felt as though he were being examined with a magnifying glass.

“Is it commonplace for humans to lie to their superiors?” Celestia asked candidly.

Blake blinked once, and then gave a nervous laugh. “I was just… you know, being sarcastic,” he said, holding up his hands placatingly. “I was ordered back to work by the blokes handling my case.”

“Your… case?” Celestia enquired, eyebrows arching.

“You know, Work Cover. I was stuck off work after my injury, so Work Cover covered me until I was fit to do some kind of work. They decided I was fit for some tasks, and here I am. Not allowed to lift anything heavy or climb a ladder, though,” Blake explained as best as he could. “Or drive a vehicle requiring use of foot-pedals.”

“And this… ‘blokes’, you spoke of, what are they?” Celestia pressed, taking a step towards him.

“Oh, that’s just… you know, Australian slang. Means ‘people’, though it usually means ‘male’. A ‘bloke’ is just a bloke… you know, a guy. If there’s a group of people, you can call them ‘blokes’ even if some of them are girls, you know?”

Celestia shook her head. “I do not know, but I find it fascinating. Please, sit if it bothers you to stand.”

“I uh… I’m supposed to be serving you,” Blake said awkwardly.

“And indeed you are,” Celestia said with a warm smile. “Please, sit.” She made a motion towards the bed.

Blake gave an uncertain look between her and the bed, before perching himself awkwardly on the edge of it. “So uh… not fired yet, huh?”

“Fired?” Celestia asked.

“Fired,” Blake repeated blankly. “Every person they sent up here ends up being sent home within ten minutes.”

“If I wished a lamp-post to come alive and serve me my tea, I would have used my magic,” Celestia said simply, looking him up and down. “Tell me… your accent, it is… strange. Are you foreign?”

Blake blinked once. “No? Well, I guess I grew up in the country. Accents are pretty strong out in the sticks.”

“‘Out in the sticks’,” Celestia repeated thoughtfully, rolling the words on her tongue. “I quite like that colloquialism. Not in the least because I understood it immediately. What is it like where you grew up?”

“Pretty shit,” Blake said, his eyes widening and mouth clamping shut as he realised what he’d said. “I uh… I mean… it was boring.”

Celestia gave a soft laugh at that, a musical sound that sent shivers up Blake’s spine but also put him at ease, somehow. “Do not feel the need to censor yourself around me.”

“I just don’t feel… it doesn’t feel right to say that in front of a Princess,” Blake admitted, frowning and scratching a mark on his shorts. He shifted his legs uncomfortably, goosebumps rising on his flesh at a draft of cool air circulating the room.

“I assure you, Blake, I have heard every instance of profanity you can possibly imagine, and more,” Celestia soothed.

“Okay, I guess,” Blake said uncertainly.

“Now, where you grew up, what was it like? Describe it to me,” Celestia pressed.

Blake gave a faint sigh, pondering for a long moment. “It was boring. Kind of shit all around. The local council was more interested in museum pieces and elderly folk things than they were in anything to do with the kids around the place. All the younger people up and left as soon as they were able.”

“What made it so… unattractive to younger humans?” Celestia asked carefully.

“There was like, one skate park in the entire place. It wasn’t maintained. The public toilets got vandalised and the council didn’t give a shit one way or another. There were a bunch of pot-smoking morons always hanging around the halfpipe and they’d do stupid shit like leaving broken bottles there and we even found a few needles one time. Complained to the council, so they just decided to put a fence up around it and never let anyone in. Not that that stopped anyone. Some idiot drove his ute through the fence one night, fucking legless, and the council just put up a big stupid red fence they used to wall off construction sites.”

Celestia blinked once, holding up a hoof to halt him. “I am afraid you will have to explain some of these terms to me. What is a ‘half pipe’, a ‘pot smoker’, what is the significance of needles, what is a ‘ute’, and please clarify what ‘fucking legless’ means?”

Blake bit the inside of his cheek, a little bit chagrined that he had been so candid with a princess and also trying not to laugh at the way she had said ‘fucking legless’.

“A half-pipe is a skating term… You need a skateboard for that. Do you guys have a skateboard?” Blake asked helplessly.

“We ‘blokes’ have a skate-board, yes,” Celestia said simply.

Blake only cringed a little bit at the princess’s use of the word ‘blokes’. "Well, a half-pipe is the bit like a cylinder cut in half. You can use your speed from going up one side to come back down and go up the other, and get a little bit of air.”

“I see. I am not familiar with that terminology used for that object. Did you use a skateboard?”

Blake nodded once. “Yeah, when I was younger. Used to be able to do a mean kickflip. Not any more though.”

“Due to your injury?”

“Nah, just fell out of practise. I guess because I hurt my foot, too, yeah,” Blake admitted, looking down at his sneaker with a slight frown.

“And now ‘pot-smoker’?” Celestia asked, carefully enunciating the term.

Blake gave an awkward shrug at that. “Means someone who smokes a lot of pot. Marijuana.”

“We… do not have this in Equestria,” Celestia admitted.

“Hooka? Reefer? Cones?” Blake listed off, arching an eyebrow.

Celestia shook her head.

“Well, basically, it’s a plant that you dry, and smoke, and it gets you high.”

“Ahhhh… the zebras had something similar,” Celestia said with a nod. “Now, the needles. Were they performing surgery?”

Blake winced. “No, a harder kind of drug. Probably heroin.”

“That sounds… unpleasant,” Celestia admitted.

“Yeah, heroine is a really hard drug. Really addictive, too. Really illegal as well. Hence why it’s a little bit goddamn fu…” Blake took a deep breath, before letting it out. “Hence why we found it a little bit aggravating that the council didn’t do much about it when we found needles where the local kids play.”

“I can understand why that would be disconcerting,” Celestia said sympathetically. “Now, the ‘ute’ and ‘fucking legless’, please.”

Blake gave a slight chortle at that.

Celestia arched an eyebrow. “Is something amusing?”

Blake gave a short nod. “I just love the way you say ‘fucking legless’.”

“Fucking legless,” Celestia repeated with a wry smile.

Blake chuckled at that, shaking his head. “Well, a ‘ute’ is a kind of car. It has a cab up the front, that’s where the driver sits, and a contained area in the back where you can put things for transport. Food, machinery, bicycles, your dogs, whatever you want.”

“It is… a kind of cart?” Celestia offered.

“Yeah, exactly. Except there are no horses on the front.”

It took Blake several seconds to realise that what he said might have been offensive.

“Uh…” Blake trailed off, frowning down at his sneakers. “You don’t… you’re not weird about horses, are you?”

“Your animals that resemble us?” Celestia asked calmly.

Blake nodded.

Celestia wrinkled her nose slightly. “I find them… quite unattractive, honestly. There noses are too large, their manes too thick and bristly, their teeth are positively frightening and they are, in every sense of the word, far too large. Even the most imposing of our Earth Ponies are no match in size for your horses. Not to mention that they are not in any way intelligent.”

“Oh good,” Blake said with a sigh of relief. “I just don’t want to say something to upset you…”

Celestia rapped him on the nose quite sharply with her hoof, and Blake reeled backwards in surprise, blinking rapidly.

“A princess does not get ‘upset’, she becomes ‘offended’. And I am quite in control of my own emotions enough that I can understand that any offense is not intended.”

“Track-record notwithstanding,” Blake quipped.

“You have trouble holding your tongue, don’t you?” Celestia asked icily.

Blake winced slightly, and then nodded once. “Got me in a lot of trouble at school.”

Celestia’s expression turned to a smile. “I like that.”

Blake blinked once more, eyebrow lifting.

“Now, this ‘legless’,” Celestia said, changing the subject. “I take that not to mean that the person was bereft of legs, correct?”

“Legless means when you’ve had so much alcohol that you can’t walk properly any more,” Blake explained.

“Why is operating a motor vehicle under such conditions legal?” Celestia asked carefully.

Blake sighed faintly. “It isn't. Kills thousands of people around the world every year, but people bitch, moan, and complain about how ‘walking is hard’ or taxis are too expensive, and then they drive home from the pub anyway.”

“These people should be punished,” Celestia said, weighing her words, watching for Blake’s reaction.

“They should be,” Blake said with a frown. “Problem is trying to catch them.”

“Attempts are made, yes?” Celestia queried.

Blake nodded. “Random breath testing, ads on the tv every other day, etcetera. But there will always be people who do it because they’re stupid.”

“I see,” Celestia said candidily. “It is a logistical problem?”

Blake only nodded again, shrugging helplessly. “And an idiot epidemic.”

“An interesting way of looking at it,” Celestia mused. “So you feel as though your ‘council’ did not do enough to keep the younger people entertained?”

“Didn’t do anything, really,” Blake admitted, chewing on his bottom lip, brushing a hand through his hair in an agitated fashion. “There were a bunch of antique stores, some fast food places, a few pubs, and other than that, nothing. The youth centre got burned down, vandalised, everyone said, and they never bothered to rebuild it.”

“I am sorry for your home town,” Celestia said soothingly.

Blake gave a long sigh. “Eh, what are you gonna do?”

“Personally? Nothing,” Celestia admitted. “There is nothing I can do.”

Blake gave her a long stare. “That was a neutral statement. It was just a ‘I have nothing really to say here but it would be rude not to say something.”

Celestia blinked once. “I see.”

“For a master diplomat, you sure miss a few things,” Blake teased.

Celestia snorted once. “The geography of your town, what is it like? Were you ever raided by neighboring towns?”

“Raided?” Blake asked, confused. “Like… what?”

“Raided. You know, an opposing town would put together a militia, travel to a neighboring town, and take their resources by force,” Celestia said candidly.

“Holy shit have they been keeping some things from you. Nobody does that. That’s some tribal-warfare shit. If they tried that these days, they’d have cellphone footage of it on youtube within the hour and they’d all get rounded up by SWAT teams or the army.”

“You have no raids?” Celestia asked, seemingly genuinely curious.

“No,” Blake said, shaking his head. “We don’t even have militias. Jesus. The closest we have to that are gun clubs. Nobody ‘raids’ places. We have a government specifically so we don’t have to do crazy shit like that to survive.”

“But your peoples are engaged in warfare almost constantly,” Celestia said bluntly. “If not with neighboring villages, then with who?”

“Other countries,” Blake explained, as carefully as he could. “We don’t go to war with villages. We go to war with countries, or, these days, ‘terrorists’. Like the Al Qaeda blokes over in whatever sandy country they live in. They attacked America, and America retaliated by invading their country.”

“Was it a neighboring country?” Celestia queried. “Or separated by an ocean?”

“Separated by an ocean and a couple of other countries, if I remember correctly,” Blake said with a helpless shrug. “And wars are generally fought in third-world shitholes. The first world doesn’t have armed conflicts.”

“The first world?” Celestia asked, confused. “Earth, Equestria… what is the ‘third world’?”

“‘Third world’ refers to poorer countries. Like Africa and such. They’re not as developed as the ‘first world’ countries like America, Australia, The United Kingdom and such. God, I’m probably butchering this explanation. This is really something you need a diplomat to explain to you.”

“The diplomats choose to give me such a tiny amount of information, carefully diluted until it is meaningless and only carries the minimum of information to even be an answer. It is unsuitable,” Celestia said with a wave of her hoof. “Let me put it this way: In your opinion, only your own, does your country, or other major powers, prey on weaker countries with warfare?”

“Russia, most definitely,” Blake admitted instantly. “North Korea flexes its muscles wherever it can. And then there are European countries I barely know about that probably do, down in Gaza or whatever. But the first world countries I can think of off the top of my head only go to war to protect themselves, or to try and help out a war with allied countries who are being attacked.”

“Thank you for your candour,” Celestia said, looking him up and down again. “Would you please remove your vest?”

“This is a shirt,” Blake corrected automatically. “Also: what?”

“Please remove your shirt,” Celestia repeated, giving him a long stare. “I have not had the ability to study a human in detail and I find you fascinating.”

“That’s… kind of weird,” Blake admitted.

“Do I have to make it an order?” Celestia asked sweetly.

Blake cringed slightly at that, and then shook his head with the softest of sighs. “No, I guess. It’s just… weird.”

“I am unclothed,” Celestia said, head canting slightly to the left. “Does nudity bother humans?”

“Basically, yes,” Blake admitted, as he carefully unbuttoned the uniform top. He pulled it open, and then laid it aside. He tried to suck in his gut a little bit, to look a little bit less like a giant sack of shit. Eight hour days unloading trucks at a warehouse had given him a wiry, strong physique. But months of laying on his ass eating crisps and playing xbox had destroyed any vestige of abs.

“Fascination,” Celestia hummed, tilting her head slightly to the left, eyes narrowing at him. Her horn glowed, and a pad and quill floated up in front of her.

Blake wiggled away a little bit. “Uh, isn’t magic dangerous to humans?”

“I am not using my magic on you. If it bothers you, I will cease,” Celestia said, making a smooth stroke with the quill. “Please, can you lift your arms above your head?”

Blake arched an eyebrow at her, but did as asked, lifting his arms.

“Now, bend them?” Celestia asked eagerly.

Blake bent his arms down as asked, feeling incredibly awkward, before losing the pose. “Ugh, sorry, our body isn’t meant to bend like that.”

“How is it meant to bend?” Celestia asked, ears pricking forwards intently.

“Well… like… uh…” Blake trailed off with a helpless shrug. “Like a body.”

Celestia frowned at that, snorting once. “The more limber of your species, the most flexible ones, what are they capable of doing?”

“Oh, well… I guess there are people that can touch their hands behind their backs,” Blake said awkwardly. “Like, one arm over their shoulder and one arm not.”

“Show me,” Celestia said firmly.

Blake turned away from the princess, awkwardly lifting one arm over his head while slipping the other up from underneath, trying to touch his fingertips together. “I can’t quite reach,” he hissed, teeth gritting slightly with the effort, before he slumped and gave up.

“How strange,” Celestia said, making a few more strokes with her quill on the pad. “Your range of motion is… exemplary!”

“I’m not very flexible,” Blake said, confused.

Celestia shook her head. “In general. Your reach is amazing. There are entire regions of my body I am unable to reach,” she admitted. “You can reach between your shoulders! I would give up a portion of Equestria to be able to reach a hoof between my wings whenever I wished.”

“Couldn’t you just use magic?” Blake asked dubiously.

“It is not the same. Have you ever scratched an itch with a stick?” Celestia asked bluntly.

Blake thought for a moment, before nodding. “Sure, on a bushwalk one time. Back got a bit itchy, scratched it with an old stick.”

Celestia looked him up and down and then made a vague motion with a hoof. “In your hair where the flesh is more delicate?”

“No, hell no,” Blake said, wrinkling his nose. “That would hurt.”

“And therein lies my problem. There are devices specifically made for this, but they are not as good as scratching an itch with a simple hoof,” Celestia explained. “But the way we evolved, we cannot reach above our own selves without rearing back.”

“So… ponies believe in evolution, too, huh?” Blake queried with a soft little chuckle.

Celestia arched an eyebrow at that. “...What is there to ‘believe’ in?”

“It’s only recently that most humans actually ‘believe’ in evolution, despite evidence,” Blake explained with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “And even that could be completely wrong.”

“All evidence we have found points to magical adaptations shaping future generations,” Celestia said smartly. “It is a foregone conclusion.”

“Don’t ponies see you as some kind of god?” Blake asked dubiously, looking her up and down again. “How does that factor in with evolution?”

“I am close to the classical definition of a ‘god’, at least… in our ‘realm’, I am. Do your ‘gods’ not reach the pinnacle of their creation through natural selection?” Celestia asked, seemingly genuinely curious.

Blake shrugged again. “I didn’t take ancient history, but all of the older god tales all say that ‘god’ that was just some bloke who was there for all time and created everything.”

Celestia scoffed. “That completely precludes time having a beginning. How could something exist before time?”

“I don’t get mixed up in philosophical debate,” Blake said helplessly.

Celestia clapped a hoof over her mouth, and then took a deep breath, steadying herself. “I am sorry, did I offend you with anything I said?”

“What? No,” Blake said with a wave of a hand.

“It was remiss of me to speak so… frankly about your beliefs and those of your species,” Celestia said carefully.

Blake stared at her for a long moment, and then shook his head. “No. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t go all ‘politically correct’ on me,” Blake said, pointing a finger at her accusingly. “You apparently wanted someone who wouldn’t kid-glove you, and now you’re going to go doing the same thing to me?”

