Author's Note
Have you ever watched those nature documentaries on National Geographic and all of a sudden, two animals are going at it and you have no idea what you're looking at? Well, this story is a little like that. This is a canon explanation of how ponies reproduce despite having no visible reproductive organs, much to the consternation of clopfic writers.
All Natural Pony Bangin'
It was a nondescript day in the middle of spring in Ponyville. Rather, that was how it felt to Rainbow Dash at this specific point in time. If this specific day were nondescript, she would have no reason to have recalled it; thus, this day would have no significance.
This day did, however, have significance. For it was the day Rainbow Dash would be impregnated by Big Macintosh.
Not that Rainbow Dash knew that as she was napping on her cloud. Unbeknownst to her, her biological clock was ticking just a little faster than those of her friends. Perhaps it was a side effect of her athleticism. Perhaps awesomeness of a pony had something to do with it. It was most likely that the pony’s biological clock is dictated by genetics. This was all something for Twilight to consider, though; none of this entered into Rainbow Dash’s consideration throughout her nap. She was dreaming of races, of winning, and of friends. Maternal concerns were not her dig.
On the other side of Ponyville, Big Macintosh was likewise experiencing a nondescript day. Farmwork tended to blend together seamlessly into a blanket of general upkeep that really boiled down to “good year” or “bad year.” Provided his work each day was sufficient, the only anomalous factors were—well, everything else. He pulled his own weight; it was up to the other respective family members to pull theirs, and there was also the luck factor in weather, pests, and unforeseen accidents.
Ironically, such an unforeseen accident was to occur today, and while Big Macintosh could be redeemed as nothing more than a victim of his own biological clock, the side effects would be much longer lasting due to the experience he was about to have.
To cut several paragraphs of exposition short, these two ponies were about to bang.
Big Macintosh was called first. He had just finished bucking a tree, its apples falling neatly into the baskets he had set out. Not a problem for him. He was big, strong, and the envy of all other stallions in Ponyville. Mares would line up just to have the tiniest shot of getting to call him their special somepony a single time. Not that he was interested in such things.
Suddenly, he was. He was very much interested.
Some knot that had been twisted up inside of him unfurled, the metaphorical appendage inside him expanding and reaching its full size. He felt... different, somehow. Like he—needed something. He had no idea what, though.
All he knew was that he was being called to the east. He abandoned his trees; let Applejack wonder why his tasks hadn’t been completed for the day. He had far greater desires than to perform his honest day’s work at this point.
Rainbow Dash lazily opened an eye, marking the Sun’s position in the sky. She figured she still had another ten minutes of rest before she was expected to be at Fluttershy’s for some thing to do with helping animals that she’d requested. Rainbow Dash hadn’t been listening that closely, but she knew that Fluttershy could count on her.
That is, unless this sudden nagging urge wasn’t telling her to head east.
She closed her eyes, doing everything that she could to ignore it. It stuck around, getting progressively worse. This... feeling. Like there was a hole inside of her, something missing. She needed to fill that hole with something. She had no idea what, but she had to.
She couldn’t take it any longer. She just felt so empty inside. She wasn’t hungry, but she knew she needed to find something. She heeded her calling and departed for the east, flying somewhat slowly and uncertainly, like a foal taking their first virgin steps towards a future they couldn’t possibly fathom the size of.
Big Macintosh arrived at the site first. He found himself being carried to the small lake that Pinkie Pie had scored with her skates last winter. Despite his incredible knowledge of Ponyville, he admittedly had no knowledge of any ponies who swam in this lake, nor had he ever swam in this lake before.
He had been somewhat curious about it. He had never asked much, but he had asked Granny Smith about the small lake just to the southeast of the town of Ponyville.
Granny Smith simply told Big Macintosh, “You’ll find out when you’re older.” Big Mac was wise enough to trust Granny Smith’s judgment.
Now, as his hooves carried him closer and closer to the bizarre lake, he began to wonder anew. He’d seen it several times; he’d seen ponies swimming in it several times. He just didn’t know why it was there. A recreational pond was expected to be in a more strategic area—further from town, perhaps, or not taking up real estate where houses would most likely expand to.
