When Double Diamond met Starlight

The first thing that met Diamond the next morning was a sliver of harsh sunlight from the window. He raised his head and rubbed his eyes as if to wash it out. Diamond considered himself to be an independent colt and he loved to camp in his backyard as a foal and go on adventures in his later school years. Waking to harsh light never bothered him too much, at least not as much as the emptiness of this place. Even deserts usually had a special kind of ambience but there wasn’t any kind of natural sound. No birds or wolves and barely any wind even. He did hear sound from below and his ears swiveled to meet it. Deciding to see what it was, he left the room and went down the stairs.

Starlight turned to face him down there. “Good morning, sleepy colt!” she said sweetly. She was holding a large wooden spoon in one hoof.
“What’s up?” Diamond said, his words scraping out harshly. He had barely drunk water in the last 24 hours and his mouth felt as dry as the soil outside.

“It sounds like you have a sore throat?” Starlight said sympathetically.

Diamond shook his head. “It’s not bad really. I could use some water though.”

“Sure thing. Get a cup. I have oatmeal ready if you want some.” He saw a pot on the wood stove, steam hissing out of one corner.

He retrieved some water and gulped it for a minute. Starlight spooned some lumpy whitish brown mass into two bowls and set them on the table, his within hoof length. He blew on it and stuck some of it in his mouth. His tongue pulled some of the hot food in and his taste buds tackled the roughness of it. It didn’t taste like much at all really. He’s had plenty of oatmeal, rice and gruel in hotels, inns, hostels and barns but most of them at least tried to make them taste like something even if it was something best left on the end of a napkin. This was the essence of pure nothingness just like everything in the world outside those bare stone walls. Still, he kept eating as his stomach demanded something to fill it, taste or no taste.

Starlight seemed to enjoy the food. “I was thinking over last night about your cutie mark and some things came to me. When did you acquire it if I may ask? Where did you get it from?”

Eager for something else besides oatmeal, he put the spoon down. “Well, it’s a bit of a long story. I am an adventurer and I’ve tried to catalogue myself going to each of the tallest mountains in the world. I’ve reached the summits of most of them in the south and now, I guess it’s my time to journey in the northern lands before heading east. I hear the Griffin lands are particularly breathtaking…as well as dangerous I must admit.”

“Admit?”

“I’ve been on the cover of an outdoor pony’s magazine once. I guess most ponies think of me as fearless but that’s not the case. There’s lots of things that scare me and that includes fear of avalanches. That’s just the worst.” He didn’t want to but just thinking about the suddenness of something that can bury a pony with no hope of recovery got to him to hunch up his shoulders. He used to have dreams of being buried alive when he was young and it only went away through talking to a school counselor.

“Anyway,” he continued after sipping water. “This awesome mark arrived the day that I won a major skiing championship back in school. I just knew that I was destined to master the slopes and ride waves of snow. That’s what I’ve been doing with my life ever since.”

As he spoke, Starlight nodded along and kept eating that tasteless mush, her posture very ladylike.

“I don’t want to sound rude,” Diamond said. “But how did you manage to get used to this oatmeal? Isn’t it hard to eat?”

She lifted her head, her amusement piqued greatly as she stifled a laugh or giggle. “Well, it is no secret of mine that I can hardly cook unlike most ladies.”

Diamond thought he was out of line and rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry…I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Of course. But I did. I am proud of what I cook because I can cook no better than anypony else.” She emphasized her words proudly. “Hey, I have an idea. I can show you around to my wheat field where I grow my food.” She stood up and took all the dishes away to the sink.

“You grow food out here?” Diamond inquired hesitantly. The info struck him as unusual even though it was logical.

She grinned. “Well, let’s just say that there’s no market anywhere near here.”

Some distance off through a path littered by scraggly plants and covered in rocks that Diamond occasionally caught his hoof on, they reached some mushy soil that smelled like rot. A small plot of wheat stood straight if unmotivated to grow any higher than a pony.
“This is really all a pony like myself needs.” Starlight pointed down. “The soil is wet because it is fed by an underground chamber of water. It’s like an oasis that I’ve brought to the surface via my magic. I could grow far more food in the future. Potatoes, barley, what have you…”
“So this is how you live?” Diamond said, visibly impressed. He let out a sharp whistle.

“I am one hundred percent self-sufficient,” Starlight boasted. “I work with the land and the land provides for me.”

“That’s a great relationship,” he said. “What about other ponies? Aren’t you lonely?”

She looked down which worried him at first until he noticed that her eyes had narrowed and a smirk made her appear intrigued. “I guess I don’t think about it enough…at least not until there is a pony right in front of me.” A sudden wind that neither had expected roared to life and shoved hair into each other’s eyes. Diamond stumbled and almost fell on his butt with his hooves bearing into the mud.