Celestia took a deep breath, scowling slightly to herself. “I just find it so easy to talk to you. It is… unsettling now that I think about it.”

“Because I don’t look at you like a god?” Blake asked with a slight smile.

Celestia pondered on that for a few moments, before giving a wary nod. “Perhaps. You are most certainly not as… reverential as my pony subjects. It is refreshing.”

“So… what do you think of humans?” Blake asked, stretching his arms out for examination. “Other than ‘wow you can reach behind your back!’?”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed at him, and she chewed on her bottom lip for just a moment. “I think your clothes are incredibly silly, your manes are too short, your arms are too long, your rumps are… Wrong. And your males have breasts.” She pointed with a hoof at his chest. “This is… unsettling. Do the males of your species breast-feed young?”

Blake resisted the urge to cover his chest, feelings his cheeks redden slightly. “No! I’m just a little bit out of shape is all.”

“But you have breasts,” Celestia pressed. “They are clear.”

“This is like, ninety percent muscle,” Blake protested. He wiggled a little bit closer to the princess, grabbing one of her hooves in his hand and lifting it. “Here, feel.”

“This is highly inappropriate,” Celestia said, but allowed her hoof to be lead to his left breast area.

Blake tensed all the muscles in his arm, and then tugged her hoof against him slightly. “See? Muscles.”

“How… strange…” Celestia said, brow furrowing deeply. She felt along the length of the tense muscle she could feel, feeling the edges of it. “It is… very similar to a phoenix's weight-bearing wing muscle in their chest. Why then, do you possess nipples?”

Blake shrugged helplessly, letting go of the hoof and scooching back away from the princess again. “That’s something to ask a scientist, not me. I vaguely remember it having something to do with every human being a female in the womb until a certain time when they get a bunch of hormones that turn them male. But by that point, nipples have already formed.”

“So they are… completely useless? Non-functioning?” Celestia asked.

“Pretty much,” Blake said with a single nod. “I did read one thing about guys in a concentration camp growing breasts and producing breast milk, though. Apparently, starvation made them produce a bunch of hormones? So they could still function, I guess.”

“Concentration camps?” Celestia asked lightly. “What are they?”

Blake blanched, scratching his head nervously. “Uh… nothing important, really. That’s really something you should ask our diplomats.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow slowly. “Now I am more curious than ever.”

“It was a slip of the tongue,” Blake said nervously, fidgeting with the edge of his shorts.

Eyes narrowing slowly, Celestia made a vague motion with a hoof. “Do I need to get a new server?”

“Probably,” Blake said, pursing his lips, before giving a long sigh. “Well, shit. Concentration camps were where they sent all the Jews to be systematically killed off. They called it the ‘Holocaust’ and it’s widely regarded as one of the worst things to have ever happened.”

“That sounds horrid,” Celestia said, wrinkling her nose slightly. “Did you participate in it?”

Blake blanched again. “What? Fuck no. It happened like sixty years ago. That was during World War Two, when all of the countries of the world teamed up, picked a side, and blew the crap out of each other. We won. The guy who did it killed himself when we got to his bunker, and the country he was from hasn’t even been allowed to maintain a military.”

“Harsh,” Celestia said simply, staring at Blake for a long moment. “What was the name of the man who did this?”

“Hitler,” Blake responded immediately. “Adolph Hitler.”

“Amazing that you so readily know the name of someone who died decades before you were born,” Celestia said tactfully. “Why is that?”

“Because we’re taught who he was. We’re told he was the worst human being ever to live. And he was.”

“Does he have any followers today?” Celestia asked carefully.

Blake shrugged. “Probably. There’s the skinheads and stuff. But if you go saying that all Jews should be rounded up and killed you don’t last long before they throw you in the loony bin, or in jail.”

Celestia nodded, looking at Blake carefully. “It seems that your species at least learns from its mistakes.”

“Hopefully,” Blake said, making a helpless motion with his hands. “I’m not a history major or anything like that, I just know what I know from school.”

“Very well. That was… enlightening,” Celestia said carefully. “Nothing similar is happening in the world today?”

“Millions of people being systematically killed? No.” Blake shook his head emphatically. “The first person to try it would get nuked.”

“It amuses me that your kind can casually reference a doomsday weapon so many times that in common language it can be a verb,” Celestia said smartly.

“Hey, we only used two of them on people,” Blake retorted. “And that was to end World War Two.”

“You simply must tell me more at another time,” Celestia stated. “I fear that our talk has turned too… heavy. You are becoming agitated.”

“What makes you say that?” Blake asked blankly.

Celestia wordlessly pointed at his leg.

Blake consciously stopped bouncing his leg, pursing his lips. “Okay, yeah. It’s just an awkward line of questioning. Not something I should have brought up with an envoy from another world.”

“And yet you were the only human who would dare, so far,” Celestia said simply. “One time, I banished my sister to the moon. She stayed there for a thousand years.”

Blake winced slightly. “That must have sucked.”

“Very much so,” Celestia said calmly. “We each have failings. Hiding them accomplishes nothing.”

“I get where you’re coming from… but still…” Blake said with a wave of a hand.

“So, does your kind cavort with other species?” Celestia asked suddenly.

Blake gave a single blink. “...Cavort?”

“Engage with intercourse with,” Celestia clarified carefully. “I am changing the subject, if you did not notice.”

“I noticed,” Blake said, blinking several times and then shaking his head to try and clear it. “Also: What?!”

“I assume that to be a negatory, then?” Celestia said with a soft giggle. “None of the diplomats would answer that question.”

“Why would they?” Blake asked, giving the princess a long stare. “Screwing animals is pretty much against the law and common morals of every civilised nation on earth.”

“I understand that you don’t have sentient species other than humans?” Celestia asked thoughtfully. “I think that the vast majority of ponies would baulk at the idea of participating in sexual relations with a bear or such, so perhaps it is not so strange.”

“Why do you… care?” Blake asked, rubbing his hands through his hair, confused. “That’s just… a weird-ass question.”

“I am contemplating opening up dialogue and trade with your species. These are things I need to know,” Celestia said candidly.

“So you think that humans and your ponies would… you know? Do the nasty?” Blake asked in hushed tones.

Celestia gave a slow nod. “I think they may,” she said guardedly.

“Do… do ponies even… you know?” Blake asked, looking Celestia up and down again. “You guys are like us, right? You know, just…” He trailed off, frowning deeply, and then held up a fist and inserted his index finger into it suggestively.

Celestia gave a candid nod at that. “Though there are… size limitations to be assured of. I myself have a cozy twelve inches, would a human male be able to ‘accept’ it?”

Blake blanched, scooching further away from the ‘princess’, his eyes wide and mouth agape. “W-what?!”

Celestia’s composure broke and she dissolved into musical giggles, covering her mouth with a hoof. After several long moments, she looked up at him, still smirking innocently. “That was a joke, Blake. You look as though I sprouted tentacles.”

“You basically just said you do!” Blake said, entwining his fingers behind his head in agitation. “Jesus.”

“A penis does not have any place being on a female,” Celestia said with a slight giggle. “I assure you, we are ‘compatible’ biologically.”

“A human woman wouldn’t take twelve inches, not a chance,” Blake said guardedly. “Well, maybe some of them. Bloody size queens. But the general woman would baulk at that. You’d basically be shoving it into their lungs.”

“And I grossly exaggerated my imaginary penis for comedic effect,” Celestia said warmly. “Come back over here, Blake, I won’t bite.”

Blake winced a little bit, but tentatively slid over closer to her again, seating himself uncomfortably on the edge of the bed once more.

“In your own case… as an ‘average’ human, would you engage in sexual relations with a pony?” Celestia asked candidly. “Twelve-inch penis included or not at your discretion.”

Blake narrowed his eyes at her slowly, and then pursed his lips. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know what you guys even look like down there. What if it’s a giant mouth full of teeth?”

“Do you wish to inspect?” Celestia asked coyly, fluttering her eyelashes at him.

Blake’s eyes widened, and his mouth gaped again.

Celestia laughed at that, shaking her head and burying her face in her hooves for just a moment to try and compose herself. “You are so very easy to fluster!”

Blake just pursed his lips at her, ignoring the burning at the tips of his ears. “I don’t know if I would or not. It would be kind of hard getting past the fact that you’re all… ponies. That’s just… it’s weird.”

“Understandable,” Celestia said, inclining her head. “Do you find us unattractive as a species?”

“Attractiveness is subjective,” Blake said bluntly.

Celestia arched an eyebrow and then poked his chest with a hoof. “That was not the answer to the question I asked.”

“I think you are incredibly beautiful,” Blake admitted. “But I thought the same thing about the arabian somethingorother horse I saw on the internet the other day. Looked like brushed gold. I still wouldn’t want to take it to bed.”

“But it was not sentient, correct?” Celestia pressed.

Blake nodded. “Just a dumb horse.”

“Then it is the lack of sentience that bothers you?” Celestia mused.

“Perhaps… maybe. I don’t know. It just skeeves me out a bit,” Blake admitted, scratching the side of his neck again. “I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I don’t get there.”

Celestia pricked her ears upwards at him. “You think a pony would not be interested in a human?”

“We’re kind of furless monkeys,” Blake said with a soft chuckle. “It’d just be weird to have a pony or something looking sideways at a human.”

“I find you quite attractive,” Celestia admitted coyly. “You are quite exotic as a species. And your personality is not unattractive from our rather brief encounter so far.”

“You have shit taste,” Blake said bluntly.

Celestia laughed at that, placing a hoof over her mouth again, shaking her head at him. “You are a refreshing change from the species of my home. Perhaps many humans would feel the same way?”

“I can’t speak for everyone else, but you’d get a few takers, at least,” Blake said with a wary nod.

“Indeed,” Celestia said, humming bemusedly to herself.

“Can I put my shirt back on?” Blake asked plaintively.

Celestia shook her head firmly. “No, I still wish to sketch your muscles. May I touch?”

Blake gave a long-suffering sigh, and then nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I guess. Just don’t go along my armpit. It’s ticklish.”

Celestia smiled brightly, magically picking up her quill and pad again, gently lifting his arm to an outstretched position and then feeling along his shoulder to find out which muscles were tense. “So, what are the major powers of your world and where are they in relation to each other?”

Blake limped out of the room an hour and a half later, his throat dry and his arms aching from being held up in odd positions.

Steven was leaning against the wall opposite the door, arms crossed, waiting.

Blake just blinked at him tiredly.

“Come,” Steven said, making a motion down the hall with a hand. “Debriefing.”

Blake just groaned, slumping. “She wants me back in there in an hour with her dinner.”

“Then you have an hour to debrief us.”

Being Convivial With Your Consort

Blake gave a long sigh and stretched out his back muscles, working his arm to get the aches out of the muscles. There was a vegetable burger frying on the plate in front of him, and a handful of chips merrily bubbling away in the oil.

The kitchen was technically closed, but Blake had been allowed to cook himself something for dinner after his second debrief of the day had gone an hour over schedule. His second meeting with Celestia had been awful. They had barely settled in when an envoy from Saudi Arabia had arrived with a billion and one questions about the Equestrian version of Saudi Arabia and the denizens.

Any time Blake had had to talk to the princess was gone, and he was delegated to awkwardly standing in the corner, hoping to be dismissed so he could return to cooking food.

But the moment he was free, Steven had snatched him for another debriefing, where he sat for an hour and a half recanting aspects of Celestia’s conversation with the envoy, up to and including Celestia’s inability to understand his accent properly.

There was a very strange sound from behind him, and Blake looked back over his shoulder suspiciously. A light glowed underneath the door leading to the storage room for cleaning supplies, before the light faded almost immediately. The door silently opened, just a tiny amount, before closing again.

Frowning, Blake reach for a knife, unsticking it from the magnetic strip above the counter. He swapped it to his left hand, holding it back-hand, and then stepped quietly over to the door. He laid his left hand on the door, concealing the knife behind the edge of the door, and then tugged it open.

“Oi! Who’s there!” Blake challenged.

“Greetings. A spacious cleaning closet you have, here,” Celestia said amicably, pretending to examine an old straw broom.

Blake frowned deeply, reaching around the door jamb and flicking the light on.

Celestia blinked repeatedly until her eyes adjusted to the sudden light, arching an eyebrow at him. “Are you done? I do not need anything.”

“Why are you in the cleaning closet?” Blake asked flatly.

The princess gave a soft snort. “I was feeling peckish. I was waiting for the kitchen to empty so I could get myself something to eat.”

“You could have just asked,” Blake said dubiously.

“I could have,” Celestia said candidly. “But I do not enjoy bothering people after hours. Either way, I would not be allowed to peruse and choose what I wished to eat.”

“Or snoop around the kitchen and learn more about humans,” Blake said with the slightest of smug smiles.

Celestia’s eyes narrowed slowly. “You are more perceptive than you pretend to be.”

“I play things close to the chest,” Blake admitted with a slight shrug “So are you really down here to get something to eat?”

“I am particularly interested in the dessert cakes but I am afraid that I do not which I prefer,” Celestia admitted. “I wished to order one of each, but I thought it would be… presumptuous of me to do so.”

“You didn’t want to give the idea to all the human diplomats that you’re some kind of glutton or cake-fiend?” Blake asked with an arched eyebrow.

Something like a low growl rolled from Celestia’s throat. “I do so love that you take every single one of my admissions and use them to insult me.”

“Well stop admitting things to me then,” Blake teased, making a motion with his head. “Are you coming out of the cleaning closet?”

Celestia gave a long-suffering sigh, but nodded, picking up her wings and stepping daintily out of the storage room. “Not going to turn me in to the guards?”

“I’m off the clock, I’m not… required to report to the guard,” Blake said tactfully. “I’m basically just a civilian right now.”

“And if you were to notice a certain princess rummaging through the sweet’s drawer?” Celestia asked carefully.

“I would probably think it strange, but hey, I’m not working here right now. It’s not my duty to stop you,” Blake said, placing a hand over his chest sincerely. “Though, I would probably say that the chocolate-swirl bavarian is the best dessert in the house.”

Celestia gave a bright smile at that, taking a step towards the door. Blake took a step backwards and to the side, allowing the princess to pass.

“Could you direct me to the sweet’s drawer?” Celestia asked, ears perking upwards hopefully.

Blake nodded, pointing vaguely towards a corner of the kitchen. “The freezer over there.”

Celestia gave an appreciative nod, brushing past him. Her tail brushed against his bare arm, and it felt like weightless, ethereal silk. Celestia didn’t even notice, pushing past and heading for the freezer as indicted. She paused in front of it, pushing and pulling at the top before discovering that it could be lifted, pushing it upwards and peering down into it.

Blake quickly swapped the knife from one hand to the other, and then leant over to stick it back to the magnetic strip, quietly closing the cleaning room door with a foot. “So uh… can I ask you something, since we’re not officially in any capacity to… thing?”

Celestia looked back over her shoulder, an eyebrow arching upwards. “Quite. We are most definitely not in a capacity to ‘thing’ at present.”

“You know what I mean!” Blake huffed, pursing his lips. “I’m off the clock, I can ask something more frankly without you taking offense to it.”

“I assure you, I will take equal offense to anything you should ask, be it in official capacity or otherwise,” Celestia said smartly, leaning in until her nose was just inside the freezer and inhaling deeply. “Ooooh… I do quite enjoy that smell.”

“Why earth?” Blake asked bluntly.

“Why Equestria?” Celestia countered, giving him a sideways stare.

“That makes no sense,” Blake complained, with a faint sigh.

Celestia shook her head gently. “It makes no sense unless you understand the context of our dimensions. Do humans understand the concept of divergent dimensions?”

Blake shrugged. “Are you talking about infinite possibilities playing out and new dimensions being created for each decision?”

“That is… a very rough understanding of it, yes,” Celestia said guardedly. “So… why Equestria?”

“Your question still makes no sense, even in context,” Blake said with a long-suffering sigh. “I feel like I’m being lectured.”

“You are,” Celestia said, turning to give him her full attention. “Divergent Possibilities Theory states that anything that can happen will happen. In some dimension. Including this conversation. There is a version of this conversation where you say something wrong and I stab you with my horn and you bleed out on the floor. There is a version where you have an aneurism and die. There is a version where you seduce me.”

Blake blinked once. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Celestia cleared her throat. “Either way. It’s not so much that this is strange in and of itself. It had to happen somewhere, why not here?”