Now that he thought about it, all of the houses in his lifetime had expanded in the other direction. For some reason, the area surrounding this lake was largely abandoned. Sure, there was wildlife and the like around, but the pond seemed... secluded.
As Big Macintosh approached the lake, he saw another pony in there. His eyes began to make out a familiar dark grey coat and tall, mohawk-looking mane. He consciously fought the urge to wave at Thunderlane, the awkwardness he felt at being here overpowering his desire to be friendly.
Apparently, Thunderlane’s swim in the lake was just being completed. Before Big Mac could come much closer, Thunderlane abruptly rose up and walked out of the water, heading around the lake toward Ponyville.
Big Macintosh shrugged to himself, then headed to the water’s edge. Something seemed... different about it, somehow. It was calling for him to swim in it, but why now? None of this made any sense to him.
Big Macintosh took several deep breaths, then went into the water. It was cool and refreshing; today wasn’t too hot, nor too cold, and the water was warm enough to be soothing to him. Admittedly, it was a nice change of pace. He had expected to be working all day, but instead he had come here and taken a dip in the water.
Abruptly, he felt like he was peeing.
On the biological level, much more was going on than meets the eye. Between a stallion’s legs is a tiny flap of skin, which is unnoticeable due to the congruity of the coat. There is no break in the fur, so the small hole between Big Macintosh’s legs was not visible unless great care was taken to move the fur and find it.
This hole between Big Mac’s legs is the orifice he would use to relieve himself from. Pony solid excretions come out in long strands through the hole, whereas their liquid excretions tinkle out as expected.
Contrary to what Big Mac thought he was experiencing, however, he was not relieving himself. Instead, he was releasing ejaculate; contained within this was sperm. The ejaculate contains white blood cells to defend the sperm from microbes in the water as well as the immune defenses of the mare’s system that the sperm intend to enter.
The white blood cells from the ejaculate quickly spread into the surrounding water, which was already devoid of microbes due to other stallions performing the same action; Big Macintosh’s blood cells went to work fighting Thunderlane’s blood cells and sperm, as well as what remained of the dozen or so other stallions that came before him. To his credit, Big Macintosh had a healthier diet than most ponies; as such, his sperm were marginally more robust and his white blood cells far more effective at the task as those of his foes.
In addition to the standard ingredients, there were trace amounts of pheromone present in the ejaculate that rose to the surface, warmed up slightly under the shining Sun, and turned into a gas, rising into the air; this gas was carried on the wind, where it was currently blowing towards Ponyville.
On the surface, Big Macintosh shivered involuntarily. He hadn’t peed in the water like this since he was a tiny colt with no bowel control. He glanced around in embarrassment, but no other ponies were around. A group of three squirrels stood on the shoreline, staring at him and silently judging, but he did his best to pointedly ignore them.
After a few moments of this happening, he abruptly felt the need to leave. He realized belatedly that he had simply up and left his chores at Sweet Apple Acres; a quick look at the Sun showed him that he had spent the better part of an hour meandering over here to take a quick dip when they had water for such things much closer to home, plus he was just going to get sweaty working again anyway. He even silently berated himself for not bothering to duck his head under; in retrospect, he probably didn’t want to get pee in his mane, but it would have been quite refreshing overall. He took off at a swift trot, wanting to conserve some of his energy for the remainder of his work, but still wanting to hurry home in the hopes that he could still finish everything before sundown.
Rainbow Dash slowly approached the lake from the opposite direction. She did not know Big Macintosh had just been there; had she known where to look and looked very closely, she could have seen him moving to the southeast, whereas she was coming in out of town to the northeast. She had no reason to notice him there; she wasn’t noticing much as it was, anyway. There was a hole inside of her that needed filling, and this lake simply called to her.
She glanced to the left and to the right, ensuring that no other ponies were around. She then went for a dip in the pond.
Unlike stallions, mares’ orifices between their legs had only the one purpose: Excretion. Rainbow Dash did not feel the urge to pee when the entered the water. She simply floated for a few moments, enjoying the soothing water.