Starlight laughed. “Be careful. The desert is a harsh mistress and likes to make those who bear her ways second guess everything they do.”
They walked into the field where a path was cut in between two sides. It blocked the bulk of the wind and allowed them time to rest. The wind made Diamond’s blood pump faster or maybe it was Starlight’s pretty eyes which bore holes in the earth and into his own soul when she glanced at him. She was a mare who knew everything she wanted and no pony or desert could deny her wishes. He felt that he could read who she was and he liked what he saw in that mysterious creature.

“Do you like it here?” she asked him. They stood next to each other in the mud.

“Here? In the desert?”

“Yes. My house. My desert.”

“It looks like you know what you’re doing and that it’s a pretty good system. I have to say it’s not bad.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So you do like it?”

He never really liked being asked those kind of questions that reminded him of an interview. There was a good reason why he only did that one in the magazine. He feared disappointing ponies. That’s why he often just told them what they wanted to hear.

He stared at his muddy hooves. “Yeah, I do.”

She grinned and elbowed him. “You better like it or I’ll throw you in the dungeon,” she said playfully.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, his voice rising sharply. He threw his hip to the left and bumped into her. He wanted to make the same cute contact but instead, she slipped and fell into the mud. At the same time, she grabbed on his hoof and pulled him down until splotches of mud dotted their coats all over. His face flushed heavily.

“Hey,” he said, panting. “If you have a dungeon in this kingdom of yours then would you also have a throne?”

She met his gaze. “Possibly.”

“But you don’t?”

“If I did, it wouldn’t be any higher than anypony else.”

Back at the house, they both took baths and got clean again. When Diamond got out, he smelled fresh bread which made him drool in his mouth surprisingly. It was as if he was getting used to things around here. He hadn’t expected that. He had no roots anywhere. No place he could really call home and that was something he never had a problem with before. Only the mountains were places where he had a calling towards and each and every one had its own unique spirit. He was beginning to see it in this house. In its plainness, he saw uniqueness. Its inhabitant, a queen of the desert who lacked a throne. She must have been drawn to the desert for the same reasons as he was towards the mountains.

He went downstairs and saw that she was cutting bread onto plates. But something new was placed on the table. A long twisted looking piece of wood that forked into two pieces at the end like an insect’s antenna. He blinked a few times, unsure what to make of it.
“Finally down, I see,” Starlight noted.

“Yeah…what’s this? Firewood?” He sat down.

She feigned offence. “Dear heavens, no! Colt, I would be furious if you burned this piece of wood.” She pushed a plate towards him.
Diamond fitted a corner of toast into his mouth and chewed on its crunchy surface.

“No butter this time?” Starlight said in amusement.

“Nope. I’m trying it plain for once. Maybe try your way on for size.”

“Excellent. Everypony should.” She drew in her breath like some kind of noble and he chuckled.

They ate the bread in silence and after she had cleared the table and washed the dishes, she hovered the stick in the air.

“This is a legendary device capable of wielding fantastic magic even more than I have ever seen in my travels. It is from the east where unicorns studied new and mystical spells that dazzled the minds of the greatest of mages.”

“So you know what that thing does?” Diamond said.

“I have my theories but what I have been lacking is a pony willing to be a subject of its powers,” Starlight said. “You see, I want to use this magic to make ponies equal. Where we have the same talents and powers. If I use it on myself first, it might not work but with a pony like yourself, I can see if this dream of mine is even possible.”

Diamond felt his body shrink as she spoke of him like a guinea pig. He was uncomfortable and expressed it outright by quickly standing and walking to a near window. Starlight teleported beside him instantly.

“Diamond…there is no need to be afraid. After all the ways I’ve shown my kindness, have I given you a reason not to trust me?” she cooed, a hoof gently placed on his back.

“I…don’t know.” He wanted to shy away from her since he wasn’t used to such feminine attention but he was kind of trapped there and he didn’t feel compelled to storm away. At least not yet. He then looked in her eyes, affixed in seriousness. “Starlight, could I use this magic? If you wanted it used on me then I could be one to use it on you? All things being equal, right?”

Starlight quickly snorted then waved an errant hair back. “Unicorns are better at using these devices because we have a magical conduit of our own. You don’t.”

“C’mon, Starlight!”

She withdrew towards the center of the room as if in contemplation or perhaps anger as Diamond’s worry felt like a weight in his gut. Then she took a deep breath and turned to face him.

“Very well, we’ll try it your way but the device might not take as well to you as it does to me. Regardless though, I wish to see it in action on you later.”