“Why did you decide to talk to us? Like… how did you even get to earth?” Blake asked bluntly. “You know, was it completely random?”

“Completely random,” Celestia stated. “It was not I who opened the portal. Though… alternate universes are not unknown. There is a… device in my possession capable of accessing a world similar in sorts to this one. There is also a magical place. A lake. It is capable of creating paradoxes in the Divergent Choices Theory to create clones.”

“Clones,” Blake said blankly.

“Clones,” Celestia said with a wry smile. “I myself witnessed four dozen of the same pony parading around Ponyville. It was… strange.”

“So all of this… this isn’t even a big thing to you?” Blake asked with wonder.

Celestia tilted her head slightly to the left, looking thoughtful. “In a sense, no. It is a big thing, certainly. But in context… it is hardly the strangest thing I have ever seen.”

“But still… why Earth? Why this specific rendition of… whatever you called it,” Blake said lamely.

“The Divergent Dimension Theory,” Celestia corrected with a slight smile. “I did not choose this dimension, as I already said. It was chosen for me.”

“But why? Why did you decide to… come here? You know. Actually talk to us? Why not just close the gateway and be done with it?” Blake queried.

Celestia frowned slightly, and then closed the lid of the freezer. “May I divulge a secret?”

Blake shrugged. “Sure. I don’t promise I’ll keep it forever and ever, though.”

“I trust that you’ll not immediately tell everyone that will listen,” Celestia said, giving him a piercing stare. “The gateway was not created by myself. The… bond between our worlds. It was, to my understanding, an accident. A unicorn was trying to expand the space of her cupboard, and she got the spell wrong. She was supposed to put the other end of the portal in another place entirely. Like a cave. Somewhere where she could store her clothes and other nicknacks. But she got distracted, or did it wrong. Her portal went back to the cupboard.”

“So why didn’t it just make the portal thing shut down? It’s like dividing by zero, right?” Blake asked, confused.

“Something akin to that, yes,” Celestia said, pursing her lips. “The portal, however, did not shut down. It went to the cupboard. In another dimension. This dimension.”

“So this is your Narnia?” Blake asked with a soft chuckle.

Celestia frowned at that. “Everyone keeps saying that. I do not understand the reference.”

“Forget about it,” Blake said with a wave of a hand. “So… that’s why you chose to keep the gate open?”

“Well… by the time I discovered the portal, the unicorn had already engaged in… a relationship with a human,” Celestia said carefully.

Blake arched an eyebrow.

Celestia shrugged her shoulders with a soft giggle. “What can I say? Unicorns are fast workers. I was unwilling to just… separate the two of them across the gap of dimensions with no chance of finding each other. Plus… the gate intrigues me. It is… it is both amazing and mundane.”

“Explain?” Blake asked, leaning against the counter.

“At the time the gate was created, it was a perfect replica of the cupboard in Equestria. Down to its atomic structure,” Celestia explained.

Blake frowned, chewing his bottom lip. “Shouldn’t… shouldn’t that be impossible?”

“Yes!” Celestia said, bouncing slightly in place, excited. “It should be such a crazy impossible thing to happen… but it’s not. That’s why it is also mundane. Divergent Dimension Theory states that there is a nearly infinite number of different paths taken. Therefore, there must be an atomic clone of that cupboard. In fact, there is an almost infinite number of them. There is an atomic clone of that cupboard that is sitting on a volcano right now. There’s one floating in space. There’s one at the bottom of the ocean trapped into a pressure-bubble.”

“So your… your portal could have gone to any of them?” Blake asked, trying to muddle through what she was saying.

“It did!” Celestia said, clapping her hooves together with a giggle.

Blake blinked once.

Celestia snorted slightly, composing herself. “This is getting into the realm of really advanced theoretical physics and abstract concepts I don’t expect you to understand. But yes… yes it could have gone to any of them. But… in this dimension. In this divergence, it didn’t. And even though everything I know, even though science tells me that it is mundane and normal… I can’t help but feel as though that is somehow special. I feel as though it is destiny for me to keep this portal open. The universe opted to give me a portal to this place. It would be folly to just throw it away.”

“I sort of get where you’re coming from but it’s going right the hell over my head,” Blake admitted, scratching his head helplessly. “I get a headache the more I try to think about it.”

“It is an exciting concept, but perhaps one best left to philosophers,” Celestia admitted, turning back to the freezer. “Now, which of these is the chocolate-swirl Bavarian?”

Blake sighed and stretched a little bit, watching Celestia spoon bite after bite of chocolate cheesecake into her mouth with delicate motions.

“So uh… how much do you guys even eat in an average day?” Blake asked uncertainly.

“A lot,” Celestia admitted with a slight smile. “I gain much of my sustenance from magic, but it doesn’t fulfill me as much as food. It is not nearly as pleasurable, either.”

“You’re on your third cheesecake,” Blake pointed out, arching an eyebrow.

“And you have barely touched yours,” Celestia said, motioning towards his quarter-slice sitting on a plate in front of him.

“I’m just waiting for it to warm up a bit so it’s nice and pliable. Plus, I don’t want to be eating like some kind of monster and getting crumbs all up in my beard,” Blake said, wrinkling his nose slightly. “At least, not in front of a princess.”

“So tell me, Blake, are you in a committed relationship?” Celestia queried, taking another spoonful of cheesecake with a happy little hum.

Blake shrugged. “Sort of? I’ve got a girl in the suburbs but we’ve been kind of… distant, since the accident.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow.

“I guess I’m a lousy cripple,” Blake said with an uneasy chuckle. “I had nothing to do but sit around and get drunk, and yell at my TV. Watch some footy, etcetera. The one time we did get… uh… intimate, I lost my balance and ended up putting my weight on my foot. I passed out from the pain.”

“That is not very pleasant,” Celestia admitted, frowning slightly to herself. “Is coitus a vigorous activity for your species?”

Blake shrugged again, picking up a spoon and picking at his cheesecake slice. “I guess? I mean, you need a certain amount of ‘vigor’ to get anywhere towards the end of it. You know, unless you’re on a hair-trigger or something.”

“Indeed,” Celestia said with a careful nod. “How… how long does it usually last?”

Blake gave the princess a long stare. “How about you tell me, first.”

Celestia tutted slightly. “Roughly thirty seconds, at last count. Selective evolution is no longer pressuring Equestrians to mate for as short a time as possible, but reversing thousands of years of evolution is a slow process.”

“Well that sounds about right for virgins,” Blake said with a slight chuckle. “But god, thirty seconds after you’ve done it a few times? I can barely even… uh… ‘finish’ if I’m wearing a condom at all, let alone in thirty seconds.”

“Ballpark?” Celestia asked, head tilting slightly to the left.

“Probably ten minutes?” Blake responded sincerely. “It’s not exactly something you break the stopwatch out for.”

“And how… developed are your species in their sexual practises?” Celestia asked candidly. “Do you still have mating rituals?”

“Rituals?” Blake asked, wrinkling his nose. “Not that I know of. I mean… an observer might say that some of the things we do are ‘rituals’, like ‘courting’ a girl or buying her nice things. But there’s no actual uh… prerequisites for sex. Except, you know, Tab A into slot B.”

“How very eloquent,” Celestia said with the softest of giggles. “Are human males or females rough? Is mating a violent affair?”

“It can be,” Blake admitted with an uneasy shift of his weight. “My last girlfriend liked me to pull her hair and be really rough. I wasn’t much into that, honestly.”

“And… foreplay?” Celestia asked with a coquettish smile.

“There’s definitely a bunch of that. Fingers, tongues. Stuff like that,” Blake admitted.

“You are being very forthcoming,” Celestia said with a soft smile.

Blake shrugged. “I’m too tired to be complex at the moment. Plus, I’m off the clock.”

“As good a reason as any,” Celestia said with a thoughtful smile. “So… another note of curiosity. What are the rates of homosexuality in your species and how are they perceived, culturally?”

Blake frowned at that, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “I read somewhere it was like five percent of the population. Which seems about right, I guess. And gay marriage is about the biggest conversation these days outside of legalizing drugs.”

Celestia gave him a searching stare. “And how do you, personally, feel on the issue?”

Blake gave an uneasy shrug. “I used to be against it. But my girlfriend convinced me otherwise.”

“What argument did she use?” Celestia asked carefully.

“She compared it to prohibition. Like, if the government wanted to take away alcohol. Or wanted to outlaw sex. Or told me that I couldn’t be friends with someone I liked. And once I looked at it like that, it… it’s pretty fucking stupid, honestly. You do who you wanna do,” Blake said bluntly. “And how about in Equestria?”

“Homosexuality in Equestria is considered normal. It is more common among females than males, though there is a larger ratio of females to males,” Celestia said with a gentle nod. “I am pleased that you are so… moderate. But bothered that there are those who will so eagerly impose their will on others.”

“That’s humans for you,” Blake said with a slight sigh. “Power-tripping cunts trying to make other people do what they believe.”

“It worries me,” Celestia said candidly. “That someone would attempt to indoctrinate Equestrians in their beliefs.”

“You mean beliefs other than your own,” Blake challenged, looking up at her.

Celestia tilted her head slightly to the side. “Perhaps. But my methods have kept peace and harmony for many thousands of years. Evidence shows that humans have not known such prosperity.”

“No arguments here,” Blake said with a soft chuckle.

“You are more complex than you allow others to believe,” Celestia said suddenly.

“I’m just a dumb bloke from the sticks,” Blake countered, arching an eyebrow. “If you’re looking for some scientist to wax lyrical on history there are plenty around. I aint one, though.”

“And yet you have an intrinsic analytical grasp on the nuances of inter-dimensional diplomacies,” Celestia challenged.

“Holy shit slow down,” Blake said, rubbing his temple with a palm. “I didn’t bring my dictionary.”

“Perhaps it is merely your simplicity that makes you so very good at this,” Celestia said thoughtfully. “Many of the diplomats... I could sense them thinking about what to say, about how to explain things without giving up too much information. It was… off-putting. There is something I find enjoyable about your simple honestly.”

“I feel like I’m in therapy,” Blake admitted, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

Celestia giggled softly. “I just… thought that I should air it. I find your company enjoyable. More enjoyable than any human I have met so far.”

“Well gee, I’m not exactly up against the stiffest competition,” Blake admitted. “You’ve got the anal-retentive body-guards and the smarmy, blood-sucking diplomats.”

“Indeed,” Celestia said with a knowing nod. “And you are so strong a contrast. Why, were it not for my machinations to find a human that wasn’t a blood-sucking parasite or an anal-retentive automaton, I would be suspicious that you were merely a master diplomat pretending to be a layman.”

“If only,” Blake said with a helpless chuckle. “I wish I was. The pay would be a hell of a lot better.”

Celestia gave him a long stare, and then paused. She craned her neck, extending a wing and nuzzling down into the feathers until she found a worthy candidate. With a quick yank, she tugged a feather out, and then leaned over the bench, offering it to Blake.

Blake watched this process, half-bemused and half-confused, holding out a hand awkwardly to accept the feathers. “Uh… is this one of those cultural things that I don’t understand because I’m just a dumb human?”

“Indeed it is,” Celestia said warmly. “A pinion from the wing of a princess is not freely given.”

“So you want money for this?” Blake asked dubiously.

Celestia stifled a giggle at that, shaking her head. “No, Blake. I gave it to you as a show of my appreciation and affection. May you bear it proudly.”

“I uh… Thank you,” Blake said awkwardly. The feather was surprisingly light, longer than his hand, and amazingly soft. Even in the dim fluorescent lights, he could see edgings of gold in the pure-white feather. Just rubbing his fingers along it sent a tingle of power through the skin contacting it. “I wish I had something to give you in return,” he continued helplessly, peering down at the feather. “But we mainly just give jewellery and stuff to people. Tearing out some of our hair or fingernails or something would be... well, it would be insulting.”

“Our customs are very different,” Celestia said with a polite nod, straightening back up. She gave a languid stretch, smooth her wing over with a hoof. “But for now, I am going to retire to my room. Thank you for the lovely dessert, Blake.”

“Or three,” Blake countered.

Celestia giggled softly at that. “See that you are ready to serve me early on the morrow. I would hate to have to come looking for you.”

“I’ll be here,” Blake said with an awkward half-salute, not entirely sure how to bid farewell to a princess.

Celestia gave him a warm smile. Her eyes focused somewhere over his shoulder, and she concentrated for a moment, her horn glowing brightly. There was a golden flash of magic, and then the princess was gone.

Blake arched an eyebrow at the empty space where Celestia had sat moments previously, before frowning to himself. He looked down at the feather she had given him, and then carefully placed it in his breast pocket, before starting to clean down the benches so he could head home to sleep.

Coaxing Your Consort

Blake fumbled with the key to his house, before finally managing to insert it and turn it, shoving the door open with his knee and then stepping inside. He flicked the light on, and then swung his grocery shopping up onto the counter.

A long sigh left him, and he rolled his shoulders to get out some of the stress, tapping his heel against the ground to try and return feeling to it. Ever since the accident driving his car had been stressful. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to, but the alternative was walking six blocks to the grocery store.

HIs house was a modest thing, a two bedroom building with a small backyard, a boxing bag, and a carport. Originally, his girlfriend had moved in with him, but she was long gone. Now it was just him.

Blake made sure he had everything, and then pushed the remote lock on his car keys, watching for the flash of orange in the darkness to make sure that the car had locked properly.

Once everything was in order, he shut the door, locked it, and picked up his grocery bag, moving into the kitchen.

Several of the cupboards were open, as was the freezer door.

Blake frowned, and quietly set down his bag of groceries. He reached down behind an old cupboard and produced an equally old cricket bat, tightening his grip on the handle and advancing further into the house.

The door to his bedroom was open, and his tv was softly droning. He could see a sliver of a cheetah on the screen, stalking some animal that was soon to become dinner.

Blake carefully advanced towards the door, holding the cricket bat behind himself, almost touching the wall, ready to swing it with great force should anything come to the doorway of his room. Holding his breath, he inched the door open, and peeked inside.

Princess Celestia was on his bed.

The princess was just laying there, on her stomach, forehooves delicately crossed, her chin resting on them, with wings splayed out lazily to the side, watching the tv with rapt interest, ears pricked forwards, eyes following the cheetah.

“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Blake asked blankly.

Celestia blinked several times, before she turned to face him, giving another series of blinks, and then shaking her head to clear it. “Good evening, Blake,” she said, seeming to come to her senses. “You missed our meeting.”

“Well they got some other diplomat-looking types in to serve you tea and stuff, I didn’t have much of a say in the choices there,” Blake said, leaning the bat against the wall beside the door, and then stepping into his own room, frowning at the princess.

“I noticed,” Celestia admitted, wrinkling her nose deeply. “They were quite… unremarkable.”

“Yeah, they kinda creeped me out, too,” Blake admitted, sitting down on the very corner of his bed. “like they were robots or something. No emotions, always trying to make me feel at ease and be friendly.”

“Indeed,” Celestia said with a faint scowl, uncrossing her hooves and then crossing them the other way, laying her chin back on them.

“That still don’t answer the question on why you’re in my house,” Blake said, turning to stare at her sideways. “How did you even find it?”

“You have my feather,” Celestia said with a slow smile, a mischievous look crossing her features. “It was not hard to find it.”

“That’s weird and a little bit creepy,” Blake responded bluntly.

Celestia gave a soft giggle at his discomfort. “I felt, somehow, that you would not be my server for very long. So I took measures until you return.”

“I’m not going to be back to being your server,” Blake said, giving her a sideways glance. “They flew in like twenty diplomats from all over the world.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow. “I am going to apply pressure to the diplomats to have back my handsome, well-spoken server.”

“Well, at least I know Equestria’s standards for beauty are in the dumps,” Blake said with a soft snort.

“Oh come now, you are not displeasing to the eye. Certainly you think the same of me,” Celestia said, giving her wings a languid little stretch.

“You’re really big and really adorable. It’s kind of weird,” Blake admitted, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “And you’re kind of… intrusive.”

“If you are overly bothered by my presence, I can leave,” Celestia said simply. “Though I sense that you enjoy my company more than you would admit.”

Blake frowned at that. “Well, okay. It’s kinda cool having a princess in my house. From another universe dimension thing. But you still didn’t ask me where I lived. You kind of just showed up. Without permission.”

“Oh please, let me just pull out my mobile fowl and dial your digits,” Celestia said with a wave of her hoof.