She was enjoying herself so much, she decided she was going to duck her head under the water. She had the feeling it would feel very refreshing at this moment. She sucked in her breath and went under, intent on enjoying herself since she’d come all this way. Then, for some inexplicable reason, she decided to let go of her breath and try to inhale water.
She immediately regretted her decision, raising her head out of the water and coughing. She couldn’t understand why she had done that; she had been enjoying the moment, then her mouth just opened of its own volition.
Then she realized: It tasted like salt water! She coughed even more, trying to get the salty taste out of her mouth, but it was too late.
She considered for a moment how that could possibly be. They were nowhere near the ocean and this lake was filled purely by rainwater, which had made a small inlet to the river to be washed away when the lake got too high. As far as she could tell, there was no indication of why salt water would be in this lake, of all places. She resolved to get some answers from the weather team.
After a few moments of coughing, she had the common sense to look up. She realized that Time Turner was there. She knew he had been staring at her; he quickly averted his gaze, however, so that they would not make eye contact.
She felt really awkward coughing like that, so she said loud enough for him to hear, “A little water got up my nose, made me cough!”
Time Turner made no reply. He simply kept his eyes glued to the ground, as if he was patiently waiting to use the restroom.
Rainbow Dash shrugged to herself and got out of the water, flapping her wings several times and taking off for Fluttershy’s place. She realized suddenly that she’d spent almost an hour wandering over to that watering hole for a little dip and Fluttershy was probably getting worried at this point. She was running even later than she tended to be after taking a nap.
“What do you mean, not salt water? I was there! I sampled it myself! There’s something wrong with that lake!” Rainbow Dash berated Thunderlane and Cloudkicker, the two ponies staring at the ground and refusing to make eye contact with Rainbow Dash.
“Miss Dash,” Cloudkicker interrupted, “it’s definitely fresh water. We’ve checked the charts. There’s nothing bizarre about that lake from the weather team’s standpoint.”
“Thunderlane, you’ve been in that lake before, haven’t you?” Thunderlane nodded sheepishly, the tiniest ghost of a blush creeping up his cheeks. “What did the water taste like?”
“I didn’t sample the water, Miss Dash.”
“Well... okay, but was there anything off about it?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Hmm,” Rainbow Dash pondered. “Why don’t we go out there and take a look? I’m pretty sure the both of you would agree that it tastes like salt water!”
Cloudkicker’s look of surprise only managed to confuse Rainbow Dash. A slow, uncertain shake of the head only served to aggravate her further. Thunderlane muttered something very quietly, obvious enough that he was talking, but definitely not loud enough for Rainbow Dash to have caught it.
“What was that?” Rainbow Dash inquired.
“I, uh... we’ll find out in a month or so,” Thunderlane said cryptically.
“What? What does that mean?”
Thunderlane hesitated. “Never mind. Just... don’t worry about the lake, okay? It’s under control.”
Rainbow Dash sighed in exasperation. She didn’t understand why her fellow weather ponies weren’t freaking out about this. She’d never heard of salt water lakes this far inland, and she’d been trained in the stuff.
Thinking back on when she was in weather school, there was a consistent freshwater lake outside of nearly all established towns that required regular rainwater. She had never scrutinized this too closely; she just made a mental note when looking at the town maps. If it had ever been mentioned in any of the books she’d been expected to read, she certainly hadn’t retained the knowledge. There was also a freshwater lake located inside of one of the clouds in Cloudsdale. She had looked at it often as a filly and had occasionally asked her father if they could go swimming in it instead of having to go to other places on land, but her father had always told her distractedly, “No, no, not yet.” It had never made much sense to her, but she simply accepted the presence of the lake as something only certain privileged ponies got to do, since the impracticality of building a giant bowl out of special material that could be supported by clouds just to hold fresh water was bound to be expensive.
Now, she was being given the cold shoulder by her colleagues. Nopony she worked with seemed able to explain the bizarre freshwater lake that happened to contain inland salt water near Ponyville. Her next option was to look to her friends.