The agreement passed between them like lightning and there was no going back. Diamond gripped this strange and ancient device in his hooves and decided that maybe it needed to be aimed at the mare like a metal detector or a divining rod. He tried to concentrate and deliver thoughts to it to make it begin to work. At first it did nothing so he shook it a little like one might to do a malfunctioning remote to a child’s toy plane. Then he saw it light up at the end, a beautiful green spark that fluttered from one end to the other. He concentrated so much that he was gritting his teeth and folding his ears back. The rod turned alive in his hooves, waving counterclockwise and creating a magical field between the two prongs. He didn’t have to do anything but let it do its thing, its power growing.

He saw something incredible. On Starlight’s flank, her pretty mark split from her body as if lifted off. The mare squeezed her eyes shut and if he knew that it hurt then he would have stopped the magic immediately but he really had no idea. After a few seconds, the mark instantly flew back onto her coat and the magic ceased. A trickle of sweat was wiped from the mare’s brow as if she had carried most of the burden.
“The staff is quite powerful,” she said with heavy words. Her voice and body was labored and she sat down on the floor. Diamond put the thing down and hurried to fetch her cold water. The mare took it silently and sipped some then poured a bit over her face, her puffy cheeks and scrunched nose.

“That was truly some amazing stuff. I hope it didn’t hurt or anything,” he said. He watched her carefully but she seemed rather okay if drained of energy.

“There was no pain. In fact, it felt rather good if only for a moment.” She got up and took the staff and proceeded to go with it to her room.
He was guilty enough to want to inquire further as to whether she was alright or not but he kept his mouth shut instead. Nothing about the situation really settled with him right. The strange magic rod did something to her cutie mark. That was the most unsettling part of all. As he waited for her return, he remembered the equality symbol. He wondered if she was so obsessed with it that she would transplant her own mark away and replace it with that? He had never wielded magic before and none of it felt right. In fact, nothing did anymore in such a short span of time. He was sure that if he stuck around long enough, he would know all the answers but did he really need to know? Was anything worth gaining the friendship of this mare?

During dinner, he had come to the conclusion that it would be best if he took his leave and sooner the better. Besides, she mentioned that she would like to use the rod on him next when he was up to it. He tried to get his mind off of it and to maybe distract her by helping with some of the upkeep of the house. He used the ladder and repaired some fallen shingles from the roof. He asked her what her plans were and she mentioned that she would love to have others live on her land on a permanent basis. She offered him the upper bedroom opposite hers and he could live there as long as he wished. Politely, he thanked her and mentioned how fine of an idea it was even if he didn’t really intend on staying.

After they ate, she came to him and told him how lucky they were to have found each other. When he asked why, her explanation, somehow both evasive and direct at the same time, was that they both completed each other. That they both needed each other more than they thought. He carried that sentiment and her lovely gaze in his mind as he sat at the edge of his bed. He looked at his things, ready to be taken at a moment’s notice. He would have to think about it. Maybe he wouldn’t go after all but with so much to consider, he could go either way. He liked the idea of being important to a mare, even one he had only known a few days. It gave him a measure of warmth in his heart. That was one thing in favor. The weird magic and possibly being tested on? Maybe giving up his cutie mark? If any of that was negative, it was hard to tell.

He laid his head on the pillow and turned out the light. He looked up at the moon, its light entering the room. Later, it wasn’t there as if a heavy curtain had draped over the world. He was either awake or was enveloped in a lucid dream. Within sight, two glowing eyes floated beside the door. They came beside him. Diamond couldn’t force his body to move and his breath was ice cold. The slender outline of Starlight’s body was revealed slowly by a rising light from the staff in her left hoof. Diamond’s heart palpitated and he was unable to speak or resist as she climbed on him in one fluid motion. The blanket was mysteriously gone. She placed the staff behind his head and her hooves pulled it upward, bringing his head in contact with her own, and she clasped his lower lip between hers in what passed for a kiss. The freezing cold of his breath met an alien intensity of the mare’s tongue and steam blew between their mouths. Being a virgin himself, Diamond couldn’t resist allowing her to have her way with him. For him, sex was stranger than taking his first plunge down a steep slope. He was used to his freezing element but not the jarring heat of her body that was a furnace at first until the blood pulsed fast enough through both his heart and his engorged organ. Diamond’s masculine muscles lit up his body without much input from his mind, pulling him into the web of Starlight’s influence. Starlight’s sex offered no resistance and from how easily he slipped inside of her, it had to have been well used in the past. She squeezed on his penis as if trying to wring something out of him. To interrogate his virginity with all her arrogant ability. All the while, the light of the staff blew up brilliantly. As she rode him on that bed, there was a burning sensation on each of his flanks like an iron was being applied only really quick. But any pain quickly passed as pleasure took hold and nothing else seemed to matter. In the end, he practically blacked out.