Blake stared at her for several long, long moments.

Celestia paused and cleared her throat. “I butchered that, didn’t I?”

“Thoroughly.”

“What did I do wrong?”

“It’s a phone. And you want to dial my ‘number’,” Blake corrected, shaking his head. “So, did you have a good snoop around before I got home?”

“Your cat may not return for several days,” Celestia said candidly, giving a soft little giggle. “She is a very pretty color.”

“Jade? Yeah. I picked her because she’s black.”

“In our world, black cats are seen as bad luck,” Celestia admitted. “Superstition, but a deep one.”

“They kind of are over here, too. But I’ve never held much stock in superstition. I’ve been known to punch a few mirrors,” Blake said with a wan smile.

Celestia wrinkled her nose at that. “Whyever would you punch a mirror?”

“Anger issues,” Blake admitted with a shrug. “I got a punching bag out the back for that now. Does a lot less damage to my fists. Less time spent in hospital getting your hand reconstructed is always nice, too.”

“I did not know you had anger issues,” Celestia said with a single blink.

“Ehhh. It was my ex-girlfriend. She was a little bit of a manipulative bitch,” Blake admitted, rubbing his arm with a palm. “I’m sure you’ve had plenty of boyfriends. Probably some awful ones, too.”

“That I have,” Celestia said, inclining her head. “Though never did they make me angry enough to punch a mirror.”

“You’re too composed,” Blake stated, looking at her properly now. “Stiff, and wooden. You smile, and laugh, but it never really… it never seems truly sincere. Like you’re doing it just because you’re expected to.”

Celestia frowned deeply at that. “I am afraid that several thousand years of habit are impossible to break.”

“I’d say something about ‘teaching an old dog new tricks’ but I think I’d get swatted,” Blake said with a half-grin.

Celestia’s eyes narrowed slowly. “Your survival instinct is quite apparent.”

Blake smirked a little at that. “So… what are you here for?”

“I enjoy your company. I find you interesting and wished to spend more time with you,” Celestia admitted, wiggling a little bit to get more comfortable.

“Well, to be honest, I was kinda just gonna have a shower, watch a movie or surf the internet, and then go to sleep,” Blake said, scratching nervously behind his head. “Aren’t they going to notice you’re, you know, missing? I’m a little worried my front door is going to get kicked in.”

A slow smile spread across Celestia’s face. “I grew very offended at the hair colour of my newest server, and I demanded that breakfast be left inside my fridge, and that I not be disturbed for any reason until tomorrow morning, lest I incinerate any who enters.”

“Subtle.”

“Your diplomats do not respect privacy without fear of incineration,” Celestia retorted.

“I heard that,” Blake responded with a faint chuckle. “Anyway, you seemed to be enjoying whatever was on TV before. I’m going to go have a shower.”

“Very well then,” Celestia said, tucking her forehooves closer and turning her attention back to the TV. “Is there a way to make it louder?”

Blake picked up the remote control from the dresser, and raised the volume until the narrator could be heard talking about the habits of Cheetahs. He dropped the remote on the bedsheets. “You can change the volume with the buttons, but I don’t think you’d be able to push them with your hooves.”

“The current volume is sufficient,” Celestia said with an incline of her head.

Blake nodded, and then slipped out of the doorway, picking up the cricket bat as he went. He placed it back behind the cupboard in the entryway. He then headed to the laundry, grabbing some clothes out of the dryer, and then stepping into the bathroom. He pushed the door as shut as possible, even though it wouldn’t latch any more due to the house settling.

After a good five minutes, he managed to get his shoe off, unwrap the bandage around it, and gingerly step into the shower. There was a huge slipper kind thing he was supposed to wear in the shower so he wouldn’t slip and fall, but it was more trouble than it was worth. With a little bit of maneuvering, he settled down in the corner of the shower with the water beating down around his shoulders, giving a long sigh as he relaxed.

After a minute or two of relaxation, the hairs on the back of his neck started to stand on end. Frowning deeply, he opened his eyes, shielding them from water with his hand.

Celestia was standing in his bathroom.

Blake closed his legs immediately, dropping an arm between them and scowling at the princess. “Oh shut the fucking door if you’re going to perv!”

“I was not ‘perving’,” Celestia said simply, turning and closing the door to the bathroom, cutting off the cool draught of air. “I was observing. It is customary in Equestria for bathing to be done communally to conserve water.”

“Really?” Blake asked, exasperated.

“No,” Celestia said, giving a soft giggle, a hoof at her mouth.

Blake rolled his eyes. “So you’re not even affording me the privacy you lot give each other?”

“I rather like seeing you flustered,” Celestia said calmly, taking a step towards the shower. “You are quite cute when you are flustered.”

“I am rugged and handsome,” Blake countered with a shudder. “Kittens are ‘cute’.”

“Very well, Mr Rugged And Handsome,” Celestia corrected, pausing at the edge of the shower and looking him up and down. “Is that the actual size of your penis, or does it grow?”

Blake spluttered.

Celestia gave a soft giggle. “Adorable.”

“Of course it fucking gets bigger,” Blake said with a scowl.

“Good,” Celestia stated simply. “By what margin?”

“I don’t bloody know,” Blake said, “Why the sudden interest?”

“I have always been interested,” Celestia explained simply. “I have merely not voiced by curiosity. So… ballpark. How much larger does it become?”

“If you let me get dressed, I’ll google it and you can know everything you want to,” Blake said, voice strained.

Celestia arched an eyebrow. “And yet, google will not become flustered and embarrassed.” With a sly smirk, Celestia held out her hooves, at nearly a metre apart. “Bigger? Or smaller?”

“Smaller,” Blake said through clenched teeth, feeling warmth rising in his cheeks.

Celestia brought her hooves closer together, arching an eyebrow.

“Smaller,” Blake repeated.

Celestia pressed her hooves ever closer.

“There, like that. But it’s different for different people,” Blake said, looking away.

“Very good,” Celestia said, clapping her hooves together with a little bounce. “Quite comparable to our stallions.”

“Now, if you’re done,” Blake said with a soft snort. “Humans do not shower together.”

“This, I understand,” Celestia said calmly. “Please stand.”

“What? No,” Blake said with a violent shake of his head.

“I assure you, I have memorized your features to be put into sketch form quite well enough already. Please stand,” Celestia repeated, making a motion with a hoof.

“Why the hell do you want me to stand?” Blake asked plaintively. “You’ve already stared at me while I showered you creepy bitch.”

“I find it interested that you just insulted me with your language but not your intent. Were a diplomat to say that to me, I would have been quite slighted. Rise,” Celestia said again, making a lifting motion with a forehoof.

“Oh for fucks sake,” Blake said, scowling and rolling over onto his knees, resting on his good heel. “That’s all you’re getting.”

“Acceptable,” Celestia said, taking a single step towards him. She reached over with a hoof, turning off the hot water tap, and then the cold, leaving Blake kneeling in the shower, water rapidly cooling on his skin.

“Okay, what did you w-

Blake was cut off as Celestia leaned in and kissed him full on the lips. Soft, slightly fuzzy lips pushed up against his own, and a surprisingly soft hoof wrapped around his hips to hold him steady as the princess kissed him.

Purring low in her throat, Celestia tilted her head slightly to the left, deepening the kiss, her tongue darting forwards like a tongue of flame, pressing against his teeth before finding his own tongue to lightly gyrate again. Her spicy breath mingled with his own, and he could taste her surprisingly large tongue as it pushed against his own.

After several long moments of fiery kissing, Celestia drew back, smirking at him.

Blake blinked once or twice, swallowing thickly and panting a little bit. “I uh.. That was…”

“You enjoyed that, did you not?” Celestia asked coyly.

Blake nodded stiffly.

“Then at least kissing is the same between our species,” Celestia said smartly.

Blake gave a weak smile, and then an awkward look left and right. “Are you done? Because I want to finish my shower. And stuff.”

A strange look crossed over Celestia’s features, and Blake realised after half a second that the princess actually looked nervous and slightly excited. Her usually impeccable composure was slightly broken for an instant. “In fact, there was one other thing.”

“Is it going to take long because I… I… Because…” Blake trailed off, finding his mouth hanging open.

“See? No teeth.”

Blood rushed in Blake’s ears, and he stared with wide eyes.

Celestia had turned around as she spoke, dropped her chest to the ground, spread her hindlegs, and lifted her tail. The multicolor, ethereal length was draped to the side, revealing the expanse of her smooth, soft rump. But the most captivating part of it all was the perfect princess pussy resting between her thighs. The outer lips were white, covered in the same fur as the rest of her, with a very well-defined mound of flesh divided into plump, pliable halves. There merest sliver of bright pink was visible between the thick, pliable outer lips.

Celestia was not helping the situation at all, as she had grasped one of her soft rump cheeks and was squeezing with just the right pressure to spread herself open, revealing more of that impossibly soft flesh to his gaze, tucked between those perfect, smooth outer lips.

After letting Blake drink in the sight of her exposed flesh, she rose back to her hooves, and then gave a lazy stretch. She giggled softly at his expression. “I think the question of if you like my kind, at least aesthetically, is now quite moot.”

“I… I…” Blake tried to form a coherent sentence. And failed.

Celestia stepped towards the door, opening it and stepping halfway through, before looking back over her shoulder with a playful giggle. “When you’ve composed yourself, I will be waiting in your room. I am interested in the movie you were going to watch.”

Captivating your Consort

Blake warily settled himself down on the end of his bed, sitting next to the princess. Celestia had returned to his bedroom, and was laying on her stomach, chin resting carefully on crossed hooves, watching the screen. The documentary on Cheetahs was over, and now it had moved on to something about monkeys.

“You can come closer, I assure you I don’t bite,” Celestia said with a smile, noting the berth that Blake gave her.

Frowning, Blake wiggled a little closer to the princess, arching an eyebrow. “Can I touch you?”

Celestia inclined her head in the affirmative.

Blake lifted a hand to rest on her wing, letting his fingers dig into the soft pinions. He had felt many feathers over the years; A ducks, a goose’s, a dove’s, bantam chickens at his grandmother’s; even the neat, silky-soft feathers of a crow’s black pinions, but the alicorn’s feathers were simply incomparable to anything he had yet felt.

Her feathers were large, broad; no surprise given how large she was in the first place; but they were also incredibly, incredibly soft. It was like the downy fluff of a month-old kitten had been neatly arranged and laid out along a satin-soft stem to form a feather pattern, and then carefully woven and wended into a layered pattern that left each portion of her wings covered in feathers at least three deep.

“Wow,” Blake murmured, letting his fingers sink into the warm feathers. “Do all of you winged ponies feel like this?”

“Not quite,” Celestia responded with a note of smug superiority in her tone. “Our pegasi are soft, but my wings are the most desired in all of my world. In fact, I collect my pinions whenever I notice them fall, and hide them away in a very large jar. Once the jar is full, the feathers are taken out and stuffed into a pillow and then gifted to somepony who has my favour at the time.”

“I’m trying to think of a human analogue to that and all I’m coming up with is stuff out of serial-killer movies,” Blake admitted.

“It might seem strange to you, but the pillow is a specially-embroidered object that is treated with utmost reverence. Common mythology says that it cures insomnia with a single sleep and rids even the most insistent of nightmares,” Celestia extolled with a broad sweep of her hooves.

“Does it?” Blake asked dubiously.

Celestia giggled, a hoof covering her mouth. “It most certainly does not. There is something to be said for placebos.”

Blake rolled his eyes, and then resumed touching at the princess’ wings, slipping his fingertips up to play over the leading edge of her closest wing, feeling over the joints hidden under downy-soft fur and supple smooth flesh.

Celestia tilted her head towards him slightly and arched an eyebrow. “Enjoying yourself?”

Blake gave an ‘mhmm-hmm’, of confirmation, and continued to trace her wings all the way down where they joined her body, feeling the surprisingly strong muscles there. They were bunched up like steel cables, thick and powerful. It was obvious that under the princess’ soft exterior, she was no weakling.

The princess rolled her eyes, but returned to watching the television, which had now switched to a documentary on a South-African tribe and their rituals involving the ‘bullet ant’.

“Your kind willingly subjects themselves to pain like this?” Celestia asked impassively as she watched a foreigner to the country scream and swear in agony after trying to pass the test..

“Some people are nuts. Plus, they get a bunch of hits on youtube or whatever so I guess that makes them feel good? Same deal with the people who try to eat the ghost chilli pepper.”

“Ghost chilli?” Celestia asked blankly.

Blake nodded. “Hottest chilli in the world. Puts people in hospital. Supposed to make you look cool or something, but I think it makes you look like a dickhead.”

“The hottest chilli in Equestria is known to make ponies projectile-vomit combustible gases and material,” Celestia said impassively. “It is quite a sight. Not very pleasant though.”

“I can imagine,” Blake said with a shudder.

“One of my advisors told me of the internet. Do you have it here?” Celestia asked guardedly.

Blake squinted up at her for a long moment. “You’ve been waiting to ask that, haven’t you?”

Celestia gave a wry smile. “You did not afford me many chances to segue it into conversation. As much as I enjoy what I can only assume to be masochistic mating rituals, I am so incredibly interested in the internet. A town hall of communications! All day, all night, all week long. Always available, always on, all the information you could ever want right at your hooves. It must be amazing.”

“Plus there are cat videos,” Blake said with a reasonable nod.

Celestia squinted at him for a moment. “Cat.. videos?”

“You’ll see,” Blake said ominously.

Celestia snorted, and waved a hoof. “I implore you to show me, then!”

Blake nodded once, and then slipped off the bed, booting up his PC and switching the television over to the channel he had set up for his personal computer. A few quick taps opened up his browser of choice, and then he stared glumly at the screen.

“This… this is it?” Celestia asked, staring at the blinking text cursor. “Do words appear here?”

“When I type them, sure. What do you want to know?”

Celestia squinted for a moment. “What is pi to the hundredth digit?”

Blake dutifully typed in her request, and then clicked on the first link that looked promising. “First thousand, actually.”

Celestia stared.

“We’ve probably got it up to a million somewhere on here,” Blake said with a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders.

Regaining her composure, Celestia lifted her head, and then said clearly, “Chocolate bavarian cheesecake recipes.”

Blake arched an eyebrow, but typed in her request.

Celestia pointed. “That picture! Can you make it larger?”

Blake clicked on it, but it was immediately lost amongst a dozen other pictures on the page. “Uhhh, which one was it again?”

Celestia covered her mouth with a hoof, staring at the screen. Chocolate cheesecakes of all kind littered the thumbnails. “This is positively disgusting,” she murmured. “I want to taste them all!”

Rolling his eyes, Blake scrolled down some more, showing even more cheesecakes. “Take it you don’t have anything like this in Equestria?”

“We only have actual cakes,” Celestia admitted with a heavy sigh. “No pictures like this. This would make even Pinkie pie weak in the hooves.”

Blake shrugged slightly and then typed in ‘chocolate mud cake’, idly scrolling up and down.

“You disgusting man,” Celestia chided. “Did I not know better, I would assume you were trying to seduce me with pastries.”

“If that’s what it takes?” Blake said with a little chuckle.

Celestia’s eyes narrowed, and she paused a moment, lightly stroking her chin with a hoof. “...Princess Celestia.”

Blake gave her a long stare. “Sure you wanna open that can of worms?”

“Do it,” Celestia urged, bouncing slightly on his bed. “I want to see what they have on me!”

Blake shrugged again, but typed it in. Immediately, a series of badly-focused shots of the princess showed up, all of them from bad angles.

“Ugh, how positively ungraceful,” Celestia stated, eyes wandering from one picture, to the next.

Blake scrolled down, spied something, and then immediately scrolled back up.

“Do not even pretend like you did not see that,” Celestia chided, making a motion. “Show it again.”

Blake winced, but scrolled back down. A half-decent drawing of Celestia was right there on the screen. A dirty one.

“Enlarge it, if you would,” Celestia said, a laugh in her tone.

The enlarged pictures splashed across the screen, and Blake shifted uncomfortably. It was a drawing of Celestia ‘presenting’, bent over with her tail lifted up and hindlegs spread.

“How peculiar,” Celestia stated. “The artist is… not unskilled. But their anatomy is completely wrong.”

“They’ve hardly done studies,” Blake admitted awkwardly. “Probably just drew you like a horse.”

“Positive uncouth,” Celestia said with a shudder. “That is nothing like my own.”