“N-no.” Twilight blushed profusely.
“You know what it’s for, though. You know everything.”
Hesitation. “Yes.”
“Then tell me!”
“N-no.”
“Why not? I’ve been asking everypony, and all they do is act weird!”
Pinkie Pie, shaking in her chair, couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!” She bounced across the table and tackled Rainbow Dash to the floor. “I can’t wait to have a part—”
“Pinkie Pie!” Twilight’s rebuke cut through Pinkie’s tirade. “You have to be gentle with her!”
Pinkie Pie looked shocked for a moment, then sad. “I guess it’ll have to be a pillow party, then. No pin the tail on the pony, no balloon popping, no bounce house...” then her expression brightened, “but there will be cake! Won’t that be nice?” She smiled at Rainbow Dash reassuringly.
“What the hay is going on, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked. There was genuine worry in her voice.
Twilight sighed, then looked at Spike. “Flambert’s Encyclopedia on Pony Biology, Anatomy, and Psychology, please.”
Spike nodded, then departed from the throne room to get the book.
What followed was an uncomfortable silence, then Rainbow Dash’s eyes rested upon Rarity. “You know, don’t you,” she said accusatorily.
Rarity rolled her eyes. “N-no. I know nothing of the sort.”
“You’re lying.” Rainbow Dash’s accusation hit Rarity’s shoulders. “Tell me, Rarity. I know you know.”
“It’s, um... well... I don’t want to discuss it. It’s... uncouth.”
An exasperated sigh. “Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy only looked down meekly. “Oh, well, it’s, um....” A blush rose to her cheeks. “It’s embarrassing.”
Rainbow Dash found herself blushing in turn. “What is? Is there something different about me? Did the salt water do something to my pores? I don’t know what’s so weird about this pond.” She turned to Applejack.
Applejack, to her credit, shrugged. “Beats me. Looks like just another waterin’ hole to me. Figured it might be drinkin’ water... though, now that ya mention it, I do see a pony swimmin’ in there from time to time.”
Rainbow Dash groaned. “I just want an answer!”
“Here it is!” Spike ran back in with a massive book held over his head. It was literally almost the same size as him.
“Great!” Rainbow Dash looked at Twilight. “This looks more like egghead stuff, though.”
“Oh, trust me. You’ll remember this after you read it.”
“All right. Show me the page, then. I don’t want to have to look through this headache.”
“All right.” Twilight flipped to the table of contents, muttering to herself. “Digestive... circulatory... ah.” She moved a high number of pages at once, flipped several more, then opened it up and pointed. “This paragraph.”
Rainbow Dash leaned over to read. Land ponies share a common ancestor with sea ponies; the two separate lines diverged several millennia ago, but vestiges of archaic adaptations still exist within land ponies. For a full list of references, turn to the section titled “Common Adaptations Between Land Ponies and Sea Ponies” within the Evolutionary Biology section of this textbook. Like sea ponies, land po—
Rainbow Dash’s vision blurred, her head lurching forward suddenly. Her stomach suddenly felt ready to eject itself from her body.
She forced herself to straighten up. She had to figure out what was going on here. Her blurred vision solidified ever so briefly. Like sea ponies, land ponies still perform several biologically necessary functions in aquatic envi—
Rainbow Dash threw up, directly on the paragraph she’d been trying to read. She stared at the discolored spot for a moment, colored a light orange, then angrily tried to clear it away.
The shocked silence around Rainbow Dash was broken by Twilight asking, “Rainbow... are you okay!?” The pitch in Twilight’s voice changed drastically within the sentence. The first word was uncertainty, then the three words that followed belied a sense of alarm. As if something was wrong.
Tears began to well up in Rainbow Dash’s eyes. “What’s wrong with me?”
Rarity looked uncertainly at her friend. “Well, I’d heard about mood swings, but I didn’t anticipate them happening... the day after.”
“Pinkie Pie!” Twilight shouted. “You need to be more careful! Rainbow Dash could be in—” She took several deep breaths. “You just need to be more careful around other ponies.” She looked at the other ponies surrounding Rainbow Dash. “We need to take her to the hospital.”
After several seconds of silence, Applejack said, “C’mon, move yer cabooses! You heard her!” Several hooves wrapped around Rainbow Dash.
The last several hours felt like a blur. She’d been carried on a hammock, suspended in the air, while she struggled against dizziness and an upset stomach. She nearly threw up two more times due to the bounciness of the ride, but managed to hold what remained of her lunch.
She then was taken into the hospital and laid down on a bed, where doctors stuck several cold metal instruments onto her stomach, causing her to shiver, and stuck several tubes down her throat, prompting her to cough several more times throughout the examination.
All too quickly, her friends had surrounded her, and a professional-looking doctor holding several charts that she suspected beared her name stood nearby.
“She’s fine.” Her assembled friends let out a collective breath. “Just a routine reaction. About 3 percent of all pony populations and about 7 percent of pegasus populations tend to have this reaction with their very first conception. The hormones released upon conception can offset the sense of balance. There’s several theories on why pegasi are more common, mostly related to equilibrium in flight and slight genetic alterations in semicircular canal development as a consequence.
“These don’t typically happen until midway into the onset of gestation—I say about 10 days, but some mares start a little earlier and some a little later—but it’s perfectly normal, especially for a pegasus of Rainbow Dash’s age. This also only tends to happen with first foal; the body seems better adapted to handle later conceptions, though this is not always the case.”
Rainbow Dash’s brain was still a little fuzzy, but she focused enough to make out words, interrupting the doctor. “What’s wrong with me?”
The doctor looked at Rainbow Dash, shocked, then back at her friends. All of them except Applejack looked down with slight blushes; Applejack simply shrugged. “She’s just been goin’ on about water or some such all day. Somethin’ about a lake outside Ponyville that’s got salt in it. Maybe she caught somethin’ in there.”
The doctor attempted to wipe the ghost of a smile off his face and adjusted his glasses. “Yes. Well. She did catch something while she was in there.” He looked back at his patient. “Rainbow Dash, you’re pregnant.”
About 30 days later, Rainbow Dash was lying over a blanket, feeling like her insides were being ripped out through her mouth.
The doctor said “gestation,” whatever that was, was approximately one month for a pony. Apparently, that meant throwing all of her major organs up onto a blanket. At least, it felt that way. She was isolated in the bathroom, Big Macintosh waiting with the girls outside. It was determined through the prognosis that he was the father; he had been initially embarrassed and refused to talk about it, then confided some small words in Applejack, then, at Applejack’s encouragement, he started speaking to Rainbow Dash directly.
His assurances that he would be there in her time of need seemed awfully hypocritical as she attempted to cough out her stomach onto this blanket.
After what felt like minutes, she felt a giant lump in her throat. She began panting, gagging, and choking as the giant object blocked her windpipe and pushed its way up her throat. It touched her uvula briefly, prompting her to throw up, an oval-shaped slightly squishy ball landing in front of her.
Buck similarities to sea ponies. Land ponies were not made for this.
Rainbow Dash lay down next to the blanket, an unholy combination of mucus, saliva, some bizarre aftertaste from that thing that had just come out of her, and a hint of that morning’s breakfast of—ironically—egg stewing inside of her mouth, souring her taste buds. She said loudly enough for those outside to hear, “Done.”
The door opened and Rainbow Dash was hugged tightly by Big Mac. He said reassuringly, “I’m here for ya.”
If Rainbow Dash had had the strength to do so, she would have rolled her eyes and made some snarky remark about laying an egg without him. Instead, she sobbed into his shoulder, her hormones finally catching up with her.
Rarity said quietly, “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that sight.”
Applejack glanced at Rarity with narrowed eyes. “The part where she’s cryin’ or the part where she’s huggin’ my brother?”
“Oh. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just... I’m not used to seeing her in such an emotional state.”
“You didn’t just cough up an egg.”
“Indeed. I’d say she’s earned a few tears and some consolation for that victory.”