“Yeah, nothing like at all,” Blake agreed, mind wandering back to what the princess had shown him in the bathroom. He blinked once as he realised what he said, and then cleared his throat. “U-uh, I mean. Like. You know! Why would it be, even? You’re not even from the same dimension. Pretending like you’re a horse is weird. Your nose is a lot smaller too. And your ears are wider. And-”

“-You are adorable when you are flustered,” Celestia cut across his smoothly, smirking at him. “Is there a way for you to leave feedback on the image? Comments? A forum for discussion of images?”

“Probably?” Blake said awkwardly. “Not exactly a place I’d frequent, to be honest.”

“Well… I think you should examine both, side-by-side, and write a detailed analysis on the differences, so that in future, the artists would not get it so wrong.”

Blake felt blood rising to his face, and his eyes widened. “I… I w-what?” he squeaked.

Celestia stared at him with a somber expression, not an ounce of mirth in her features. “We cannot have this be the norm. I am not like that. You must do it for the good of inter-species relationships.”

Blake stammered out a protest. “M-maybe… y-you…”

Celestia dissolved into giggles, wrapping a wing warmly around his middle and pulling him against her, nuzzling her silky-soft cheek against his own. “You are so incredibly cute when you are flummoxed!”

Blake huffed and allowed himself to be pulled against her, grumbling to himself.

“At least I know you find me ‘interesting’,” Celestia stated with a soft little giggle.

“Of course I find you interesting,” Blake countered.

“Sexually,” Celestia purred, gazing down at him.

Blake chewed on his tongue for a moment. “Perhaps.”

“Definitely,” Celestia said with a sly little smirk tugging at the edges of her muzzle. “Why, if I were nine centuries younger…”

“And I were three feet taller...” Blake added.

“What does height have to do with it?” Celestia asked blankly.

Blake cleared his throat. “Uh… you know. Bigger means.. Bigger.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow.

Blake made a motion with his hand. “You know.”

“I do not,” Celestia stated simple.

“Penis,” Blake said finally. “Bigger person means a bigger penis.”

“You think you would be inadequate?” Celestia asked candidly.

Blake’s eyes narrowed, and then he pursed his lips.”You are twice my mass, easy. It’s simple physics.”

“Physics has nothing to do with it,” Celestia said coyly. “If you think you won’t… ‘measure up’, then you’ll have to show me so I can judge for myself.” She batted her eyelashes at him suggestively.

Blinking once, Blake stared at her for a long moment. “Excuse me?”

“You think you won’t measure up,” Celestia said simply. “In the interest of furthering human-pony understanding, I wish to measure you, myself.”

Blake swallowed thickly, feeling blood rushing back to his face. “Y-you’re just trying to get under my skin again.”

Celestia fixed him with a long stare, and then smiled slyly. “Am I? I would learn a lot from it, you know. And….” she trailed off, leaning closer to him, letting her soft nose brush against his ear, before whispering candidly, “I haven’t even told you what I’d measure you with…”

Blake felt goosebumps popping up all over his arms at her words, and he gave another difficult swallow, cheeks burning.

Celestia opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment, there was a very authoritative knock on his door. She arched an eyebrow, indicating towards it. “Expecting visitors?”

“Never,” Blake grumbled, pushing off the bed and limping towards the door. “You should like… hide yourself. It’s probably someone looking for you.”

A soft grumble left the princess, and she muttered something about ‘Alfred Colt’s law’, rising to her hooves.

Blake limped to the front door, pulling it open to find a pair of police officers there. “Evening. Anything I can help you with?”

“Blake, is it?” one of them asked.

Blake nodded.

“Just wondering if you’ve had any unusual visitors tonight?”

Blake shrugged. “Just me and my cat, officers. Is something wrong?”

“Got reports of people trying to harass those whom are involved with the portal horses thing. Mind if we take a look around?”

“Do I have a choice?” Blake asked with a long sigh.

The officers didn’t say anything, but one pushed past him, quickly looking in each room, before returning. “All clear here.”

“Expecting to find anything?” Blake asked blankly.

The officer gave him a sober stare, before tipping his head to him respectfully. “If you have any strange visitors, give us a call. Any time of day or night. Your security is important.”

“I’m sure it is,” Blake said, stepping back inside and closing the door, grumbling to himself.

Princess Celestia was indeed gone. His television was still on, displaying a picture of a bent-over Celestia with her tail lifted, and he groaned as he sat down on his bed. No way did the officer not see that.

He made to pull back the covers to get ready for bed, and found a single large white feather and a folded piece of paper. He unfolded the piece of paper, and found neat writing that spelled out ‘I hope you measure up tomorrow’

Conversing With Your Consort

“Enter.” Celestia’s voice was calm, even, but carried through the door quite adequately.

Blake pushed the door open with his knee and then wheeled the food cart in, holding the door open so nothing scraped.

“You’re late,” Steven said, staring at Blake down his nose.

Blake looked back and forth between the diplomat and Celestia, and then gave the slightest of shrugs. “I apologise Your Majesty,” he said with a slight bow to Celestia, and then turned to Steven, “And sir; I stopped for a skateboarding competition on the way over.”

Steven’s eyes narrowed further, and he arched an eyebrow. “Oh really now?” he asked, turning to face Blake fully. “I’ve noticed you redirect quite often with insipid little quips. You’ll tell us why you were late or I will have you removed.”

Blake frowned inwardly at that, casting his gaze towards Celestia.

Celestia lifted her head slightly, and made a motion. “Please tell Steven why you were late,” she said calmly.

Biting the inside of his lip, Blake shrugged. “I slept through my alarm clock.”

“You are nowhere near careless enough for that,” Steven said with a slow smile. "I would wager you have two different alarms set to go off within ten minute incriments.”

Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Five minutes, in fact.”

“Exactly,” Steven pressed, making a motion with his hand, impatient. “Now, the real reason, lest I have you thrown out?”

Blake ground the heel of his good foot into the carpet. “I tripped walking up the stairs in the park and spent ten minutes sitting on the sidewalk crying.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow.

Steven snorted once. “Really?”

“More pained groaning and grunting and lots of cussing,” Blake corrected flippantly. “You get the gist.”

“Very well, you may leave,” Steven said dismissively, waving a hand.

“I would like him to make my tea,” Celestia said flatly..

“Wait, come back then,” Steven said with a sigh. “Make the princess’ tea.”

Blake didn’t answer, but he uncovered the tray of foodstuffs and set about making the princess her tea. “Any particular preference for your tea this afternoon?”

“Your highness,” Steven added, his tone venomous.

“Your highness?” Blake added.

Celestia’s gaze turned from Steven, back to Blake. “The black tea, please.”

Blake nodded, and pulled out the metal kettle, setting it atop the hot plate built into the cart, beginning the process of boiling the water.

“So, as I was saying,” Celestia said, turning back towards the window, staring out at the hustle and bustle of the world beyond. “Did any of the ponies I requested make it through quarantine?”

“I’m sorry, Princess, but we just didn’t have enough time. Had you given us the list or informed us of the celebration yesterday or even the day before…” Steven said, his tone completely different now that he was talking to the princess. He was attentive, careful, pronounced, and utterly unlikable.

“You assured me you would attempt to rush,” Celestia stated blankly, her tone and expression impassive.

“And I most certainly did exert as much pressure as humanly possible. Unfortunately, some things simply can’t be rushed.”

“So I am to celebrate the Lunar Perihelion on my own?” Celestia asked, an edge entering her tone.

Steven paused, collecting his thoughts. “I am sorry, your majesty. But it’s simply unfeasible given the time constraints.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault?” Celestia asked, her expression darkening.

“Yes, yes I am,” Steven said calmly. “You did not give adequate time for us to get your guests through quarantine and thus this could not be avoided by us.”

Celestia seemed taken aback by the calling of her bluff, and she fumed for a moment, staring out across the city. “Fine,” she growled. With a haughty huff, she turned, and sized up Blake with the look of someone inspecting jewellery. “You, server, what are you doing tonight?”

“Sleeping for some time, watching television,” Blake said evenly, picking up the heavy iron pot and pouring some fluid into her cup.

“You can’t be-” Steven began, but Celestia silenced him by lifting a single hoof in his direction.

“Very well, you are cordially invited to a Royal Celebration.” Celestia’s tone dropped, and an almost ominous note entered it. “It is very unwise to refuse a royal invitation.”

Blake looked back and forth between the two of them. Steven mouthed ‘no’ at him quite exaggeratedly.

“Uhhh, I’m…” Blake frowned, chewing on the inside of his lip. “I don’t have anything to wear,” he said lamely. “I really don’t want to stand around all evening either, Your Majesty, on account of my foot?”

“There will be seating provided,” Celestia said with barely-repressed rage in her tone.

“Your majesty, you cannot just pick someone at random to join your celebration,” Steven coaxed genially. “Why, I could have a veritable who’s-who of people here by this evening, a party fit for a king. Or a princess.”

Celestia rounded on Steven, her tone rising with each word until she was almost shrilly yelling at him. “Are you denying me this?! First you deny me my actual guests, and then I’m not even allowed to choose whom I am to spend my evening celebration with?!”

“I did not mean to imply-”

Celestia cut across him immediately. “I don’t care what you meant to imply! You outright offered to pick and choose my guest list. My guest list! To my celebration!”

Steven gave a strained smile. “What would please you, your majesty?”

“What would please me, is this human accompanying me to the celebration,” Celestia said, pointing vaguely in the direction of Blake with a hoof. “And not anyone that you select for me!”

“Very well,” Steven said carefully, turning to Blake and giving him a warm smile. “I leave it up to Blake.”

Blake didn’t fail to notice it was the first time Steven had treated him with even a trace of respect.

“Yes, Blake,” Celestia said, rounding on him, rising to her full, impressive height. It felt like she was filling the entire room with her presence. “Are you coming to the celebration with me?” she asked, her tone sweet and unemotional, but with a biting edge of danger hidden amongst it.

Blake actually felt slightly cowed under her gaze and the question. He wasn’t entertaining any ideas of refusing, but just the thought of it had a cold sweat building on his brow. “Yes, I’ll come. If I can sit down.”

“Very good,” Celestia said with a smug smile, and then pointed a hoof at the door. “You may leave, Steven. I don’t wish to speak to you any more right now.”

Steven bowed cordially. “Very well, your majesty."

As he turned to leave, he gave Blake the dirtiest look he had ever received from a person, and sniffed once in annoyance, smartly closing the door behind himself.

A long silence hung in the air between Celestia and Blake.

“So,” Blake said after a moment. “You totally planned all of that, didn’t you?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Celestia asked, turning towards him, sizing him up.

Blake pondered for a moment. “Well, you asked for black tea,” he said, holding up the iron pot. “Takes twice as long to boil and prepare as regular tea, keeping me in the room the entire time. You dragged Steven into a verbal trap by making him call your bluff on acting all haughty about not getting your guests here for that thing you want, when you know he’s just dying to correct you and show you up any chance he can get if you’re in the wrong. And that set you up to demand that I, your oblivious server, join you for an evening. Alone.”

Celestia gave a thin smile, and then stared at him for a long moment, sizing him up again. “Are you quite certain that you aren’t a diplomat?”

“I’ve been with a few really manipulative girlfriends so I know a set-up when I see it,” Blake said with a slight smile.

“I planned it down to the sentence,” Celestia said with relish, before she rounded on him, her eyes narrowing. “Why do you let him talk down to you like that? He humiliated you. You know he was digging up that thing from this morning just to spite you.”

“I know,” Blake said with a strained sigh. “But I can’t exactly tell him to go fuck himself. I have to insinuate it, instead.”

Celestia gave a single snort. “Still.”

“I appreciate you getting annoyed on my behalf,” Blake said with a slight smile, taking the iron put over to the sink and pouring the contents out entirely. He returned, and pulled out the porcelain pot. “Green tea this time?”

“Please!” Celestia said, throwing herself onto the couch and stretching out with a long sigh. “At least the most annoying part of my day is over.”

“So what’s this Lunar periwhatsit anyhow?” Blake asked carefully.

“Lunar Perihelion,” Celestia corrected, and then added: “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Pretend to be stupid. It’s unbecoming,” Celestia said flatly.

Blake gave a chagrined smile. “Okay, I know what a Lunar Perihelion is, but only because I play videogames.”

“Very good. Then you know it is absolutely rubbish.”

Blake paused at that, and then shook his head. “No, actually. Ancient cultures probably used to celebrate that stuff. Or at least took note of it, if I remember that stuff I read about Mayans…”

“Either way, it is not a celebration in my culture,” Celestia said simply. “In fact, the perihelion is not for another month.”

“You just desperately want to get me alone for a few hours?” Blake asked casually.

“Desperately,” Celestia said, licking her lips.

“And now it’s my turn to say ‘stop that’,” Blake said bluntly.

“Stop what?” Celestia asked, blinking once.

Blake took a long inhale, and then sighed slightly. “Trumping everything up like that. I know it’s fake. I know that’s not really you.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t respond.

“It’s like this comedian says. When you first meet someone, you’re not meeting them, you’re meeting their representative. And for some reason, you really want to seduce me,” Blake said casually. “I don’t know why. But you’re trying too hard. You’re being very unlike a princess and against what I think you would normally be like, trying to appeal to what you think I want you to act like.”

Celestia pursed her lips. “Is it working?”

Blake scowled, and then chuckled. “Yes, yes it is. But still… It feels insincere.”

A long sigh left the princess, and she hung her head slightly. “It’s… It’s very difficult to say to someone ‘I am desperately curious as to your species’ mating rituals, please show me’.”

Blake nodded. “Yeah, I get that,” he said, picking up the tea he had prepared and bringing it around to the princess, setting it down on the awkwardly-named coffee-table and then sitting lightly on the edge of the couch next to her.

Celestia frowned, staring down at her forehooves, her tone flat. “Your kind is emotional. Just like ours. If I even let on that I’m interested in the mechanical aspects of your courting, it would be a huge turn-off and make the whole thing pointless. It would ruin it.”

“I get that, too,” Blake said soothingly, shifting a little closer to the princess. “But being fake about it ruins it for me, too. I know when someone is trying to manipulate me.”

“And here I thought I was being perfectly acceptable,” Celestia said ruefully. “You really should be a diplomat.”

Blake narrowed his eyes at the princess, and then gently pulled her muzzle up with his palm, leaning in to kiss her on the lips.

Celestia blinked once, but relaxed into the kiss, enjoying the feel of his soft lips against her own. One of her eyebrows arched and her eyes blinked open as she felt a warm palm on her wing, pushing it back down against her side.

Blake drew back from the kiss with a smirk, giving her a long stare. “You see that?” he said, pushing against her wing a little more firmly in punctuation. “You can’t hide that.”

A soft huff left the princess. “Are you now a master of alicorn body-language?”

“Enough to know that your wings lifting up on their own like that means you enjoy something quite a bit more than you’d admit,” Blake said with a wry grin.

Celestia scowled at him slightly at that. “Perhaps.”

“And now, you’re going to think about it next time I kiss you, and it won’t happen any more… so I’ll just have to look for some other ‘tell’,” Blake said with a knowledgeable nod.

Celestia squinted at him, but then her gaze softened, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. “Is that enough for you?”

Blake nodded, lifting a hand to rest on her mane. “In regards to you? Yes.”

Cajoling Your Consort

Blake groaned as he limped up a narrow double-flight of stairs to the roof access, each step putting a little more pressure on his bad foot. A heavy bottle of red wine was in one hand, and a pair of fancy wine-glasses in the other. Unfortunately, elevator-access stopped at the top floor, and roof access was by the rather-disused staircase.

Celestia was regally laid out on a large red cushion that had been place on the roof for her comfort some time previously. She had her forehooves crossed, one over the other, and her chin resting on it. Pink eyes reflected the lights of the city as she watched cars moving along the roads below. “Your world is so alien, but so pretty,” she said without turning her head towards him.

Blake paused, casting his gaze out over the city, before shrugging inwardly and limping over to place wine and glasses on a little table that has been provided. “I guess so. It’s very… pedestrian to me now. I’ve seen it so much.”

“Acclimatization. Though how you would acclimatize to this is beyond me,” Celestia said, sweeping a hoof in a broad gesture towards the city. “Everything is illuminated! Everything!”

“You should see it around Christmas,” Blake said with a slight chuckle, producing a wine-bottle opener from a pocket and beginning to work on the cork of the wine bottle. “We have this historical figure, Jesus, our ‘god’, who was born on a date like in the middle of the year but the old religions wanted to take away pagan worshippers so they moved his birthdate to the twenty-fifth of December and that’s when we celebrate it. But one of the ways they celebrate it is by stringing christmas lights up everywhere. They’re all different colours and whatnot, too.”

“That sounds amazing,” Celestia said, turning her head to watch the lights of a car moving along one of the roads far below. “Coloured lights glowing amidst the snowfall…”

Blake gave a slight laugh at that. “Snowfall, right. Uh, I don’t know if you realise this Princess, but we don’t get snow here. Not to mention Christmas is in summer.”

Celestia looked puzzled for a moment, before pursing her lips. “Ah, yes. The southern hemisphere.”

“Want some wine?” Blake offered, reaching for the glasses.

“Please,” Celestia responded, finally pulling her eyes away from the traffic.

Blake picked up the wine bottle, uncorking it and then carefully pouring a glass of wine for the princess, careful to observe proper pouring technique as he did. It had already been drilled in to him how to pour the wine properly: the correct distance it should fall, how high the glass should be filled, the twist at the end to prevent any spillage. “You know, it was customary back in the day for people to open their wine bottles with a sword.”

“That sounds barbaric and a good way to lose wine,” Celestia responded bluntly.

Blake chuckled. “You should see how they christen new ships.”

“Is it something barbaric?”

“Wasting perfectly good wine by smashing a bottle on the bow of the ship.”

“Barbaric.”

Blake chuckled again, and poured himself a measure of the wine, placing the bottle back in the bucket of ice to make sure it remained chilled while he picked up his glass and inhaled the scent of it.

“I have a confession, Blake,” Celestia said carefully.

“You stole more cake from the freezer?” Blake asked, arching an eyebrow and sipping his wine.

Celestia shook her head with a thin smile. “I resisted the urge.”

“Well, what then?”

Celestia lifted her glass with magic, and sipped at it slowly, carefully tasting the wine. She wrinkled her nose after a moment. “This tastes… dirty, somehow.”

“They do grow grapes in the dirt you know,” Blake quipped.

Celestia rolled her eyes.

Blake wanted to press Celestia for her confession, but sensed that she was stalling to collect her thoughts and thus just sipped his wine, staring out over the glowing streetlamps.

Celestia pursed her lips, obviously deep in thought.

“Wow, I’ve never seen you weigh your words so carefully. Did you kill someone?”

Celestia scoffed. “No! I just… I’m not sure how to… phrase this.”

“You are the most eloquent person I have ever met. You spoke circles around Steven,” Blake reminded.

“Yes, but that was Steven. He is very… simple. I know him and his kind. Conniving is easy to talk around, but you are an entirely different puzzle. You see through diplomatic bullshit with an ease of which I tried to instill in my own sister and which she could not grasp after a thousand years.”

“I… is that a compliment?” Blake asked uncertainly.

Celestia shrugged. “Perhaps. People are just different. If you had a cutie mark, it would be… something diplomatic.”

“Well, thanks, I guess,” Blake said with a soft laugh.

“What I’m trying to say is that… You pegged me wrong last night,” Celestia said carefully.

“So, not a compliment?” Blake queried, confused.

Celestia shook her head. “Somewhat. What I’m trying to say is… That ‘me’, the flirty Celestia that made lewd innuendo…”

“The fake you?” Blake asked.

Celestia nodded. “The ‘fake’ me,” she trailed off, pausing and sipping her wine again, carefully taking her time. “Was not.... Entirely fake.”

“Semi-fake?”

“Semi-fake,” Celestia agreed, nodding once to herself. “Of a kind. It was not… as I usually am. But it felt… right.”

“So, what you’re trying to confess to me, Princess,” Blake said, turning to face her properly. “Is that you are a harlot?”

Celestia gave a tinkling giggle, and then carefully nodded. “Yes, Blake. I am a harlot. Or… I want to be. It was liberating, to watch you fluster and flummox without any thought of the diplomatic fallout, without needing to think ahead twelve steps and divine your attentions.”

“Well, that’s nice to know,” Blake said with a faint smile, swirling his wine in his glass and then taking another sip.

“The main reason I wanted you to know that was… well… I wish to seek your permission to do so again,” Celestia said candidly.

Blake arched an eyebrow. “You hardly need my permission.”

“But by asking you, I have also stated my intentions and in doing so have reassured you that my frisky affections are not… fake,” Celestia added, looking Blake up and down carefully. “I feel as though you know this but you are deliberately acting dumb so that I am forced to voice it.”

Blake gave a weak laugh, taking another sip of his wine. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You are a very shrewd man,” Celestia said calmly. “And even though I know I’m being played… I’ll go along with it. Blake,” she asked, turning to face him properly.

Blake turned his head to regard her, arching an eyebrow.

“Would you allow me to suggest lewd, inappropriate actions with you?” Celestia asked carefully.

“Like I said, I can hardly stop you,” Blake responded, just as carefully. “But if it makes you feel better… I think it’s cute. Adorable, even.”

Celestia paused at that, working her next sentence over in her mouth before giving voice to it. “I cannot say that those are descriptors often applied to myself.”

Blake nodded thoughtfully, sipping his wine again. “When you were trying to be all flirty with me. I knew it was at least mostly affected. Like… uhh…” he trailed off, searching for the right word. “You were pretending to be a frisky young pony when really you’re an older, calculating gal, and rather shrewd yourself. But I also got the sense that you enjoyed it. And that’s cute.”

Celestia scoffed. “Did you just call me ‘old’?”

“You are positively ancient,” Blake responded bluntly. “Hell, every meeting we ever had must be like the blink of an eye to someone as old as you are.”

Celestia paused, weighing her words. “At the moment, no. They are a new experience. New experiences always take up more… ‘spatial memory’. It’s the day-in, day-out drudgery that makes the days blur and blend together.” Celestia sipped her wine, looking at him sideways, and then sighing faintly. “In a thousand years time, the entirety of our meeting will be nothing more in my memory than a lazy afternoon spent basking in the sunlight. But,” she lifted a hoof to halt anything he might have started to say. “That does not mean I remember it any less fondly, or long less for that lazy afternoon.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Blake said, nodding to himself. “Like eating really good food. Just because it’s gone in fifteen minutes doesn’t make it any less special.”

“Exactly so,” Celestia responded with a gentle nod. “So, I have your blessing?”
Blake snuffed a laugh. “Continuing to ask me that over and over again kind of ruins the charm of it. It’s just flirting. It’s not like a BDSM session or something. We don’t need to pick a safeword and discuss which hours of which day.”

Celestia edged closer to him, and almost laid her chin on his shoulder so she could heatedly whisper in his ear: “With some of the things I intend to do to you, a safeword might be prudent.”

A shiver passed down Blake’s form, and he covered it by sipping at his wine once more. “That’s… uh… probably a little more ominous than you intended.”

Celestia giggle, and then crossed behind him, to rest her chin on his other shoulder, murmuring softly. “In my people’s culture, older ponies are revered for their… sexual knowledge.”

Blake tilted his head slightly, trying his best to appear nonchalant. “S-same over here, really,” he responded, his voice wavering just slightly.

Celestia giggle again. “Can you imagine the things I know?”

Blake swallowed thickly for a moment, and then straightened up slightly. “I dunno. I think you might be too prudish to know too much about all of that. You are a princess, after all.”

Celestia’s expression darkened for just a moment, and pink eyes narrowed at him intently before that sly little giggle returned. “You’re right. Of course. I’ve hardly taken any lessons or anything like that…”

Blake sighed inwardly in relief, and raised his glass to his lips again, before pausing as Celestia tugged at his wrist with a hoof. With a slightly bemused expression, he allowed his hand to be led towards her muzzle, before the princess caught his index and middle fingers in her surprisingly soft lips and drew them into her mouth.

Vibrant pink eyes stared into his own unflinchingly as a velvety-soft tongue curled over his fingers and drew them deeper into the damp warmth of her muzzle, giving a slow, grinding undulation around them and gentle swirling as a soft, intoxicating suction tugged at the very end of his fingertips. Celestia swallowed softly, and the back of her tongue rose to gently caress his fingertips with the motion.

THINK CLEAN THOUGHTS! THINK CLEAN THOUGHTS!

Blake’s mind screamed at him as she stared wide-eyed at what Celestia was doing, his breath catching in his throat and mouth hanging open just slightly. There was a faint noise of moisture on the roof and he belated realised he had let his wine glass tilt so far that wine was dribbling out of it.

Celestia giggle, pressing down, soft lips consuming his fingertips until they bumped up against his knuckles, completely encasing his digits in warm, wet tightness. She paused that, and then gripped his wrist gently in a hoof before giving a slow bob of her muzzle on him, tilting her head slightly to one side as she pressed down, letting her tongue grind and undulate along the entire length of his fingers.

“F-fuuuuck…” Blake breathed, swallowing with a suddenly dry throat, feeling his heart racing and his breathing picking up in speed while a certain insistent ache in his lions demanded to take the place of his fingers.

Rumbling heatedly, Celestia drew back, gently, carefully, almost reverently flicking her tongue over his fingertips as she slipped back far enough to disengage. “I think I have the basics of it down…”

Blake tried to respond, but all that escaped was a strangle squeak.

“Although, I think I’m forgetting something…” Celestia trailed off, looking thoughtful for a moment, before giving an ‘aha!’ of realisation. “I forgot the end…” she murmured heatedly, catching his eye again and holding his gaze as she leaned forwards, tilted her head up and gently parted her lips. That soft pink tongue extended, giving him a perfect view into that presented mouth. She looked like she was waiting for her favorite treat.

Blake just about fainted.

Celestia giggled wickedly, closing her mouth and licking her lips, rising back to her full, regal height. “Why, Blake, you seem a little pale. Is everything okay?”

Blake lifted a shaking hand to try and casually brush his hair back, realising that his fingers were slick with her saliva. “I-I’m f-fine,” he managed to stammer, trying not to stand side-on to the princess so that she wouldn’t notice his raging erection just about breaking the seams of his pants.

Pink eyes narrowed at him, and Celestia giggled darkly. “Are you thinking dirty thoughts about your princess?”

“Yes… fucking yes,” Blake managed to respond, his tone strangled.

Giggling even more at that, Celestia turned back and held up her wine glass. “Refill, please, Blake.”

Nodding woodenly, Blake took the glass from her, shuffling back towards the wine bucket, trying his best not to let her see the effect she had on him.

Celestia watched him knowingly, giggling softly to herself. “If you’re a good boy, your princess might let you judge the exam.”

Blake gave her a confused stare. “Exam?”

Arching an eyebrow, Celestia looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the bulge in his pants as she licked her lips lasciviously. “You doubted my prowess… Clearly the only way to allay your doubts is… a test.”

A strangled laugh left Blake, and he gentle handed the wine glass to the princess with a shaking hand. “Y-you’re coming on a little strong.”

Celestia picked up her wine glass, and sipped at it carefully, even as her ethereal tail came around and brushed over the front of his pants, almost making him yelp, his entire form stiffening. “And when you finally work up the courage to reciprocate, I’ll let you find out whether I’m serious or not.”

Blake stared at Celestia sideways for a long moment, trying to read her expression. But that sly smile on her muzzle offered him no concrete answer either way.

Was she just teasing him? Was she being serious?

“I uh… I need to go use the toilet,” Blake muttered, not meeting the princess’s gaze.

Celestia nodded generously. “I understand. You need a few minutes to gather yourself.”

“Y-you can say that again!” Blake said with a strangled chuckle, placing his wine glass on the little table. “I’ll be back in a few minutes!” he said hurriedly, turning to walk away.

“Oh Blake…” Celestia said softly.

Blake paused, looking back over his shoulder attentively. “Yes, princess?”

“I know you’re running off to masturbate furiously,” Celestia stated simply.

Swallowing thickly, Blake shook his head, throat even dryer. “O-oh no, not at all, I just… I uh…”

Celestia held up a hoof for silence, and her serene expression morphed into a wicked smirk. “When you orgasm, I do hope you’re fantasizing about my muzzle being open in front of you.”

Blake tried to stammer a response, before he whirled and limped away as fast as his bad foot could carry him, his cheeks burning.

Celestia giggled to herself and turned to look back over the lights of the city, taking another sip of her wine.

Corrupting your Consort

“How many times have you masturbated while thinking about me?” Celestia asked bluntly.

The glass of wine Blake was pouring clattered to the carpet and caused a crimson stain to begin spreading. Grimacing, he reached for a cloth, trying to blot up some of the moisture, carefully not answer the princess’ question. “You did that deliberately.”

Celestia giggled, not looking away from the window, but turned her gaze to the side enough that she could see his reflection. The window was heavy tempered glass, and reflective on the outside. The only time Celestia would be visible behind it was when it was dark enough and she was lit from behind.

“Don’t fret, I’ll say it was my fault,” she said, giving a wistful sigh and staring out over the city as dusk fell, watching lights slowly starting to twinkle into existence. “Your planet is so pretty.”

“Very dirty and grimy,” Blake added , folding the cloth in half and continuing to blot at the spreading stain.

“Not from where I’m standing,” Celestia corrected, her horn almost touching the glass.

Blake looked up, tossing the cloth back on the serving cart and arching an eyebrow at the princess. “There’s some commentary in there about the ruling class being disconnected from the populace but I completely lack the knowledge to make it.”

“I think you just did,” Celestia said, turning to regard him with a long stare. She harrumphed, and turned back to the window, her flowing tail giving a slow, elegant, flick. “How do you imagine I masturbate?” she asked bluntly, before pausing, a wicked smile tugging at her lips as she corrected herself. “How do you fantasize I masturbate?”

Blake stared up at her, swallowing thickly and then shrugging his shoulders helplessly. “I… I don’t know. I don’t imagine those kind of things.”

“Do you think me too old to enjoy the comforts of such a thing? Too elegant? Too refined?” Celestia asked, giving him that shrewd sideways glance he was slowly becoming familiar with.

“No I just… I haven’t imagined you masturbating before,” Blake said, voice slightly strained as he bent back down to continue cleaning up the wine stain as best he could.

Celestia turned back to the window, and gave a tinkering giggle, lifting a hoof to scritch at the side of her chest almost innocently. “Well, for the record, and for your future fantasies, I do not use my hooves. In my youth I did… there was nothing quite like the soft felt of my hoof rubbing over moist exposed flesh…”

Blake swallowed thickly, and Celestia paused, one ear perking up, gauging his reactions carefully though she didn’t make any indication she noticed his reaction.

“But once I became proficient with magic…” she trailed off for a moment, her tone turning wistful. She closed her eyes, and turned her head to the side slightly, seemingly lost in her own little dream-world. “The soft touch of magic, as firm or as soft as you like, as slender or as thick as you please…”

Celestia’s horn lit up, and the glow of magic was reflected back upon her face by the window. Blake could also see a similar glow of magic somewhere between her thighs, though the flow of her elegant tail occluded his view.

“The softest touch of a lover,” Celestia purred wistfully, one of her hindlegs lifting off the floor the tiniest amount. Her magic moved, and intensified, and she gasped softly, her hoof quivering. The vibrating hum of her magic grew stronger and more intent, and the glow of her magic shifted about between her hindlegs, working slowly back and forth in a cozy, glowing rhythm. “Or the hard eagerness of a lustful reunion… magic can be whatever you want.”

Blake swallowed thickly again, a mysterious lump in his throat and a pounding in his throat that was quickly finding its way to other parts of his body. Her tail was still in the way,

The softest little giggle left her as she placed her hoof back on the floor, and deliberately leaned forwards, letting that shapely white rump lift upwards with the motion, her tail still obscuring anything that Blake might catch sight of. “It’s so easy to use magic… you can do it anywhere, any time,” she purred, the magical glow across her lower belly intensifying and seeming to slip inwards.

The princess gasped, and then gave a soft, breathy moan, exhaling softly and rolling her hips. “You can make it feel like anything like you want… fantasize about anyone you can think of. I can even make it feel like your human fingers if I wanted…”

Celestia trailed off, seemingly thoughtful, and her magic coalesced again into a different shape, shifting and rolling between her thighs, making her arch up and giving a jerk of surprise, her glowing horn touching the glass as she shuddered. “Oooh… that feels strange. But I like it.”

Blake stared, swallowing heavily, mechanically replacing the cloth on the cart and feeling like his erection was going to strain right through his zipper and out into the open air. He stared at her wispy tail, spying the shifting movement of Celestia’s magic beneath like an alluring, x-rated shadow-puppet play.

Celestia regarded him with one narrowed pink eye, her expression devious, rolling her hips slowly in time with the touch of her magic between her own thighs, gasping and then giving a more potent grind against herself. “To think… if you just reached out and moved my tail…”

Blake shuddered from top to bottom, deliberately placing weight on his bad foot until it started to hurt, trying to distract himself from carnal thoughts.

“Just a few inches to the side…” Celestia husked, deliberately curling her tail, almost calculatedly, swaying it until just the merely sliver of her inner thighs was visible and Blake could see a small slice of heaven, brilliantly lit by her magic, and glistening.

“F-fuck…” Blake mouthed, putting more weight on his foot, clenching his teeth and very jerkily trying to pour another glass of wine for the princess.

Celestia smirked, straightening, her magic dissipating and horn losing its glow. She rounded on him, coming around the drink cart and pushing him back towards the wall. Blake protested weakly, but allowed himself to be corralled without any resistance, until his back bumped up against the wall.

A heated rumble left the princess, and she kissed him, pushing him back against the wall and holding him there with her substantial weight, muzzle pushed against his lips and that soft, velvety tongue seeking entrance past his lips like a heated tongue of flame for the merest of moments before she pulled back, staring into his eyes.

“So eager…” Celestia purred, and Blake realised that she was standing close enough that her foreleg was pushed right up against his crotch, letting her feel the outline of his rock-solid cock against her silky-soft flesh. “So… needy,” she added, deliberately pressing against him, seeming to enjoy the way his aching cock ground against her foreleg.

Blake grimaced and tried his absolute best not to dry-hump the princess’ foreleg, but each hint of friction she gave against him made him throb, and made it harder to resist.

“And yet… so reserved,” Celestia giggled, staring into his eyes curiously. “I know many guards on my staff with the same resolve. The same devotion to duty.”

“N-not sure what you’re talking about,” Blake squeaked weakly, resting a hand on her shoulder for balance, wanting to pull his hips back from her torturous touch. Even the soft rise and fall of her chest from her breathing was giving him the tiniest ghost of a touch that made him want to grind against her all the more.

“You could have me,” Celestia purred, nudging her nose in under his chin and giving his throat a heated lick. “All you’d have to do is take me. And yet you don’t… Despite the fact that you want it.” Celestia demonstrated her point by giving another grind of her foreleg against him, making him arch and stand on tiptoes for a moment. “Why is that?”

“N-not sure,” Blake managed to answer, feeling his face warming with how close and intent the princess was.

“You could have grabbed my tail and pulled it aside… could still do it. Could slip your fingers down under my belly, rub backwards until you find something…”

Blake swallowed audibly, and the throb of his aching cock gave Celestia enough information to know his true feelings on what she had voiced.

“Are you so intimidated by me? So scared of me?” Celestia asked, giggling softly again. “Poor thing… I know it must be... hard,” she rumbled, giving another press against him until he ached and throbbed against her. “Do you doubt my sincerity?”

Blake shook his head, grimacing uncertainly. “I don’t know! I can’t just grab you and go to town. You’re a princess! From another world!”

“Such admirable restraint,” Celestia purred, lifting her hook to trace down the side of his hip, so tantalizing close to that straining bulge in his pants, not taking her eyes from his own for a moment. “So urgently hard,” she whispered, lightly brushing the front of his pants and smirking wickedly at the way it made his erection throb and jump. “I’m not going to do it for you… you’re going to have to take a step.”

“I’ll step,” Blake tried to respond, his voice breaking and quavering.

“Take a step, then,” Celestia whispered heatedly, trailing her hoof lightly down the front of his pants again, grinning at him all the while. “Take a leap of faith.”

“I want to,” Blake responded, mouth dry, his hand twitching on her back, sliding down a few inches, squeezing at her fur and feathers impotently.

“That much is blatantly obvious,” Celestia smirked, staring into his eyes intently. “I can see the cogs turning… weighing your options. Am I just teasing? Is this part of my game? Will you take it a step too far from my teasing and I’ll order you away and you never see me again? Will you be harming the relations of a neighboring species by giving in to your desires?” she simpered, holding his gaze unwaveringly.

Celestia’s eyes sparkled with utter mischief and she leaned in until her svelte nose touched his own. “But what if… what if I really am just a giddy princess eager to have someone so seriously sexually interested in me?”

Blake swallowed around the lump in his throat, feeling his heart beating somewhere in his ears.

“Maybe I am just teasing… Maybe I’m leading you along. Maybe that’s my game,” Celestia murmured, her expression unreadable. She leaned forwards, brushing soft lips against his cheek so she could whisper in his ear, “Or maybe I’m telling the truth and I’m interested in you sexually as well? Is that worth the risk?. One of Celestia’s hooves lifted, hooking around Blake’s middle, squeezing him against her front and making his erection grind against her foreleg. “Risk versus rewards,” Celestia quipped with a giggle. “I’ll break you eventually, Blake. I’ll wheedle you down… I’ll tempt you until you break, until you just want to grab my horn and… mnf....” the princess trailed off, giving a soft giggle. “What would you do if you could do anything to me, Blake? Would you grab my horn? One hand there and one on the back of my head?”

Blake was starting to feel lightheaded, and his hips ground against the princess on reflex, one of his hands automatically grasping for her horn, before he brought himself up short, sucking in a breath.

Celestia giggled darkly, staring into his eyes. “I’ve almost got you, Blake. Just a little more… just a few more nudges, a little more coaxing. I’m going to break you,” she murmured softly, holding his gaze. “I’m going to break you and I’m so sure of it that I don’t even need to be coy about it.”

The princess drew back, giving enough space between their bodies for Blake to let out a sigh of relief, his legs strangely weak and shaking.

Celestia leaned down, until her nose bumped against his lower belly, making Blake suck in a breath and stare down at her, eyes wide.

“I’m going to break your resolve, Blake,” Celestia purred, her wings rustling softly as she adjust her stance. She brushed soft lips against his lower belly, and then even lower, tracing the bulge in his pants.

Blake couldn’t even swallow any more, his heart pounding in his throat and that stiff erection throbbing wildly.

“And then you’ll find out that I’m teasing you, leading you on…” Celestia trailed off, staring up at him, and then the most devious, wicked smile crossed her features that Blake had ever seen.

“Or you’ll get to spill your load right over my tongue…” With a heated purr, Celestia leaned in again, a hoof holding Blake’s hips, pushing him back against the wall so he couldn’t move, and then she licked him. That soft, pink tongue extended, finding that bulge in his pants and drawing a long, slow, careful line along the length of it, outlining it with her tongue until her lick reached the end of it, flicking against the waistband of his pants.

Blake nearly came in his pants.

Celestia growled heatedly, and then lipped at the waistband, tugging them down just enough to get uncomfortably tight against his straining, throbbing erection, before she giggled and relented, rising back to her full height.

“Any time you’re ready to take that leap of faith…” Celestia purred, leaning in until her nose was almost touching his own again, giggling. Her horn alighted, and she levitated her half-full glass of red wine over to the two of them, lifting it to take a sip. “You have to take that step, Blake. I’m not going to just pull your pants down and stuff it all in my mouth. You’ll have to take some initiative. You’ll have to reciprocate.”

“Y-yes ma’am,” Blake managed to strangle out.

“If you don’t reciprocate, nothing will happen… but if you reciprocate, you might be rebuked. Such deadly waters you navigate,” Celestia simpered, sipping her wine again and staring at him with the same stare a cat might give a pigeon. She leaned close again, nuzzling past his cheek to whisper in his ear, “But reciprocating is the only way you’ll get to fuck me.”

Blake shuddered, his grip tightening on her wing, his breathing catching in his throat.

“I’ll give you some time to think it over… and ‘cool off’,” Celestia giggle, staring down his body to where the streak of her tongue had left a visible line on his pants. She lifted her glass of wine, and then drizzled some of it down his front, masking the stain of her saliva. “Now go get yourself cleaned up, Blake. A princess has spilled her wine on you.”

Blake nodded weakly, straightening up properly, his heart pounding in his ears.

Celestia smiled warmly, taking a step back from him, letting him move. “Think you’ll survive another day without forcefully removing your pants for me?”

A slight squeak left Blake, and he cleared his throat, before trying again. “M-maybe.”

Celestia turned away from him, walking back towards the window, standing in front of it and staring out over the lights once more. She lifted her glass to take another sip, and likewise lifted her tail, giving Blake a glimpse of her thoroughly moist, perfect white lips with the hint of shiny pink between them. “”Well maybe next time I spill my wine on you I’ll clean it off myself.”

Blake gave her an uncertain stare.

“With my tongue, of course,” Celestia giggled, staring at his reflection, a wicked smile dancing in her eyes.

Capitulating Your Consort

Blake stared at Celestia’s reflection, standing at attention towards the back of the room. He had a cloth folded carefully over his left arm, and was trying to keep as unobtrusive as possible. A veritable cavalcade of diplomats had come and gone, and it was finally time for Celestia to wind down for the night.

“You are usually silent,” Celestia said calmly, staring at his reflection in turn. She had been staring out the window for the last half-hour, watching the headlights of traffic down belong. For a creature raised in a world without electricity, seeing the city lights and just traffic eking along the highways must have been quite the spectacle.

“Don’t have much to say,” Blake responded carefully, bowing his head at the alicorn respectfully.

Celestia smiled at his reflection, and then turned to look at him over her shoulder, eyes narrowing. “Oh, I very much doubt that. You always have insights. You have many things to say but never want to give voice to them.”

Blake grimaced. “Well, I find the whole diplomatic stuff tedious, to be frank. They take so long and think so carefully about their words. It’s so…”

“Fake?” Celestia asked with a soft giggle.

“Fake, yes,” Blake responded with a short nod. “My father always said that someone who has to think about what they say before they say it says too many lies.”

“Well your father hardly has to deal with nobles who are as sensitive as country leaders,” Celestia said with a long sigh.

“Oh, there’s certainly that, too,” Blake admitted with a smile.

“I sense some hesitance from you,” Celestia stated.

“Oh? No hesitance here.”

“There definitely is, you’re very… formal tonight.” Celestia hummed, lifting a hoof to her muzzle thoughtfully, and then narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s as though you’re afraid I’ll devolve into the… harlot again, if you say the wrong thing.”

“Not… necessarily,” Blake said with the tiniest of strained laughs.

“Oh-ho, I should hire some delivery ponies, because there’s a loaded sentence that requires some unpacking,” Celestia tittered. “What exactly are you afraid of?”

“Well, I love the flirty you, don’t get me wrong. But I’m… I’m just a man, princess,” Blake said, bowing his head at her respectfully. “And if you start doing that again… I’m going to… uh…”

“Break some diplomatic boundaries?” Celestia asked, her expression far more predatory than Blake thought would be possible.

“That would be putting it lightly,” Blake responded dryly. “And I’m not… I’m terrified of you sending me away for offending you.”

“Well, I can hardly give you carte blanche to offend me, and give you guaranteed outcomes, then there would be no risk, and no excitement. There would be no hesitation on your part if you were guaranteed of your outcome, and the constant back and forth so evident on your features is… appealing to me.”

“You are one twisted princess,” Blake said with a soft chuckle.

Celestia shook her head firmly. “I have been seduced by noblestallions and ruffians alike, but it was always I who were exulting in the taboo. It was always I who were giving up my royal aura to ‘slum’ it and frolic with the ponies under me. And I enjoyed it, yes, but that was always the end of their goal. That was their objective in seducing me. But never before…” Celestia trailed off, frowning, and Blake knew she was searching for the right words.

“Is it because I’m human?” Blake asked blankly.

“In part, yes,” Celestia said with brutal honesty. “But it is also that you are taking a risk. Not taking the risk of my objection, but the risk of becoming a social outcast among your own species. All my previous suitors were… suitable,” Celestia said with a short giggle at her wordplay. “But they were also taking very few risks. Being turned down by a princess is hardly exceptional. Even the royal guards who had designs on me only risked being ousted from the guard. Not becoming a pariah. Not an example of degeneracy.”

“I hadn’t even… thought of that,” Blake said, frowning to himself. “But a human caught with a pony. Oof, the tabloids would have a field day, my name would be dragged through the mud.”

Celestia rounded on him, and stalked over closer, eyes narrowed and hungry. “Yes, exactly. You flirt with your destruction. You are compelled towards the risk of earning my ire even though it could destroy you in ways most profound.”

“You are really really giving me a soft-sell right now,” Blake said with a weak chuckle.

Celestia stepped closer, and Blake could feel her looming over him. With her horn and mane, standing at her full height, she was so much taller than him. “And despite all of that, despite all of the things stacked against you, you still want to fuck me anyway,” she said with the most wicked of giggles.

Blake gave a rueful smile, and then lifted a hand to lightly rest on her nose, causing the princess to go cross-eyed for a moment. “I could say the same for you,” he stated. “What would your ponies back home think of you screwing a human?”

“They wouldn’t know, and whom a princess does in her spare time is not something my ponies would think on for too great a time. Perhaps it is due to the disparate nature of the species in Equestria, but we hardly look at interspecies relationships as darkly as your kind evidently does.”

“And how do you know this, hmm? Who told you all this?”

“You,” Celestia said bluntly, smiling at him with intent, narrowed eyes. “Your body language, your responses, your hesitance. That, and I learned to read English before coming here and I read some of the comments left under those pictures you showed me at your house.”

Blake cringed slightly, before composing himself. “How… did you learn all of English?”

“You think it an accident we speak the same language? Your english is… strange, and a very different dialect. But, still, learning it was not too hard, except for some of the idioms I still do not understand, rooted, no doubt, in your barbaric culture. It is very interesting though, that I can trace the etymology of many of our shared words through events that must have happened on both of our planes of existence.”

“Again, but slower?” Blake pleaded.

Celestia narrowed her eyes at him intently, and her elegant tail gave an agitated flick. “I told you, you do not need to appear dumb to placate me. I am hardly intimidated by your intelligence.”

“But I am by yours,” Blake said with a chuckle, and then squeaked slightly, leaning back as she leaned closer to him, her large head almost bumping against his own. “And your size.”

“You are small,” Celestia stated simply, smiling and brushing her lips against his nose for a moment. “But not displeasingly so. In fact, I would wager that I could-”

“Stuff my entire cock in your muzzle without gagging?” Blake quickly finished the sentence for her, arching an eyebrow expectantly.

Celestia drew back with a scandalised expression, raising herself up to her impressive height and touching her chest with a hoof in a ‘sincerity’ pose. “I was going to say ‘bear your entire weight on my back with little issue’ but your filthy human mind ousts itself once more!”

Blake pursed his lips at her dubiously.

Celestia stared at him, and then shook her head firmly. “I assure you, I was not!” she protested, before leaning in close once more, leaning past him to let her soft lips delicately brush against his ear, so she could whisper: “I’ve had a thousand years to practise… I no longer gag at all.”

Blake gave a shiver and then a nervous laugh at that. “I don’t think you’d have that much practise at… that. I’d wager most of your sex is missioniary style with the lights off for the sake of pro-creation.”

“That is… incredibly specific,” Celestia said, caught off-guard. “Is that something you wish to do with me?”

Blake blinked. “Oh, no, that’s uh, that’s how we humans describe really vanilla sex, the kind done by religious people who are ashamed of sex or whatever.”

“Oh so you think us ponies are vanilla?” Celestia asked, her eyes narrowing slowly.

Blake shifted uneasily. “Not… ponies. Just… princesses.”

Celestia’s eyes flashed, and she loomed over Blake, her wings giving an irritated flutter. “Why, some might view that as a challenge.”

“Some certainly might,” Blake said, straightening up himself and swallowing thickly, very aware of how the princess was staring at him. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to be flirty and I think-”

“In the bedroom, now,” Celestia stated flatly, lifting a hoof and pointing with it towards the adjoining room.

Blake paled. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Now.” Celestia reiterated.

Swallowing heavily, Blake carefully took the cloth off his arm and placed it on the serving tray, and under Celestia’s glare, he carefully made his way to the adjoining room.

This was one room he was not familiar wit. It was clearly a regular hotel room, but much of the furniture had been removed and even the bed had been replaced, taken out in favour of a ground-level ‘nest’ type circular mattress with thick, heavy padding and many cushions strewn around. A privacy curtain was pulled across the other part of the room, where the kitchen area and bathroom were, which were all a little too small for an alicorn to comfortably use.

Blake turned around, and immediately took a step backwards as he found Celestia positively prowling directly behind him, her head lowered and ears flattened back, pink eyes narrowed at him intently. She kicked the door closed behind her with a deft motion of her hoof, closing it with such force that he just about felt the walls shake.

“Disrobe.”

“What?” Blake asked blankly.

“Dis. Robe.” Celestia repeated, biting off each syllable.

Blake fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, starting to undo them, while Celestia stared on impatiently.

“You are lucky your kind is so adverse to our magics, or I would tear your clothes from your body and make you walk back downstairs as naked as I… perhaps I should add that to my diplomatic standards,” Celestia added with a dark little chuckle, watching him intently all the while.

Blake gave a slightly nervous chuckle, and undid his shirt, before fumbling with his belt, managing to get it undone, followed by the button and the zipper at his front, before pausing uncertainly.

“Did I command you to cease?” Celestia demanded with a growl, advancing on him butting her nose against his chest, her horn coming close to poking him in the chin.

“S-sorry princess!” Blake stammered, struggling out of his shirt.

Celestia evidently felt that he was taking too long with his pants, because one of her hoofs caught the side of them, and tugged them down over his hips, revealing his boxers to her. She pulled them down towards his ankles, smirking up at him all the while, until her hoof pulled them all the way to his foot and then deliberately tried to tug them off him.

Blake had to lift one foot to do so, and the instant he did, a shock of pain ripped through his ankle, and it refused to hold his weight, and he collapsed backwards with a cry, quickly followed by a cry of concern from the princess.

“Blake! Are you okay?” Celestia asked, concerned, standing over him, watching him writhe in pain. “Your hoof! I forgot!” she whimpered, carefully lifting a hoof to try and touch his shoulder. “Need I call for assistance?!”

“No! N-no!” Blake hissed, terrified of the thought of being found half-naked in the princess’ quarters. He lifted his bad leg up, bringing that knee to his chest and holding it, inhaling deeply and rolling back and forth, trying to catch his breath. “J-just… give me a second.”

“I am so sorry,” Celestia said, her eyes wide and sincere. “I… I shouldn’t have been so forceful.”

Blake exhaled slowly as the lancing pain in his foot started to fade, and he sat up carefully to take stock of where he was. He was on the floor in Celestia’s room, a few feet from her nest of cushions, no doubt already manifesting an imprint of carpet all up his shoulder blades by now. “No, it’s fine,” he soothed, peering up at her. The haughty, angry, forceful princess had evaporated in an instant, and a scared-looking alicorn teenager was in her place. “I’m fine. I’m fine. Just don’t ask me to dance for you,” he said with a brave attempt at a weak laugh. He reached out and grasped one of the princess’ pillows, dragging it closer to stuff under his back so he could sit up easier.

Frowning deeply, Celestia stared at him, pursing her lips in uncertainty. “Are you certain?”

“I’m certain,” Blake assured, pulling himself into a better seated position, and staring at the princess, licking his lips nervously for a moment. “So uh… where were we?”

Celestia stared down at him, her expression showing an instant of hesitation. “I was ord-...” Pink eyes flicked up to catch his own, judging him, and her eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “You were taking off your pants for me.”

“Right, right,” Blake responded, reaching a hand down to his middle to hook a thumb in the front of his boxers, carefully pulling them away from his skin, watching with interest as the motion drew Celestia’s gaze. It was quite evident that she couldn’t look away, and he bit his bottom lip, before letting the band of his boxers snap back against his belly.

Celestia’s eyes narrowed down at him slowly, and the very edges of her wings shifted, the feathers spreading in a slow flare, a faint noise of annoying building in her throat.

“O-okay, geeze, fine!” Blake quickly relented, hooking both thumbs in his boxers and pushing them down lest he incur the princess’ wrath, his semi-hard cock bouncing free and then thudding against the bottom of his own stomach.

A low, pleased growl rolled up out of the princess’ throat, and she took a step backwards so she could gaze down upon him, her eyes trailing down over her form before fixing on his growing cock. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Not yet,” Blake said with a weak chuckle.

Celestia carefully arranged her hooves, and Blake saw her give his bad foot a consciously wide berth, stepping in a slow crescent until she could drop down onto her belly beside him. Her nose came to rest right against his hip, letting him feel just how heavy her comparatively large head was against him, while pretty pink eyes gazed up at him coquettishly.

“Is this… is this some kind of pony mating ritual? I am unimpressed,” Blake said with an attempt at a laugh to soften his words.

“Unimpressed?” Celestia simpered, eyes fixing him with a stare that looked straight through him. “Or disappointed that I didn’t immediately start tonguing you like some desperate harlot?”

“I… I would never call you a desperate harlot,” Blake said, uncomfortably aware of each of Celestia’s soft exhales, her warm breath tickling across the side of his cock, making it twitch and stiffen all the more eagerly.

Celestia’s eyes flashed towards his cock as it twitched, but she brought them back to stare at him so quickly that he could almost convince himself that he had imagined it. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I… Fuck, okay, yes, I’m disappointed that you didn’t just st-a-ah!” Blake’s stuttering admission faded into a tremulous groan as Celestia tilted her head and then licked him, brushing her soft lips against the side of his erection and then dragging a long lick of her supple, velvety tongue from his mid-point al the way to his tip.

A wicked giggle left the princess as his cock throbbed to its full size, sitting stiff and urgent against his stomach as she carefully drew her lick off of his turgid tip, letting the soft curve of her tongue slather against him, contouring to the shape of the head of his cock and licking over a full half of it at the same time in a single stroke in a way no human woman’s tongue could ever achieve. It made Blake’s hips arch up off the floor until his foot twinged with the effort and he collapsed back with a gasp.

Celestia peered up at him, and Blake was prepared for another verbal jab, but she just lifted one of her powerful hooves up to delicately rest on his hip, holding him steady as she drew another lick across the length of his stiff cock. She curled her tongue nimbly around his tip, and lifted it with her surprisingly powerful tongue until the tension in his cock caused it to tug free of her grasp, slapping against his belly. “Not as thick as my kind,” Celestia hummed thoughtfully.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Blake asked heatedly, staring down at her.

“It means that my tongue will be more useful,” Celestia responded simply, staring up at him with intent pink eyes, a look of utter mischief crossing her features. “Less girth means less weight, and more room, so I can work unimpeded.”

“It sounds like you’re denigrating me,” Blake said, trying to keep the bitchiness out of his tone.

“Oh shush, trust you to find the one thing to complain about in princess fellatio!”

“You’ve done very little of the fellatio so f-f-fuuuck…” Blake was forced to trail off into a hissed groan as the princess drew him back up with her strong tongue, curling it around and lifting him upright, before she adjusted her stance and then sank down over his cock all the way. Soft lips and warm mouth consumed him utterly, all the way until her muzzle buried at the very base of his cock. She kissed around his base, holding him deeper in her muzzle than he thought would even be physically possible. Every last inch of his cock was buried in the warm, wet heat of her mouth, and her agile tongue was lazily curling back and forth against his underside.

Tilting her head very gently to the side, Celestia stared up at him, making sure to catch his eye before she deliberately spread her jaws and then extended her tongue out around the base of his cock. Her tongue slathered down against the top of his balls for a moment, but as she extended it, the length of her tongue in her muzzle slid over his tip and the underside of his cock, hitting pleasure points he didn’t even know he had. Blake’s hips tried to come up off the ground, but she held him firmly in place with her hoof, carefully swirling her tongue back and forth against him before withdrawing it, which just flicked the back of her tongue along his tip once more and made him throb wildly, stiffening to an angrily-pulsing, insistent erection right in her muzzle.

“H-holy f-fuck!” Blake stammered, one of his hands finding Celestia’s horn, the other grasping around her chin, his hips trying in vain to fight against the firm press of her hoof and grind up into her amazing mouth.

Celestia paused then, glowering up at him, one eye visible behind her mane, and it took Blake several long seconds to realise he was grasping her head and muzzle, before he suddenly snapped his hands back to his chest, holding them there tightly. “S-sorry!” he squeaked.

Mollified, Celestia turned her attention back to his cock, her gaze flicking back down to his pelvis as she lifted her muzzle up until half of his cock was no longer buried inside her, before she sank back down again, all the way to his very root, making sure to kiss her lips softly against his very, very base. And then she drew back up, and repeated the motion, very deliberately giving him five solid, slow bobs of her magnificent muzzle, her wispy, ethereal mane brushing against his hip all the while.

On the fifth bob, Celestia tilted her head, lifting up to the halfway point and holding there, and this time, her strong tongue swirled against him with a surprisingly powerful lick, curling against the sensitive head of his head in a wickedly sensuous laving, before she carefully altered the angle of her muzzle and tongue so that the next deliberate grind of tongue against him caught the entire other side of his stiffly-throbbing cock. And then she curled her tongue over him in a slow, firm anti-clockwise swirl, her tongue and muzzle so long that even with him half-way inside her beautiful mouth, she could still rotate her tongue around him again, and again, and again.

Blake’s good foot was pressed against the floor almost urgently, trying to press his hips up into the torturously talented muzzle, while he was clenching his closed fists so tightly against his chest to resist the urge to grab her head that his knuckles were turning white.

Smirking, Celestia delicately feathered his very tip with a flurry of firm licks, each of them earning a gasp and shudder from the human, before she dropped her muzzle back over him and started to nurse.

Blake’s resolve was crumbling rapidly, and his vision was getting hazy, finding it harder and harder with each passing moment to remember his injured foot and not just press both of them against the floor in a vague attempt to fuck the princess’ muzzle. He wasn’t even certain he would have been able to remember his own name in that instant, and when Celestia started to nurse on him, it got so much worse. Soft, velvety inner flesh drew close about him, and her tongue curled tight around his base in a half-twist, just increasing the amount of pressure she could get behind her nursing, while she gave soft, delicate swallows around him again and again, each of the soft motions causing the back of her tongue to rise and kiss against his tip in an utterly mind-bending sensation.

“Nnng f-fuck I’m g-gonna…” Blake managed to stammer out, his good heel grinding against the floor as he cock throbbed with urgent intensity in the wickedly wonderful prison of Celestia’s talented muzzle.

Celestia drew back immediately, the pressure, the friction, the gentle curl of her tongue, all ceased in an instant, and his cock slapped wetly against his belly, covered with her saliva from base to twitching tip. “Oh? A warning?” she asked, moving her hoof to lightly lift his cock, holding it steady in front of her muzzle so she could flick his tip with the lightest of licks, keeping him achingly hard and on the edge of release with perfect poise. “Does that mean, you wish me to stop?”

“NO!” Blake blurted, feeling his face flushing hot.

Celestia smirked at him wickedly.

“I m-mean, no, please. Don’t stop. I… I need to cum.”

Celestia arched an eyebrow, and gave him another light lick, giggling at the way he throbbed in response to her touch. “You can be more direct than that, I think.”

“I-I need you? To make me cum?” Blake offered hesitantly, earning himself a stern stare from the princess.

“Where, Blake?” Celestia asked, throwing him a hint, her eyes flashing with lustful mischief.

Blake swallowed thickly, his throat suddenly dry. The implication was clear.

“Y-you’re kinda putting me on the spot here!” Blake protested, feeling his heart yammering in his chest to match the urgent throb in his cock as Celestia gave him another stalling lick.

“I am giving you some leeway as you are clearly indisposed and incapable of higher though at present, but I could always just st-”

“I-inside! I need to make me cum… i-in your mouth…” Blake cut her off, feeling his face and cheeks flushing with warmth.

Celestia drew back, staring down at him, her eyes flashing triumphantly. “Yes… yes you do…” she purred, and then dove back down over him, burying herself right to his base in one smooth motion again.

The powerful hoof was back on his hip, and Blake gasped as Celestia seemed to come to some kind of decision to just make him blow as soon as possible, her sleek muzzle lifting up a little and an almost desperate, eager feathering of her tongue against his tip making him throb and jerk before she shoved her muzzle back down over him and nursed on him hungrily, only to draw back up and repeat the process!

Blake’s head fell back, and he bit his tongue, his hips tensing, the muscles of his stomach tightening up and both heels digging against the floor. The pain in his foot was completely forgotten as Celestia started to urgently nurse on him, holding him balls-deep in her perfect muzzle as she diligently suckled and swallowed around him, carefully timing her motions so that each urgent throb of his cock was met by another of her swallows, which just made him throb and stiffen all the harder!

“A-ah f-fuck!” Blake hissed to the ceiling, fists clenched tight against his chest as his hips overcame her grasp for just a moment and he ground himself urgently right against her muzzle. His cock throbbed against her tongue, and then his first eager spurt splashed up, strong enough to splatter the back of her muzzle and coat the back of her tongue. Celestia snorted an exhale around him in surprise, perhaps at the taste or sensation, and his next two urgent bursts splashed in to join the first, coating over the back of her tongue and then dripping down, utterly flooding the princess’ muzzle with his taste.

Celestia seemed to gather her wits then, and tightened her grasp around him, adjusting her angle and swallowing, a faintly audible action that made all the surfaces of her muzzle contract around him and her tongue curl against his underside to make him spurt into her mouth all the more urgently.

That large head started to bob carefully in time with his spurts, working to the rhythm of her eager swallows as she hummed around him, the faint, pleased rumbling she made adding another mind-bending element to her already-stupefying blowjob as she eagerly swallowed down every last burst of Blake’s urgently-spilled spunk.

“H-holy… f-f-fuuu….” Blake stammered, not even able to complete a full sentence as he stared up at the ceiling, his entire body going limp.

Celestia giggled around him, curling her tongue against him and drawing upwards, letting her tongue slip off his tip as his cock fell back against his belly, and she gave an audible swallow, before dragging another series of gentle licks around him, cleaning him up. Her licks trailed over his belly, his chest, and then paused at his throat so she could stare down at him. “You taste… unique.”

“I… I fucking… Just…” Blake mumbled incoherently.

“Was I that good?” Celestia simpered, a wicked laugh in her tone.

“Jusdontell…” Blake began, before giving up on words for that moment, trying to compose himself. After several long, long seconds, the world stopped spinning, and he became aware of a throbbing in his bad foot that had been buried under post-orgasm euphoria brought on by easily the best blowjob he could have ever conceived.

“Just don’t tell the world at large that you’re that… good. At blowjobs. Ponies, that is,” Blake managed to say to the ceiling in general. “My species would be extinct in one generation.”

“I believe I get the gist of what you are saying,” Celestia giggled.

“It sounded better in my head,” Blake complained, groaning weakly. “I don’t think I can feel my fucking fingers. Jesus Christ.”

“So it was acceptable, then?” Celestia asked, a smug note in her voice.

“Are you fishing for compliments?” Blake asked blankly.

“Yes.”

“Then yes, it was the best fucking blowjob I have ever had and I’m going to be looking down on every girl I ever have sex with after this because there is no way they can measure up. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

There was a pause, and then a low, pleased purr. “Yes.”

“I’d apologize for saying that you’d be vanilla but I have zero regrets about the sequence of events that lead to this.”

Celestia giggled, resting her nose on his chest and peering down at him. “That was… rather vanilla, all things considered. Most wish to see the princess debase herself for their enjoyment. Open mouthed, waiting, face covered…” she trailed off suggestively.

Blake swallowed thickly at the mental image, and even in his euphoric daze, the thought still excited him. “Next time?” he asked with timid hopefulness.

Celestia arched an eyebrow at him quizzically, and that low purr came back. “You think there will be a next time?”

“After that, I’m going to do absolutely everything in my power to make sure there is,” Blake responded candidly.

Celestia paused at that, and the wicked smirk in her tone grew louder. “Oh Blake, you poor human. You can’t just admit things like that to me and expect me not to take advantage of them.”

Blake rolled his eyes. “As though, after that, there was absolutely any doubt that I’d do anything you ask just for the chance of it happening again.”

“Oh I know,” Celestia purred hungrily, staring down at him with a twinkle in her pretty pink eyes. “And I already have some ideas.”

Author's Note

I am sincerely sorry I keep you guys waiting so long for these. If you're reading this, thanks for having the patience to still be waiting on this slow-ass mothafuckin pegasus to write shit!

P.S. new keyboard, keys are really stiff. Probably typos I missed! :derpytongue2: