The Gift of Growth

Chapters

Prologue: To the Moon and Back
Chapter 1: Lower Than Dirt
Chapter 2: Breaking Ground
Chapter 3: Taking Root
Chapter 4: Tough Loving Care

Prologue: To the Moon and Back

Mist Melody strolled through the Lunar Guard barracks nude, her buff, beautiful body bouncing the whole way down the hall.

Her stride was cool and confident; no prank or dare was involved with this. Indeed, though most ponies she passed by gave her an appreciative wandering eye, no one looked shocked or insulted by having to see her bare mons or her generous ass or her immense, swaying Q-cup breasts. Though the latter forced a couple of hyper ponies to hug the opposite wall as she passed by to avoid colliding with one arm-filling tit.

Life under the Moon’s command was simply, by royal policy, clothing-free.

There were no strict rules regarding fraternization, either. Even as Mist walked down the hall, every so often she could hear lovers of every gender, size, and partnership vigorously fucking in one of the adjacent rooms – or as the saying went, ‘worshiping the Moon’s pull.’ She smirked at hearing a favored toy get wrestled into submission, and though her loins tingled at the idea of going in there and showing whoever thought they were on ‘top’ who was really boss, Mist was on a mission.

Mist reached the end of the hall, climbed a staircase, and soon found herself before a set of double-doors leading into a grand office. She did not open the doors, and instead waited patiently with her hands behind her back. It didn’t take her keen bat-like ears to detect that somepony was already meeting with the mare in charge.

The left door opened, and out stumbled a muscular but normal-sized thestral stallion. His gait was wobbly and his faintly glowing, slit-pupiled eyes were a little bit glazed over. He barely nodded in acknowledgement of Mist Melody at all before marching robotically past her.

Mist just grinned toothily and rolled her eyes. She didn’t recognize him, so he was probably new, and new to meeting with the Princess in her… natural state.

“If you have made done with hubris,” came a booming, regal voice from beyond the doors, “then enter my presence with purpose, Mist Melody.”

She suppressed a chuckle at getting pegged from the next room over. Nevertheless, before heading inside, she took a moment to swallow and steel herself. Sure, she had been doing this for almost six years now, and it was funny to make fun of the newbies for getting bowled over, but the truth was that meeting a Goddess was something you were never meant to get used to, and she was no exception.

Mist Melody entered, and was immediately awash in the awe-inspiring and intensely arousing presence of Princess Luna (High Warmistress of All Equestria, the Great Mother, the Unbound Moon, Goddess of Dreams and Illusions and the Night, etc. etc.).

There were plenty of logical, somewhat-documented reasons why basking in the aura of an alicorn was so affecting, and Mist Melody reminded herself of them even as said aura worked to disarm her skepticism and inflame her passion.

The first reason was that the alicorns were quite unmistakably divine. They were Goddesses, avatars of the virtues that ponykind held dear. To stand in an alicorn’s presence was to witness an ageless champion of all Epona, ascended by the very concepts they represented, and it was impossible to see them in person without at least a little stirring in one’s soul.

The second reason was that they were very magical. Sounded obvious when you put it like that, but there was more to it. Alicorns were brimming with power. Even if they suppressed their presence (which they often had to do just to function in public society without creating spontaneous cults left and right), the sheer potential of their power was impossible to ignore. Their bodies were enchanted with all kinds of powerful magicks, big and small, passive and active, and even if it hadn’t been all terribly impressive, the most magic-insensitive office worker would still be able to feel the power radiating off them.

And the third reason, the biggest reason, was... well, everything physical about the alicorns. Strength and beauty went hand-in-hand in Epona, and though hard-working hypers like Mist Melody were blessed with imposing muscles and generous endowments, alicorns were orders of magnitude greater.

It was impossible to look at Luna and not start reciting numbers and measurements in your head, comparing yourself to her. The messy mane on Mist Melody’s head reached just above 7’10”, fairly tall for a hyper, but Luna’s full insane height was 9’4” – 30 inches of difference for someone who wasn’t used to looking UP at much of anything. The top of Mist’s head could maybe reach Luna’s massive shoulders, but that just put her in perfect range to be all but smothered from the waist up in the Goddess’s gravity-defying Z-cup breasts, with only Mist’s ears and her short, unkempt mane poking out from the cleavage. An enticing scenario, to be sure – almost as enticing as being penetrated by those immense nipples, bigger than even a hyper pony’s cock when they were completely turgid.

Then there were the muscles. It was almost impossible to realize your first time, because there was so much and so big, but the fact was that the largest and most powerful alicorns were just fucking broad as hell. Broad as brick houses. Broad as almost three Mist Melodies standing side by side, and every inch was packed with impossibly strong, impossibly dense, impossibly huge muscularity. These were ponies who you could believe could move mountains, magic or not. In comparison, the most that Mist could move with her buff body was a couple hundred pounds.

Oh, and what was Luna doing with her nude alicorn body to really accentuate her divinity, her magic, and her enormous physicality? What position was she assuming to drive home how naturally dominant she was over all her subjects?

She was lounging on the couch at one side of the room, reading a book and eating snacks. Her horn was alit with magic, guiding a pen in the jotting down of reports over on the office’s central desk, but that was the only sign of professionalism she was showing at the moment. Yet her commanding alicorn presence made its best effort to unwind Mist Melody’s sanity regardless.

Luna didn’t need to do anything to inspire awe and lust, as the second-greatest alicorn (and only by a small margin, that) in all of Equestria. All she had to do was be.

But Mist was no fresh-faced, slack-jawed rookie. Sure, her heartbeat was quickening, her fat nips were rock-hard, and the cleft between her legs was threatening to catch fire with all that heat, but Mist was experienced enough to let it roll over her. She didn’t need to prostrate herself before this goddess, nor beg for mercy or pleasure.

Mist simply took a knee before her, bowing her head. Not out of worship, but out of professional respect. “Your Majesty,” she said.

With the noble tone of a Goddess-Princess who sounded supremely bored, and without even raising her eyes from her book, Luna let out a sigh and muttered, “Report.”

“Yes, Your Highness. I briefed Winter Wind and Comet Crush about the psychological profiles of all my wards, and completed delegation of my personal guardian duties to them. Then I patrolled the dreamscape of the greater Canterlot area for the remainder of my shift. I only had one encounter – one Baku and one Greater Fiend, and dispatched both.”

Luna’s eyes widened, and she finally looked up from her text and over at the kneeling hyper thestral. “A Greater Fiend? So simply, my dear Watchmare? Thus, and nothing of consequence else?”

Mist was aware that that was no small feat, but she was still ‘on the clock.’ “...The details will be in the written report, my Goddess–”

“You must tell me!” Luna declared with a grin. She sat up on the couch, crossing her perfect legs – her thighs wide enough for two normal ponies to be seated upon, each – and set her book aside. “Was the battle most glorious? Did you honor your Warmistress well in holy combat?”

The thestral hesitated for a moment, then said, “It will be much easier to tell you when I’m not kneeling, Your Highness.”

“Ah, of course. Ahem. Mist Melody, Dream Warden and–”

“Actually, my Mistress, if I could make one last professional request,” Mist said quickly. “At some point during my sabbatical, I would like to… dive into the Akashic Record.”

Luna’s eyes went even wider in surprise. “That is no small thing for thee to ask for, child…” she said gravely, slipping a little into archaic speech as she was occasionally wont to do. “Art thou then prepared according to such a journey's need, then?”

“Not yet,” Mist admitted. “It will depend on how my project goes.”

The Princess ‘ahh’d in understanding. “In that case… Thy mistressy of dreamwalking is sufficient to the task, and thou'rt well apprised of such precautions and procedures as are required. I grant thee this boon. Is that all thy needs?”

“As far as professional requests go – yes, Your Majesty.”

“Very well. Mist Melody, Dream Warden and Knight-Lieutenant of the Lunar Guard, I bestow upon thee sabbatical until the beginning of the fourth working week from today. Of this duty, then, thou art dismissed.”

Finally, Mist thought. She got up and stretched, her muscles flexing and tensing as she worked out the kinks from a long night of work. Princess Luna yawned and stretched also, though it was a lot more dramatic when she did it. Biceps bulged bigger than Mist’s entire head, and millennia of evolutionary instinct screamed at Mist to cower in awe and lavish praise upon them for the rest of the night. But Mist exercised self-control, outwardly cool and collected. There will be plenty of time for that later, if my Goddess wishes it. And if not tonight, then there will always be another night.

Still, her inner thighs must have twitched or something, because the subtle signs of Mist’s attraction did not escape Luna’s eye. Smirking, the Princess kept flexing and said, “I have a sneaking suspicion of what your next personal request might be…”

Rolling her shoulders, Mist Melody grinned – baring her cute little fangs – and said, “Didn’t you wanna hear about the Greater Fiend, though?”

“Absolutely!” Luna agreed. “But yours was the last report of the night, so, mmm…” The immortal Goddess uncrossed her legs and let them spread ever so slightly. “...I hope you don’t mind if your Princess… unwinds.”

A wave of powerful, intoxicating arousal slammed into Mist’s nervous system like… well, like an alicorn in a wrestling match. (Trains had nothing on that.) And it was all due to the scent of Luna’s unceasing arousal, which the Princess was now allowing to spread from between her legs and waft around the entire room. And Mist… Mist loved that scent, those pheromones, perhaps somewhat unhealthily. It was her weakness.

She’s really going fast tonight, Mist noted to herself. I guess she’s already got some ponies ‘in orbit.’ Darn. Probably won’t mind me joining in, though, and Generosity knows she can send a half-dozen ponies to a Dream of pleasure as easily as one.

Outwardly, Mist acted as though Luna’s addictive scent was little more than a minor distraction, keeping up her own smirk and shrugging her shoulders. “Anyway… So, the Greater Fiend and the Baku. It was actually the Baku I discovered first, in the dream of a little filly in the Noble Quarter.” Mist frowned as she remembered the diminutive elephant-ox-tiger chimera. “It was eating up a recurring nightmare she’d been having, but I intervened once the Baku started to eat her hopes and desires as well.”

Luna’s face scrunched up in thought. “Shame. Baku aren’t always the predatory type. But most strange that it was the Baku you found first, and not the Greater Fiend. They aren’t exactly known for their stealth, as dream-monsters go.”

“I have a feeling the Baku had something to do with that. As soon as I apprehended the Baku, it offered up the Fiend as a bargain, uncloaking it and even revealing the core essence to me. I saw no reason not to take the advantage, and ended it in two strikes.”

“Aww, so no glorious battle, then. ...Wait, do not tell me you left the filly unattended!”

Mist grinned and flexed her leathery wings, which briefly glowed with pinkish-purple magical power, along with her eyes. “Of course not. I quartered the filly away in a protected dream-bubble while the Baku was pleading for its life, but set up an illusion where she had been. While I was off facing the Greater Fiend, the Baku made a break for the filly… or what it thought was the filly.”

“Baku are usually more intelligent than that,” Luna noted.

“It was probably gonna eat up whatever it could before I came back, so it was in a hurry. But the trap went off, revealing the Baku’s core essence, and I dispatched it in just one strike.” Mist folded her arms under her breasts a little proudly. “Then I comforted the filly for the rest of my shift. Her parents are having marital troubles, and she was hurt and confused, partially blaming herself for their anger. I did what I could to reassure her, but… that’s rough stuff. I at least guaranteed her that she wouldn’t have those nightmares for a while.”

Luna raised a massive hand to her chin. “Guilt… That is very attractive to a Fiend. You don’t suppose…?”

“Oh, I’m pretty certain the two of them had a whole racket going. The Greater Fiend finds the target and stokes the nightmares, the Baku offers to take them away and maybe a little extra. They both get fed, the Fiend gets a cloak, and the Baku gets some muscle. Though it couldn’t have been a strong bond, since the Baku sold its partner out immediately.”

“If that’s true, then this ‘racket’ could have been going on for some time. That is troubling. A shame you did not capture and question them… but as you said, one of them was a Greater Fiend, and they were terrorizing a little filly, so I do not fault you for taking decisive action.”

Mist held up a finger. “I did capture their leftover psychic essences and had them sent off for crystallization.” She shrugged and added, “Maybe while I’m on vacation, somepony can open up a case file and dig through those essences. There might be a string of kids out there whose parents are wondering why their child’s completely lost their passion and drive to do, well, anything.”

A warm, broad smile grew on Luna’s muzzle that made Mist weak in the knees. “A marvelous night’s work, my little Melody.”

Direct praise from an unrestrained Goddess was something ponies were practically programmed to fall apart over, but Mist did her best not to melt and merely shrugged in response. “Just doing my job, Princess.”

The smile morphed into a knowing grin as Luna reclined further into the couch, making it creak under her incredible weight, and spread her legs another inch wider. “Still… after a hard working week, and before you embark on this ‘project’ of yours… I have no doubt there’s one thing you’d like most.”

Mist tried to hide her nervous gulp. With Luna turning up the charm, resisting her was about to get way more difficult. It was tough enough with the Princess of the Night just lounging around, hanging out casually with an off-duty guard. Now she was starting to assert herself as Mistress once again. On top of that, her unmistakable scent had permeated the entire room. She wouldn’t have been surprised if it was starting to seep through the wood and affect the rutting couples on the ground floor.

“Mmm…” the powerful, sexy Goddess hummed pleasurably as she teasingly rubbed her inner thighs for Mist’s benefit, her hands straying closer and closer to her barely hidden treasure every time. “I’m afraid… you’ll have to share a bit. Three of your fellow guards have also requested some ‘personal time’ this night.”

I knew it. “Eh, I don’t mind,” Mist said as casually as she could, even as sweat began to form on her brow. “Just a little bit of you is mindblowing enough; we all know that.”

“Indeed; the last two had no objections either.” Luna’s grin widened further as she spread her legs far enough apart that her tree-trunk thighs no longer obscured her soft, plump lower lips. Though darkened under the shadow of her gravity-defying Z-cup bust, the patch of ethereal starlight hair on her mons glittered, the light reflecting off every drop of slickening arousal seeping from that feminine portal, which Mist’s keen eyes zeroed-in on at the expense of remembering where she even was anymore. “Both of the stallions before you requested penetration by nipple, once they’ve earned it. The mare before them wanted a good fisting to send her into dreamland. I wonder if your eyes have already told me your request?”

Mist snapped herself out of her ocular worship and straightened her posture, physically rooting herself to focus her mind. Still smirking a little, she said, “It’s not so much a request as an inevitability, if we’re being real here.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Luna playfully bantered back. “What kind of good, responsible top would I be if I didn’t manage my little subbies’ expectations?”

Just the thought of not getting to lick Luna’s pussy and breathe in her musk gave Mist the fleeting desire to cave in and beg for the Goddess’s divine blessing. But the fire in Mist’s spirit was far from gone yet, even under this assault on all her senses. “Eh, you’re the boss. If all you want is… to make me do a little pole-dance in the corner or somethin’ while you play with everyone else, I guess I’m down for that. I’m sure you’ll find a way to… make it spectacular.”

At this point, Luna had to quirk an eyebrow at Mist’s casual replies. Most of the Lunar Guard would have been reduced to gibbering worshippers by now. Even the members of her closely guarded elite harem, the ones who were dedicated to her greatest secrets and her intimate needs, wouldn’t try to brush off getting some playtime with the Princess.

“If you must then be like that…” Luna muttered, and with some effort stood up from the couch.

The High Warmistress standing at her full height, putting her whole body on display, added yet more layers of temptation to Mist’s already struggling libido. The strongest desire of all, alongside cowering in awe and rubbing herself against every bulging muscle like a bitch in heat, was the want to be held tightly against that massive, curvy body – to be embraced and protected by the Great Mother. It was all Mist could do to stand still, maintain eye contact, and keep up her lazy smirk… instead of throwing herself at the Goddess’s feet and drooling over each toe.

Despite this open-faced challenge to her natural dominance, Luna smiled again. “Such strength of will. No wonder I’ve heard there are few other guards that can ‘top’ you, even among my thestrals.”

Mist shrugged again, and it felt like there was a huge rock weighing down each shoulder. “I have my preference,” she croaked out.

“Indeed…” Luna took a step forward, and one of her hands reached down to the holy gate between her legs. Two massive fingers spread the lips apart, baring her gash to the ‘merely’ hyper mare. A blast of pheromones hit like a sucker-punch, and Mist could’ve sworn that she’d gone briefly blind. “Would that preference,” Luna went on, “be between my legs, huffing my musk until you plummet into subspace, little more than a puppet dancing on my strings?”

As long as those strings are made of femcum bridging my muzzle and your glorious pussy, Mist dreamed.

“What would your peers think,” Luna teased, “if they walked in here and saw you, fully ‘switched,’ your delectable ass waving in the air, tail flagged as you mindlessly pleasured me?”

Mist somehow found enough saliva to swallow. “They’d… think ‘it must be Thursday.’”

The Princess burst into laughter – Goddesses, even her giggles felt like a blessing from heaven to Mist’s stupefied ears. When Luna calmed down a few moments later, the alicorn gazed upon her sub with a proud smile. She started to circle the stiffened hyper, the side of her massive breast brushing against Mist’s shoulder – and it took all of her strength to stay still and not get bowled over, and all of her willpower to not immediately turn her head and start licking at the expanse of creamy sideboob.

“How do you manage it?” the Princess asked. Her horn lit up, and Mist gasped. She could feel ghostly phantom touches across her nipples, her inner thighs, and her round buttocks. “That particular blend of devotion, trust, submission, and patience that gives you the strength to stand, even awash in my scent.” As she rounded to Mist’s front, she added, “It’s rare to see.”

Mist couldn’t even manage an easy shrug, not with Luna standing so close that those titanic, steel-deflecting breasts were smooshing her own gray tits. Luna’s presence was overpowering; it was getting hard to think, or do anything other than stare into that vast indigo cleavage. “Maybe… Maybe I’m not that enchanted with you,” she said haltingly. “Maybe, unlike every-freaking-body else here, I didn’t grow up dreaming every night about serving you.”

Luna frowned a bit. “That you most certainly did not.” She put a single thick finger under Mist’s chin and raised the hyper’s gaze up to meet her own. “But have I not earned that trust? Have I not proven over the last six years that I am worth your love, and that I always return that love?”

“You have, Princess,” Mist gasped out under the influence of Luna’s magic still playing with her most sensitive bits. “You have.”

“Good.”

Then, almost too fast for Mist to see, Luna reached down and pressed a single finger against the thestral’s lower lips. Mist choked back a moan – just a single one of the Goddess’s fingers had enough girth to pleasure her as any well-endowed normal pony’s cock, and to feel its power and strength pressing against her…!

“Then why do you keep up this… defiance?” Luna half-hissed into her ear, diving effortlessly back into the role of domineering Mistress. “Can you feel that? My loyal mares would have come at least once, and yet you are barely wetter than a single melting icicle! Why?!”

Luna’s barking demand crashed into Mist’s system and caused chaos. The Princess was right – play or not, she should have succumbed to pleasure by now, especially now that she was being actively seduced. She’d never lasted this long before, at least since she’d become a loyal Knight-Lieutenant. Everything was screaming at her to give in and let Luna’s dream of pleasure take its course… and yet she couldn’t. Some fire in her heart was desperate to be seen and recognized, and it only burned brighter and stronger. But Mist hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. “I… I don’t know, My Lady.”

“Hmph.” Luna’s other arm wrapped around Mist Melody’s back and pulled her against Luna’s body, burying the thestral’s upper half in acres of impossibly smooth Z-cup titflesh. Her stimulating magic didn’t let up, and Luna even went so far as to penetrate Mist’s pussy with her finger, up to the first knuckle. “Playing hard to get, are we?” Luna taunted, still playing her role. “Making me spend extra time with you? There are three other ponies wanting my attention too. You mean to hog me all to yourself?”

“N-No, Mistress…” Mist Melody gasped out. She was on the verge, barely able to form a coherent independent thought other than holding out as long as she could. And even that was breaking down, for she was utterly enveloped in the Great Mother, breathing the feminine scent emanating from the cleavage she was now up to her cheeks within. She took a great big whiff, and a dopey smile spread across her muzzle.

“W-What the–!” Luna sputtered, and it was hard to tell if her offense was part of the act or genuine. “Breathing so deeply of me and not so much as cumming…! How dare you disrespect your Goddess this way?! I can make an entire enemy squad cum in sync with a single flex of my mighty pectorals, and yet you enjoy the banquet of my body without returning the slightest tribute...? You are stealing the precious fruit of my glands’ labors! I could have you tried for this! I could court-martial you for this heinous crime!”

Mist just giggled like an idiot at her silly speech, beyond rational words at this point. She nuzzled into the top of one enormous boob. Her golden eyes began to glaze over from the stimulation.

Princess Luna Selene Solutae (High Warmistress of All Equestria, the Great Mother, the Unbound Moon, Goddess of Dreams and Illusions and the Night, etc. etc.) quickly lost her rage and instead became rather concerned for her guard. “All fun and games aside, Melody… Art thou hale? This is… becoming psychologically dangerous. A valiant effort, but thou knowest as well as I that no mortal can hold out forever. Please, Melody, just drop. It’s okay. Thou hast proven thy–”

The next words stopped and formed a lump in the Princess’s throat – a rare moment of shock for one who had commanded armies across millennia. Her eyes began to moisten in front of her sub – even rarer still. She ceased all of her active stimulation.

“Is… this, then, your signal of a grander climax?” the Goddess of the Night asked, her voice faintly trembling with emotion. “Do you tell your Goddess that your heart has grown strong and your will true?”

Mist could barely think of anything besides the pleasure she was denying herself, but something deep within her resonated. Maybe it hadn’t been her conscious desire when she walked in the room, but this was exactly what her subconscious wanted. She barely managed a nod.

Two stray tears flowed openly down Luna’s chiseled cheeks, and she hugged the thestral mare tighter. “Oh, Melody…! My sweet, baby Melody…”

The Princess’s horn glowed with an intensely bright light, and suddenly they were gone entirely from the Lunar Guard barracks. A second later, they reappeared in Luna’s bedchambers. The Princess tumbled back until she was seated at the edge of her giant mattress, and all Mist could do was hang on, kept upright only by the strength of Luna’s tits.

“The other three guards will have to wait,” Luna declared, sniffling and regaining her composure. “This night will be all about you.”

Mist panicked a little. Far be it from her to selfishly hog her Goddess’s attention and deny three other loyal subjects! “I– I don’t mind! I–”

“NONE OF THAT!” Luna barked, just barely avoiding use of the Royal Canterlot Voice, and Mist fell silent. Then the Princess kissed the thestral’s forehead. “You have moved your Mistress, more strongly than the praises of a thousand sycophants. I would be a disgrace to all of Goddesshood if I did not reward this act of worship.”

The Princess kissed her again, this time on the lips, and Mist Melody swooned like a maiden in a cheesy romance novel.

“I will ravish you, Mist Melody. I will send you to the sweetest Dreams of pleasure again and again, and keep you there until long after the sun rises. And if this ‘project’ of yours does not produce a most perfect mate for my sweet little Melody… then when you return, just say the word and I will collar you myself.”

No mere platitude, that. Nopony joined the ranks of Luna’s personal servants; they were chosen. Rumors swirled regarding increased longevity, phenomenal power, and pleasure beyond even a teenage hyper’s wildest dreams. To be even considered for the collar of shadows was an incredible honor. To be given the choice was a dream made reality.

But even in her wildly overstimulated state, Mist Melody knew that she was in no position to make such a commitment, if only because her reply would only contain the words ‘Yes yes Goddess yes more yes!’ So she just nodded her head once more, not trusting her own mouth.

“Then let us begin,” Luna said. She placed a hand on Mist’s head and gently, restraining might that could break through stone and steel down into a comforting pressure, pushed Mist down to a kneeling position. “Let yourself sink, Melody. Let yourself Dream.”

When those perfect thighs closed around her head and her tongue finally tasted the Princess of the Night’s sweet nectar, Mist Melody – her Loyalty proven – finally allowed herself to drop into blissful submission.

Chapter 1: Lower Than Dirt

An Earth Pony working farmland ought to be the most natural-looking thing in the world, but Trace somehow managed to make it appear almost downright alien.

He was the picture of a born-and-raised city-colt forced to hack it out in the sticks. Clothes that were a little too inauthentically rustic, accompanied by a gallery of modern creature comforts. High-end sunglasses, a personalized flask, a toolbelt marked with a prominent brand-name logo… By any other standard, Trace was an unremarkable Earth Pony stallion – average build, dark brown fur, green mane – but out on the border farms, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

Not that the southwest frontier was an especially dangerous place where only the most hardened badflanks dared to tread. Many of Hoofbrook’s residents were recent transplants themselves, seeking new jobs, buying new land, and starting families. Living out here just came with a nonzero risk of magical creature encounters, only slightly moreso than living in Ponyville next to the Everfree Forest.

So it wasn’t primarily his appearance that made Trace stand out. It was more the way he carried himself, his demeanor that constantly screamed “I’m not happy to be here.” At least if it looked like he was enjoying his work, his minor oddities could be ignored, but joy never seemed to be on his mind.

His work, his role on Happy Hoof Farms, was pest control. Yes, the warm season crops had gained a new enemy this year: Thunderblights. Tiny thrips that buzzed around the fields, sucking out the juices from the ripening plants. Called Thunderblights for the way they would create sparks in groups; though easy to mistake it for an electrical charge, it was actually a volatile magical charge that grew in strength as the swarm got bigger. They weren’t necessarily aggressive or deadly to ponies, but the sparks made a mean defense mechanism – no one wanted to get close to them for fear of getting an irritating zap for their trouble.

Enter Trace. Beneath the one-size-too-big overalls, his cutie mark was a set of curvy rainbow lines carrying two leaves, suggesting a fragrant gust of wind. For that was somehow his speciality: Perfumes, fragrances… and pheromones.

It was a simple application of his limited talents. The right smell, or combination of smells, could repel the Thunderblights, or lead them into an adhesive trap. It’d taken all of a day to set up his samples and see how the bugs reacted, and then he was off to the races. The fruits of Happy Hoof were Thunderblight-free, or at least much moreso than they would be without him.

The work was grueling and stressful, though. There were four fields under his singular protection. The traps had to be cleaned out almost every day, the fragrance wells refilled twice a week. He frequently got zapped for his trouble. Many of the substances he used needed to be imported from shops in central Equestria, and there’d recently been a price bump that went beyond the operating cost coverage outlined in his contract. Renegotiating his terms wouldn’t happen until the end of the harvest season – three weeks from now – and that was only IF his contract got renewed.

And in the last couple of days, the likelihood of Trace still having a job at the end of the summer had dramatically dropped. Apparently the magical creature situation had attracted the attention of the Caretakers – druids and subordinates of Kindness herself. Apparently this one particular Caretaker could… talk to the insects, figure out why they were out in swarms this year. Apparently Mr. Cocoa Bean and Mrs. Lavender Grace, the owners of Happy Hoof Farms, were looking for a more long-term solution to the Thunderblight problem. A reasoning that Trace completely understood, even if it threatened his livelihood.

Of course, that was Trace’s whole problem. He could understand, in an intellectual sense, why all these things had happened to him. Why he was out here in the sticks. Why he was working pest control. Why his job, his paycheck, was about to be taken away from him. But that didn’t stop everything about it from feeling so… so wrong. Beyond mere ennui, deep down, Trace was possessed of a profound anger and sadness that had been building up over the last few years, threatening to boil over.

Then, the day came. Heralded by heavy footsteps that shook the very soil.

Trace was just finishing up his rounds of cage-cleaning, scooping out the incapacitated bugs so they could be released back into the forest (treating them equinely and all that), when the shaking of the earth pulled his attention to the right. Then up… and up.

So much green, motherly mare approached him, practically posing for a magazine cover with every step. Seven and a half, maybe even eight feet of thick muscle and bounteous curves, contained only by tight jeans and a southern-style poncho that her chest mercilessly deformed. J-cups? K-cups?! The mare’s bust was insane, yet perfectly formed, and her strength kept it bouncy and perky.

Hyper.

It was a simple fact of life on Epona that there were normals and there were hypers. (And then there were alicorns, but Trace dreaded ever encountering them – their legendary virtue-driven aggression made their great beauty and strength as terrifying as they were arousing.) Hypers were bigger, stronger, and more well-endowed by several orders of magnitude compared to normals. And with the size came greater responsibilities, more required maintenance, bigger lusts. Or so Trace had heard. And read. And fantasized about.

Being normal wasn’t really supposed to be a source of shame, though. Normal ponies were still capable of great power, great feats of both magic and ingenuity, and Equestria’s social structure was such that everybody worked together and complemented each other anyway. Normal and hyper ponies hooked up all the time in happy (and fun-filled) marriages. No, it was only a sore point if you were the envious type. If you wanted and wished to always be that big, but ended up short-changed on the genetic lottery, or failed to be born into a family or community that cultivated hyper qualities.

Trace’s mother was a wedding planner. His father was an accountant. Both normal. Neither of them notable in any way – a trait apparently passed down genetically to him.

While his life flashed before his eyes, the hyper mare began to speak. “Is this your exterminator?” she asked in an airy, carefree voice.

From behind the mare stepped out Cocoa Bean, the stallion in charge (though everypony knew his wife Lavender was really in charge). A deep frown on his face, he said, “No, he doesn’t exterminate, we just send them out at day’s end– Ah, Trace? This is Orchid Blossom, the Caretaker I told you about. Orchid, meet Trace.”

Orchid Blossom smiled warmly and extended her giant, muscular arm, which Trace reluctantly mirrored. She shook his hand, and his arm might as well have been a limp noodle for all the strength he had compared to her. Trace pulled back and rubbed his poor elbow, while the hyper Caretaker just made a low, rumbling laugh in her throat. “Ahh, sorry, don’t know my own strength sometimes!”

Trace wasn’t feeling very good-humored. If the boss and the Caretaker were coming to him specifically, it could only mean one thing…

Cocoa Bean took off his straw hat and placed it on his chest. “Trace…” he said slowly, knowing full well how much this was going to hurt, “Orchid and the Thunderblights have come to an agreement.”

Even though he was expecting it, it didn’t sound any less absurd. “Excuse me?”

“I talked with the hive’s queen,” Orchid said authoritatively, unconsciously placing her hands on her wide, breeding hips and cocking them to one side. “They’re not evil, they’re desperate. An ancient evil cursed them, and many other creatures in the area, to be its minions. This land used to be called the Plaguelands for a reason, you know. The evil’s gone, but natural resources are dwindling.” She clapped her hands together, going from serious to cheerful in almost an instant. “So! In exchange for a tiny portion of crops to feed on until they and the cursed lands heal, they’ll protect all of Happy Hoof Farms from other pests!”

“Yeah…” Cocoa Bean mumbled. “The Fearcrows will start comin’ out in autumn. Turns out they can’t stand the little blighters.”

Trace swallowed a lump in his throat. “Great,” he deadpanned. “Everything works out, then.”

“And now you don’t have to lock up innocent insects!” Orchid cheered. “Isn’t it great when we respect nature and nature respects us right back? It never ceases to amaze me, and I’ve been doing this for most of my life!”

Trace’s heart turned cold and dead so he could delay his raw emotions until later. “Back up a second,” he muttered. “Why is it great that I’m not doing this anymore?”

Orchid just blinked at him. “Well… Mrs. Lavender told me you don’t even have a cutie mark in pest control. Cutie mark mismatch is one of the most severe causes of workplace stress, you know.” She beamed. “Now you can find new work that makes you happier!”

“Take my advice – once you finish your community service, leave Ponyville. Go far away. Never look for work in central Equestria again. At least out there, you have a chance no one cares about your… contemptible record.”

“Uh… I guess maybe pest control? Because that involves… scents… and stuff? I dunno, yer not giving me a lot to work with here.”

“Sure,” Trace said distractedly. “Whatever.”

Finally, the hyper Caretaker seemed to take the hint that something was wrong, and her chipper mood dampened by the tiniest degree. “What is your cutie mark in, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Trace grumbled, “‘Scent management.’”

That had been the official designation he’d been given after going through Crusader Counseling – the second time.

“Hmmm… Oh!” Orchid had a sudden flash of insight, which seemed almost dizzying for her floaty personality. “So you’re a botanist!”

That was technically true; his work involved enough specialized plant extract on a weekly basis for a hyper pony to take a bath in. Though Trace didn’t consider himself an expert. “More or less.”

“Have you considered opening up, like, a fragrances and perfume shop? City ponies love that sort of thing.”

“Tell me anything, order me around... please, master…! It feels so good!”

“...Out. Get out! OUT!!”

Trace swallowed again, and blinked in advance of the stinging feeling behind his eyeballs. “Tried. Failed,” he said robotically.

“Ohhh,” Orchid whined, like a sad puppy. “Bad business? Sales tanked?”

“No, more like a… bad accident,” Trace mumbled, and that was as dangerously close to the truth as he’d said to another living soul in years.

“Awwwwww. That’s a real bummer! Well, here.” And the hyper mare reached into her back pocket and pulled out a… pamphlet? Trace mindlessly took it, barely scanned over the cover with his eyes. Orchid continued, “The Caretakers are having a meeting next month in Ponyville. I think you should go!”

“I’m not a druid,” Trace pointed out, stating the utterly obvious. “And no offense, but it’s none of your business, ma’am.”

“Well, sure it is!” Orchid insisted, pouting with those full lips of hers. “I’m displacing your job, after all – I wouldn’t be a good Caretaker if I didn’t make sure everypony I affect was being taken care of, now would I? And you don’t need to be a druid to go to a Caretaker meeting; they’re a great resource for anyone who has a connection to nature and needs a little help! You could get some advice, start an apprenticeship, who knows!” She smiled her best motherly smile (completely ineffective on Trace’s black coal of a heart at this point) and said, “Won’t you at least try?”

Trace resisted the urge to tear up the pamphlet in front of her, and simply put it in his own pants pocket. “I’ll think about it,” was all he could trust himself to say.

Orchid nodded in understanding. “Okay.” She clapped her hands again. “So! As a gesture of good faith, we need to set all the captured Thunderblights free!” She put a finger on her cheek thoughtfully and added, “We also need to come up with a new name for them. ‘Thunderblights’ is just so awfully negative…”

Trace walked up to her and lifted up a jar full of natural adhesive and trapped insects. “Here,” he grumbled, shoving it into Orchid’s hands. He pulled out a bottle of dissolving agent and placed it in the crook of her arm. “Take that out of the fields, spray into the jar; in five minutes, they’ll be buzzing free.”

“Oh, sure!” Orchid said, more than a little confused. “But, um, aren’t you supposed to…?”

Trace put up his hands and stepped back. “Not my job anymore.” He then spun on his heels and marched off – before he could explode and do or say something he’d regret even more.

Twenty yards down the row of tomatoes, Cocoa Bean caught up to him in a sprint. “Hey, hey Trace!” As the two of them came to a stop, Trace’s now-former boss said, “Look, I’m sorry.”

Trace closed his eyes and put his hands up placatingly. “Don’t be,” he said as calmly as he could muster. “You’re the last person I’m mad at, sir. You’re doing what’s best for your farm – that, I ain’t got a problem with.”

Cocoa Bean nodded, still grimacing from the awkwardness of the whole situation. “I did warn you this might happen…”

“You sure did.”

“Well… then did you do what I said? Started looking for new options?”

“Yep.”

“...Find anything?”

Trace thought back to the coffee table in his dingy apartment, and the single letter left open upon it. The only company to respond after he’d submitted his application to that employment service.

We are happy to inform you that you are a suitable candidate for a position at Seaddle Waste Management! As you may have read in the news, Seaddle recently passed a local law prohibiting garbage facilities in northwestern Equestria from becoming too odorous. You, and your talent for scent management, would be ideal for protecting the sensitive noses of Seaddle residents and helping SWM stay within the bounds of the law! Contact us at your earliest convenience so that we may discuss the terms of your contract.

“Y-Yeah… I did.” The thought made his blood boil, but that answer was technically the truth.

“Okay. Okay, good!” Cocoa said, trying to stay positive. “You gonna be fine, then?”

Trace opened his mouth, but no words came out, completely frozen in indecision. He wanted to say ‘Yes,’ but twisted Honesty wouldn’t allow him to outright lie. He wanted to say ‘No,’ but twisted Generosity couldn’t permit him to foist his personal troubles onto someone else.

Thankfully, Cocoa just sighed and gave Trace a pat on the arm. “Well, look. You’ve got until the end of the harvest season. Wanna keep you around during negotiations so these Thunderblights know we can still go back to the old solution if they try to get greedy. Come in tomorrow, and if Orchid has these things under control, then… Well, I guess you don’t have to keep your traps up no more. Which gives ya… three weeks of paid vacation. Severance, if you wanna call it.”

A silver lining to this terrible news, finally, besides not having to get stung by Thunderblights anymore. “I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it.” Cocoa stepped back and put his straw hat back on his head. “Listen, Trace, I’m not tryin’ to be a father figure or nothin’, but… You’ve got three weeks. Take the time. Sort things out. Think about where you wanna take things. That’s… really what you need right now.”

More preaching. More advice. More people trying to solve the failure that seemed to be his destined path through life. “Thanks, sir,” Trace grumbled.

His boss gestured towards Trace’s pocket with the Caretaker pamphlet in it. “And consider going to that meeting, huh? I’ve never worked with a Caretaker who didn’t know their stuff.”

Sure, because the precise thing he wanted to do right now was walk into a convention hall full of Orchids. Trace couldn’t stop himself from gritting his teeth at the idea. “Will. Do.”

Cocoa Bean nodded awkwardly and started heading back through the fields towards the farmhouse. Trace turned the other way, towards home. It was a long walk, giving the depressed stallion plenty of time to think about the events that had led him up to this moment. One event in particular.

That oblivious hyper druid… She’d just had to mention the perfume shop.

It’d actually been a flower shop, mainly – one that sold perfumes and little wooden crafts as well. They’d called it Little Spice of Life.

There’d been three of them: Sunny Days, himself, and Carver. Sunny was the flower girl, earnest and hardworking, unquestionably the leader of the group. Carver was a shy unicorn stallion whose hobby was, well, his namesake. They’d been friends all throughout school, and once they graduated they all decided to go into business together.

“It’ll be a little scary,” she’d said as she pitched the idea, “but I don’t have a doubt it’ll push us to be greater than we are. Even if the business tanks, we’ll all have learned something that we can take with us for the rest of our lives!”

Just like that (and with a bit of Sunny’s father’s money), Little Spice of Life was open for business on the side streets of Ponyville.

To be honest, business had never been… great. Trace remembered a lot of long hours waiting for exactly zero customers. But eventually ponies started wandering in, word of mouth spread, and they were on their way to breaking even. All three of them were selling their products and having a grand old time, pushing themselves to make better and better things.

It was this pursuit of greatness that landed Trace in the biggest trouble of his life.

Before closing time, he’d walked into the manager’s office – Sunny Days’ office – carrying a tiny porcelain pot with a single bloom growing out of soil. It was a stalk of freesia blooms, giving off the most powerful scent he’d ever concocted, and he’d been sure it would sell brilliantly once he distilled it. He’d wanted to show her first and get her approval.

He still wasn’t sure how exactly it had all happened. He’d been rattling off about how excited he was, failing to notice how Sunny Days had transitioned from intelligent responses to quiet docility, grinning dreamily as she stared blankly at the flowers.

Trace stopped prattling on for a second and took notice, unable to ignore how vulnerable she looked in that state. Sunny wasn’t a hyper mare, but she still had an attractive body. The trio’s friendship was platonic, but once or twice Trace had dared to imagine what she’d be like… and that spark of curiosity surged again that day.

To this day, he wasn’t sure if that thought was the trigger, but he knew that a second later, Sunny had pulled her shirt off and was groping at the cups of her bra, showcasing her C-cups almost blatantly for Trace’s hungry eyes. That glassy eyed grin burned into Trace’s retinas, a display of complete helplessness that both horrified and... aroused him.

“Do that again,” she’d said huskily.

“W-What??”

“Make me do what you want,” Sunny, or the creature calling itself Sunny, moaned. “Tell me anything, order me around… please, master…” She threw herself against Trace’s body, rubbing up against him. “It feels so good!!”

Trace’s wide, terror-stricken eyes darted from her face, to her exposed body, to the porcelain pot held out in his hand…

A second later, he smashed the pot on the ground and stomped the freesia into the floorboards.

The spell broke in moments. Sunny stumbled back, blinking away her confusion. “What… What in the world…?” Then it all became clear – her half-nudity, Trace’s proximity, the fragrant plant on the floor...

“...Out. Get out! OUT!!”

“Why’d I hafta get the power fer shcumbagsh and shupervillainsh…” Trace slurred.

Laying on his couch in only his underwear and a t-shirt, sipping from a bottle of craft ale, fighting off existential dread. This was something Trace did every once in a while, and after practically being fired from a job he really disliked only to soon end up in an even more... less... dis...like...ing-er job… Well, indulgence was his only way to cope.

He had no close friends to speak of, no shoulders to cry on. Letting someone get to know him meant revealing that he’d pled guilty to one charge of Accidental Mind Control.

Pheromone control.

You can do a lot with pheromones. Trace knew that, because that had been a part of Trace’s job. You could repel or attract Thunderblights, for instance. But that was only the beginning. For many species of the animal kingdom, pheromones were an entire language; everything was spoken in undetectable scents and smells. Ponies of the modern age only appreciated ‘male,’ ‘female,’ and the most recognizable one, ‘horny,’ but the receptors were just as strong as any other animal’s, the scent language just as complex. So it wasn’t too much of a leap to assume that ponies could be swayed by more advanced pheromones creating powerful impulses in their unprepared minds.

Practically science fiction to the laypony, but to someone whose special talent was entirely about, to put it the Crusader way, ‘scent management’... Well...

Trace sighed and took another swig. The only reason he wasn’t still serving a life sentence in prison was because he’d stopped it as soon as he realized what was going on. It had been an uphill battle, though – it took truth draughts and mind-reading to satisfy the court regarding the veracity of his account. And downgrading the charge to Accidental hadn’t stopped it from ruining his life.

His addled brain struggled to remember the first person in charge of his case. Starlight… Shimmer? After Trace had finished his community service, Starlight had outright told him he would never be able to work in Ponyville, or any of the surrounding cities, again. Then she’d dumped him onto Bulk Biceps, Princess Fluttershy’s Captain of the Guard – of all ponies – who put him through Cutie Mark Crusader Counseling. Twice.

The first therapist had walked out in disgust as soon as he brought up the mind control incident, which had been devastating. (And strange, in retrospect. Had no one told the doctor beforehand? Had he never even looked at the file?) When the second therapist arrived, he just started pretending the whole thing had never happened – which made it hard to deal with his problems because he wasn’t sharing the actual source of his problems. Eventually, they wore him down to calling his cutie mark ‘scent management,’ recommended him to pest control, and sent him on his way.

But that was all a lie, wasn’t it? Even though it involved botany, shooing off bugs on a farm had felt subtly but thoroughly wrong. He was never happy to show up to work, never fulfilled in a way that mattered. He didn’t belong in Hoofbrook, not in this capacity.

And yet, what were his options?

Trace glanced at the coffee table, where the letter from Seaddle Waste Management lay, stained from being thrown in the trash can, and pulled out, multiple times. It was the only lucrative employment offer he was likely to get with his vague-ass cutie mark designation and his delinquent record. But it was job about making other ponies’ shit smell slightly less like shit. If pest control felt “wrong,” then just the thought of becoming a garbage-pony made all his bones want to tear themselves out of his skin!

The thing was, he couldn’t go back into botany again, back to the “right” career path. That power to control others’ minds had never really gone away. It was still within his grasp. Tartarus, he still had plenty of freesia extract for his lures! So inevitably, going down that path again would mean exposing himself to that power again, along with the consequences.

It wasn’t like he could go to the Caretakers for help. Trace looked down at the discarded pants on the floor, the pamphlet still sticking out of the front pocket. If a room full of upstanding druids found out he could use the power of nature to control others’ minds… they’d label him an abomination for sure. No, the Caretakers were not an option.

So that left him with… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well, no legal options, anyway.

Trace smacked his own forehead. He knew what he was about to start thinking, and it was always a bad road. But the pesky, villainous train of thought came regardless.

What if he replicated that power but didn’t chicken out? Could he use that ability to regain control of his life? Secure his finances? ...Find companionship? He hadn’t had a fillyfriend since college, well before Little Spice of Life was a thing. With the right pheromones… maybe he could even bag a hyper...

Smack! No. Trace was not going to rob ponies of their money. He was not going to take mares against their will. He was not the next Equestrian villain in larval form! He was just…! Just…

Trace sighed and rolled over.

He was just nopony worth caring about, clearly.

Through the haze of the dreamworld, Mrs. Lavender Grace’s office materialized. “Hello, Trace,” the farm owner said simply. “The bugs seem to be standing down, so it looks like we don’t need you anymore. Feel free to head back home and mooch off us for a couple of weeks before dying in a gutter somewhere.”

Trace looked down at the tiny porcelain pot in his hand, with the special freesia bloom. He just smirked and looked back up at the boss-mare. “You don’t mind me sticking around for a little bit, do you? In fact, you want me here…”

Lavender Grace nodded passively, a blush forming on her cheeks. “Y-Yes…” she murmured, unbuttoning her blouse. “I… I want you so bad…”

There were a couple of stomping footsteps, and the door to the office opened. “Mrs. Grace, you asked for me…?” The hyper mare Orchid ducked her head as she entered the room, but as the smell of the bloom entered her nostrils, she fell to her knees and stared open-mouthed at Trace. “W-Wowie…”

Trace reclined on the edge of Lavender’s desk. His pants had disappeared all of a sudden, letting his hard six-inch prick stab out into the open air. “I think you owe me a better apology than yesterday’s, don’t you?” Trace asked, grinning.

“Oh… Oh yes…”

“Me too…!”

Lavender Grace knelt down before him and took one of his balls into her mouth, gently sucking. The act seemed to fill her with pleasure. And Orchid threw off her poncho, baring her incredible green K-cups to Trace’s hungry eyes. With her might, she smashed them against Trace’s groin, burying his cock and Lavender’s head in the process.

Trace let out a sigh of contentment. At last, things were going his way.

A dainty hand gripped Trace’s shoulder; a pair of lips hovered near his ear. That was strange… When had a third participant entered the room?

“Do that again.”

Trace turned and recoiled in horror – there was Sunny Days, wearing the same glassy stare as that fateful day and a lustful, unnatural smile nearly splitting her face in two. The desk and the room dissolved and he flailed backwards. Now Orchid and Lavender had the same looks on their faces, their heads stretching upwards into the inky blackness and looming over his body.

It was all over. He’d let it happen again! He’d lost control, and now he was going to lose everything!

He fell backward as the growing, elongated eyes of the mares stared down at him, simultaneously begging their master for more and condemning his very soul. More faces stretched over him – friends, family, princesses, gods, demons; all judging him. All preparing the sharp instruments with which they’d take away more and more of him until there was only a husk of a pony left.

“No…” Trace begged, curling up on the ground. “No, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

And then – POW!

Something crashed into him, sending him and it careening through the void, until with an “Oof!” he landed on something... fluffy. A cloud? His assailant was now laying on top of him, massive and… soft. Very soft, mountains of softness, but big and incredibly strong, too, gripping him tightly.

Trace finally opened his eyes. A pair of golden, glowing thestral eyes gleamed playfully back at him.

Chapter 2: Breaking Ground

Trace briefly struggled to get free. It was fruitless – not only was he pinned beneath the bulk of this well-endowed hyper mare (and trying not to think too much about how naked he was and how much other naked skin he was making contact with), but the firm hands gripping his upper arms prevented any side-to-side shimmying. With no option to panic available, he settled for nervously looking back up into those eyes and stammering, “Uh… Um… Hi?”

He'd had better opening lines. Or not.

“Hi,” the mare said back in a low, tomboyish voice, grinning smugly and baring her fangs. There was a slight curl to the long thestral tongue just visible past the sharp teeth, as though she was restraining herself from licking her chops.

Having lived a mostly sheltered and unexciting diurnal life in Ponyville, Trace was barely aware of the existence of thestrals. The word ‘bat-pony’ came to mind, and he wondered, Is that offensive? I think I read somewhere that they find the term ‘bat-pony’ a little offensive. In his current position, he didn't think offensive was a good strategy. The thestrals had apparently been ‘brought back’ by Princess Luna’s return, whatever that meant… Otherwise, they were considered to be just another of ponykind’s distinct varieties. If rare.

In theory. There was a lot of thestral on him right now.

This thestral was, on closer inspection… kind of cute. Her face was round and her muzzle short, giving her a girlish appearance. There was, though, a faint sharpening of features around her cheeks and eyes, suggesting a hidden, lethal perceptiveness. Her mane, a deep purple, was short and messy, hairs pointing in whatever direction they felt like, adding to her rascal-y vibe. The rest of her, though, was pure, powerful hyper. Especially the massive, luscious breasts pressing into all of his naked torso, with only what seemed to be a skimpy, transparent negligee separating his flesh from hers.

Her ears swiveled forwards and a long smirk played over those prominent (especially in Trace's hindbrain) fangs. “It’s alright, I’ll wait,” the mare who had him in a pin said teasingly, after a few moments of Trace’s eyes darting in every direction trying to figure this all out. She leaned her head down, squishing the otherwise rather… exciting… heft of her breasts between their bodies even more, and added sultrily, “We’ve got allllllll niiiiiight.”

Despite Trace’s fears – the leftover terror from the nightmare, the shock of getting tackled by a stranger, the apprehension of having a big, beautiful hyper mare on top of him – he gathered enough of his wits to realize that he needed to speak. “Wh-Who are you?” he croaked out.

“Mist Melody, at your service!” she replied, performing a mock salute right in front of Trace’s face. “Lunar Guard, Dream Warden division.”

“Dr-Dream…?” Trace’s eyes widened. Despite being pinned down by a sexy mare, now was the time to panic. If she was a real dreamwalker, one of Luna’s guards, that meant she’d seen… everything!

Mist rolled her eyes and relaxed her grip on Trace’s arms as the earth pony squirmed backwards, dragging his body rather nicely against hers… and fell right off the cloud. Thankfully, their perch was close to the ‘ground,’ which had taken the form of a semi-solid lake of glass in a pinkish-purple nebula, so the damage from Trace’s fall was limited to a bonk on the head. Which thankfully caused ripples across the glass, rather than shattering the surface.

With the cloud all to herself, Mist laid herself across it and kicked up a long, chiseled leg playfully. Trace’s lower body was still propped up, showing his half-erect six-inch stallionhood for the dream-world to see. Mist smirked and gave it an interested tap with her finger.

“Gaaah!” Trace scrambled up to his feet and swung his short green tail around to his front, holding its strands fitfully with his hands in front of his bits to cover his shame.

Mist Melody rested her chin on her hand. “Relaaax. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Kinda cute, too. And you’re not in trouble for the dreams, either. We don’t arrest folks for thought-crimes. Besides…” The gray thestral winked and put her other finger in front of her lips. “I’m off the clock right now. Shhh!”

Despite his quaking knees, Trace’s eyes wandered. With the mare laid on her front, that light gray cleavage was pointed straight at him like a cannon. The black lingerie wasn’t hiding anything. She had to be even bustier than Orchid Blossom… and judging by how far away those feet were, maybe even a little taller, too. Every limb bulged with powerful muscle, smoothed out by just the slightest layer of feminine softness.

The thestral grinned and flipped over on the cloud, now laying on her back with her leathery bat wings spread wide to either side. Now her… O-cups? P-cups? Q-cups?! They were laying on her chest, the negligee holding them together just enough to thrust them high into the air, with those dark gray nipples stabbing upward…

“Enjoying the show?”

Trace winced and pressed the end of his tail tighter against his crotch, trying fruitlessly to tuck his stubbornly hard stallionhood between his legs. “What… What are you doing here?” he deflected.

Looking at him upside-down, Mist smiled and said, “You’re not in legal trouble, not yet, but you are in trouble, aren’tcha? You know what I mean. Job trouble? Life trouble? Feeling-like-you-got-nowhere-else-to-go-but-down trouble?”

His sense of skepticism returning, Trace replied, “And that’s why you’re trying to seduce me…?” He knew dreams didn't make sense, but shouldn't thestrals?

“Nah, I’m trying to seduce you because yer cute,” Mist said with a cat-like grin. “But I’m here because I wanna help.”

“Help…” Trace echoed dully. He’d heard that one before.

“Yep! You don’t wanna go to the Crusaders again and re-figure out your cutie mark because you’re afraid that they hate you for the whole mind control thing. But me? I know better. I’m not gonna turn you away just because of an honest mistake, or because you have fantasies about that sort of thing. Rather scrumptious ones, at that!”

An icy feeling chilled Trace’s veins. “You… You saw…?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve pretty much seen them all.” Out of nowhere, a large tome materialized and Mist opened it up to peruse it. The fact that she used her huge tits as, well, a rack did nothing to help Trace's focus, but he managed to pay enough attention to catch the title of the book, despite arguments coming from his nethers.

Embossed in gold letters on the cover were the words ‘The Big Book of Trace’s Erotic Dreams.’ The amount of glee in her voice as she read off the titles was, if anything, a little intimidating. Frankly, she outright cooed as she said, “There’s the ‘Saddle Arabian Sultan’... ‘Naked Giant in Manehattan’... ‘Makeout with Sexy Fictional Character du jour On the Couch’... ‘The Amazing Elastic Penis’ – hey, you’ve been having that one since you were a teenager, haven’t you?”

Trace recoiled a couple of steps back. “You’ve been stalking me for that long?!” Mental curses began in earnest as he tried to remember if he'd gone anywhere really… Oh, well, if she knew about the Elastic Penis one, it didn't matter if she found the Valley of the Boobs one.

“No no, I– pfft. When you’ve been having a recurring dream long enough, it develops certain markers that a dreamwalker can…” Mist trailed off, tossed the book aside flippantly, and rolled over to her front, squishing her breasts beneath her again. “In the interest of transparency” – she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at that – “you’ve been on my radar for about fffffour? Four months, yeah. You might remember a night back then where the ‘Sunny Days’ nightmare suddenly turned into ‘Saddle Arabian Sultan’ for no apparent reason. That was me! You’re welcome.”

“Uh… thank you?”

“And hey, that got my little mare in the boat paying attention, and that got me looking around… So as standard procedure, I did a little research, a little background check, to try and figure out why you were having that nightmare so much… And in the process, I learned a couple things. One, I kinda personally sympathize with your situation, and two… the solution to your problems is a liiiiittle more complicated than slashing up a couple of dream-monsters.”

Trace swallowed a lump in his throat and sighed. “Yeah… You got that right.” Complicated. He'd heard that before, too. Usually with bit signs attached.

“I usually do,” Mist replied smugly. She climbed forward and sat up on the cloud. Every movement was a combination of fluidity and coiled strength – so predatory he wondered if thestrals were part griffon. Part of the cloud raised up so she could lay across it on her side like a fainting couch, giving Trace a pin-up profile of her muscular, busty, nightwear-clad body. “So I’ve kept my eye on you since then. Nothing invasive beyond what a Dream Warden is allowed to do; just taking notes on your dreams and coming up with a plan. Now, here we are: You’ve got three weeks until your paychecks dry up, and I’ve got three weeks off work. I can give you my full attention~.”

The earth pony was absolutely flabbergasted and speechless at this point. Here was this beautiful hyper mare, in a lucid dream, claiming to know everything about him and assuring him that she was here to help with all of his troubles. Because that was likely. Part of Trace wanted to believe that he’d finally snapped and this was just a comforting hallucination, but Mist Melody looked so much more vibrant and real than the rest of the dream, which was just a little bit blurry and hazy. So the part of her being a dream-walking Lunar Guard seemed to check out… but where to start on the rest of it?

While Trace debated internally, Mist just kept smiling and resting in a provocative pose, patiently waiting for him to respond. When he was starting to take a little too long, she snorted and finally said, “Well? This is what you wanted, right? You’ve been hoping and praying someone would take notice of your situation. Here I am, offering to help.”

Trace swallowed and furrowed his brow, regaining some of his backbone. Bitter memories circled his mind – and, little did he know, behind his head – reminding him of prior help. He had many problems with this. “‘Help’…” he echoed, shaking his head slightly. He turned his back on her, scowling to himself. “I’ve had enough ‘help.’ I’ve had enough people trying to tell me how to fix my life. It’s never worked.”

He could almost feel the sharklike grin forming on her face behind him. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not going to do that,” she said, an extra layer of confidence (and hunger) in her voice.

Trace turned back around, still holding his tail as a proverbial fig leaf. “What is even your ‘plan,’ then?” The followup he left unspoken: ‘What can you do that professional counselors have tried and failed to do, twice?’

Mist Melody’s smile broadened and her eyes narrowed slightly, and Trace got the sense that she was choosing her words carefully. “Let’s just say… I’ve got a bunch of things for you to try, and depending on how you take to them, that’ll help both of us find what you’re missing. Think of it– yeah! Think of it like a placement test. Except at the end of it, you decide what you’re going to be, not me.” Judging by the way her cheekbones rose, she seemed awfully pleased with herself for this analogy.

Unimpressed, Trace replied, “And what if I say no?”

“No?” Mist responded, just a little bit surprised.

“Yeah. Because this looks sketchy as all Tartarus.”

Mist grimaced a little, but then shrugged, Q-cups wobbling. “Then I guess we never speak again. We go our separate ways. You go back to your dead-end life.” She sat up on the cloud-couch and leaned towards Trace, steepling her fingers beneath her chin and smirking. “Or I keep popping up in your dreams – and nightmares – until you say yes. Whichever’s more fun.”

“S-So I don’t have a choice,” Trace muttered, trying to pretend that he wasn’t kinda scared now. The glint on her fangs, the glow in those night-graced eyes… A quiet, mousy part of him wondered if she was deliberately shaping his dream to emphasize just how threateningly mighty she was.

Not that such a possibility was any less frightening.

“In theory, you do,” Mist pointed out. “You can go back to Crusader Counseling again. See if that garbage job pans out. Apply for openings in Ponyville. Any number of things, really.” She tilted her head, licking that long, pointed tongue around a finger for a moment, then gave Trace kind of a pitying look. “But realistically? If I know you half as well as you think you know yourself? Yeah, this is kinda your only ship in the harbor.”

Trace fell silent and stared sullenly down at the glassy, watery ‘floor.’ She had him there.

Mist Melody regarded him with an unreadable expression for a moment, then stood up. That immediately got Trace’s attention.

When he wasn’t slouching, Trace’s stood at the perfectly acceptable height of 5’9”. Mist Melody, however, not the tallest hyper but still rather tall for one, reached 7’10” easily. Just slightly more than two feet of difference, which put Trace’s eyes approximately level with the point of her sternum – and her sweeping underboob. This was a mare who could easily plant her chest on Trace’s head like a hat, and, despite everything, for a single moment Trace wanted little more than for that to happen.

Mist crossed half the distance between them, increasing Trace’s tension. When she was close enough to be tilting her head down at him, bright eyes peering down over the mountainous peaks of her breasts, she said, “You have my word – my word before the Unbound Moon! – that I won’t bankrupt you, publicly humiliate you, or put you in unnecessary danger.”

‘Unnecessary’?! screamed the panicky alarm bells in Trace’s head.

“Heck, at the end of all this, I won’t even ask for payment,” she purred with a casual shrug. “I know it’s hard to believe when you’re in this kind of situation, but… sometimes, someone offering to help is actually someone offering to help. So–” She offered down at him a large, powerful hand. “–will you take a chance and trust me?”

Trace swallowed another lump in his throat and considered the hand in front of him. More than ever, he felt like he was on the precipice of tumbling into something wildly beyond his control…

But the more he thought about it, the more he had to admit that this frightening and frighteningly attractive hyper thestral had a point. Without intervention, chaos and entropy was where his life was heading anyway. Not straight to Tartarus – straight to Discord. He was hopeless, he was out of options. If he was going to get caught up in an uncertain whirlwind of events either way… maybe the one she was offering could only be better than his.

With a great deal of trepidation, Trace shakily put his hand forward and did his best to grip hers. His fingers didn’t get very far. “Alright.”

Mist shook his hand firmly, just once, and it was enough to nearly knock Trace off-balance. “Great!” she exclaimed, and turned around. “Let’s not waste any time.”

The glassy lake disappeared in a wave of… something, and was replaced with a dark, dimly lit, and poorly organized office. Mist hopped up onto the desk, grabbed a paper and a quill, and started scribbling furiously.

And nakedly. Trace wished that the part of his brain responsible for such observations would shut up. Or at least get his cock to stop throbbing quite so stiffly.

“There is a ton of stuff to get to, and we aren’t even ready to get started,” Mist said excitedly as she wrote, her nips bouncing and wiggling with her chest as she wrote. “But trust me, this is gonna be the best decision you ever made.”

“Woo,” Trace said flatly.

After a suspiciously short amount of scribbling, Mist folded up the letter – it suddenly became enveloped and stamped and everything – and tossed it like a frisbee out an open window into the moonlight. “So while that’s getting rolling,” she said, looking at Trace again, “I just want to set a couple of ground rules tonight. Don’t worry, they’re pretty simple.”

Trace was still naked and vulnerable, and wasn’t feeling much for conversation. “Great…”

“One, do everything I say. And two, no stupid questions, like ‘Why am I doing this?’”

Another alarm bell rang. “Uh, depending on the circumstance, that would actually be a very smart question…”

The thestral let out a little aggravated huff. “Look, I’m just gonna straight-up not tell you shit,” Mist said candidly. “Just accept that. And if I have to dodge every little ‘But whyyyyyy’ question, then that’s gonna take up my entire night – and we got shit to do. So no stupid questions.”

Trace managed a bit of a glare. “This isn’t getting any less shady…”

“It’s not like I’m gonna ask you to assassinate a Princess,” Mist muttered, then shook her head in disbelief. “Though honestly, I’d like to see you fuckin’ try. That’d be hilarious. But no – I’m just gonna ask you to do a lot of stuff that’s gonna seem weird at first, but you gotta do it, and you just gotta trust that I have good reasons and that’s that. Got it?”

“...Got it,” Trace mumbled reluctantly. He was too tired and confused to really argue anymore.

“Great. I’ll let you get your REM now, but there’s instructions in the mail.” The office started to fade away into blackness. Mist stepped off the desk as it disappeared behind her and smirked at the earth pony. “Goodnight, Trace~.”

Those golden eyes and that toothy smile were the last things Trace saw before the dream faded and became something else.

Outside Trace’s dream-bubble, in the greater collective limbo between dream and reality, Mist dropped her trademark smirk and groaned.

“Goddesses, was I really that stubborn…?” she muttered to herself, her voice echoing in the swirling abyss. As she gently floated away, she rubbed the side of her head and realized, “No, I would’ve been five times worse. But she had two years, not three weeks…!”

Mist Melody shook her head in disbelief. “Luna… if there’s anything left to take back at this point, I take it all back. This is going to be harder than I thought.”

Chapter 3: Taking Root

Day 1

Trace’s feet brought him to the door of Lavender Grace’s home office, almost all on their own, but were hesitant to carry him much further. Throb. He put a hand to his head as flashes of memory from last night’s dream lashed across his imagination – mind-controlling Grace and Orchid, the arrival of the personal nightmare that was Sunny Days…

“Do that again.”

Lust. Scourge. Enticement. It all wound together, and Trace shook his head vigorously. He could almost still hear her voice. Certainly, he still felt it. But though this particular personal demon had been haunting him for years, it seemed unusual that the echoes would still be so powerful this morning, long after the dream had ended. Had the intrusion of that thestral mare – what was it, Melody? Mist Melody? – had her dreamwalking magic preserved the entire dream as more memory than figment? If so, it was making an already hard– difficult morning that much moreso.

Resentment, after all, wasn't the only thing that was stirring at the thought.

If it weren’t for the sheer detail in which he could remember it, Trace might’ve written it off as an unbelievable, laughable fantasy. The whole scenario seemed worthy of those letters ponies wrote to raunchy magazines: I was having a nightmare, a sexy nightmare, and then this sexier yet hyper thestral showed up in lingerie to dispel the dream and… rope me into following her orders without question for the next three weeks, under the… sexy?... pretense of fixing my upcoming job problems?

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that erotic.

Trace sighed and opened the door to his boss’s office. The mare herself was standing at the window, looking out from the second story over the fields of crops and the morning workers tending to them. Voice distant, cold, Grace barely turned her head before saying, “Orchid Blossom has the Thunderblights under control. I’ll need you to take down all the traps and lures. After that… well, we’ll contact you if we need anything.”

Trace stood still, eyes pointed at the floor, his breath shallow. Here it was, official as Celestia’s royal seal. His job was gone.

“Did you hear me?”

Trace swallowed. In the whorl of hateful memory, painful present, and a distant hope of the future, he found something almost like courage. “Yeah.” He raised his eyes and mumbled, “Can I ask a question?”

Almost.

Grace snorted through her nostrils and turned around. “I don’t know – can you?” she replied with all the smugness of that teacher you couldn’t stand back in elementary school.

It was a struggle to keep his face passive, but he barely managed, clinging to his dignity if not his Harmony, and soldiered on. “Have I… been a problem? Have I caused any issues, or… broken any rules?”

Lavender Grace raised an eyebrow, then thought for a second or two. “You were tardy a few times.”

“That was the first two days,” Trace replied, trying to keep the whine out of his voice, remembering those incidents clearly and how much he feared for his job security after getting lectured by the bosses. “Since then, I’ve always clocked in on-time or earlier. Anything else?”

Grace’s lightly wrinkled eyelids narrowed slightly; not out of malice, but more annoyance than anything. “If you’re wondering whether you’re being let go because of some infraction or slight or farm politics – no. You’re a contract worker, and we don’t need you once your contract’s up. That’s all.”

His throat feeling very dry all of a sudden, Trace stared back and muttered, “That’s all, huh?” No ‘Sorry’ or ‘You will be missed’ or ‘Wish you well on your future endeavors’?

The co-owner of Happy Hoof Farms shook her head, placed her hands on the desk, and leaned forward. “If you wanted this to be more of an ‘event,’ maybe you should have made more friends here. Or any friends.” She then straightened up and said, “Now get to work. I’ve got another meeting.”

Almost on cue (but not quite; it was a beat and a half too late), the door ajar behind Trace was pushed open again. Orchid Blossom ducked and twisted to get her curvy bulk through the doorway. “Mrs. Grace, you asked for me?” she announced in her airy but powerful voice. She looked down at Trace and said, “Oh, hello again!”

Filling up all the space he had and more. Maybe he was still dreaming; the metaphors were coming at his head like confectionary at a bison.

Trace resisted the urge to shove past her (knowing it would probably be futile anyway) and simply maneuvered around her. He had less success resisting the temptation to slam the door behind him, stallion-baby that he knowingly was.

The last thing he heard was Orchid saying, “Hey, you alr–?” Slam.

Honestly, it felt good to cut someone else off for a change.

“‘You should have made more friends. Any friends,’” Trace muttered to himself. “Sure, ‘cause that’s so easy for an ex-mind-controller with a public record…!” He could bring it up at parties, or class reunions, right? “I don't know, Grosse Pointe, I've been trying not to accidentally brainfuck every mare, stallion, and foal I come across. How about you? Freelance assassin? Smashing, let's be friends.”

Going up and down every field with a cart and removing the Thunderblight pheromone traps was grueling work. This job hadn’t been pleasant at the best of times, but it was like all of the things he hated about it were coming up all at once in full force. The collected traps had a funk that stank to high heaven. Stray bugs shocked his arms with tiny currents of magical charge. And worst of all, he was alone; everypony else steered clear of him whenever they saw his cart full of awful-smelling bug traps come down the rows of crops.

Trace worked through lunch and managed to finish gathering every last trap by the time breaks were over. If there was one thing to recommend it, it was that the work made it hard for him to stew. He hauled his overfull cart back to the shed where Mr. Cocoa let him keep all his chemicals and tools – a shed that would no doubt be repurposed for something else once he was gone. For now, though, Trace simply stood all the empty traps against a wall and got to work freeing all the bugs still captive with the adhesive-dissolving agent.

As he went about releasing the Thunderblights (and got a few more shocks in gratitude), he looked around the shed. In his mind’s eye, he could see price tags attached to every item and barrel, totalling hundreds of bits over months of time that was now worthless. Spent, lost, and squandered. The supply stores weren’t going to buy back their own containers that were now less than half full, and it wasn’t like he was gonna find a private collector that would be interested in all the bug-capturing equipment. His best shot was happening upon a colt or filly who’d just gotten a genuine pest control cutie mark, and giving his stuff to them to get their career started… in exchange for lunch money, at most.

Unless he kept the raw plant extracts and got back into botany…

Trace smacked his forehead again. If I’m still having nightmares about that career path, that probably means it’s not a good idea to go back to it. Just seems like a logical rule to live by.

By the time he was done cleaning out the traps, Celestia’s sun was past its peak in the sky. Trace’s stomach was growling since he’d skipped lunch (not that he’d had much of an appetite at the time anyway). He rinsed off his hands and face with the water and rags he kept in the shed, then locked up the shed, parked his cart next to it, and headed out into the fields.

Out of curiosity, he decided to see how the crops were doing without his traps. And sure enough – bizarrely enough – instead of the waves and waves of bugs he expected to see crawling over every fruit and vegetable, the most he could find were the occasional swarm flying high overhead, sparking with magical energy on their way past. Orchid Blossom had really done it. Not only were the bugs leaving the majority of the crops alone, they were beginning to act as a sort of… defensive system!

Not just replaced. Superceded. In a way his intellectual side could even admire, to rub salt in the wound.

Dejected, Trace death-marched his way back to his apartment.

“Sign please!”

When he reached the lobby of his building, Trace was so lost in his own sad little world that he almost didn’t notice the clipboard being shoved in his face by a cheery gray-and-blonde wall-eyed pegasus. He robotically took the pen and looked over the sheet. “I… have a package?” he asked.

“Lots, actually!” the mare replied, jabbing her thumb over at a pile of boxes and bags next to the front desk. “You must be very popular today!”

“Sure…” Trace muttered suspiciously, taking a few steps over to the pile. They were all correctly addressed to him, there was no mistake. He signed the sheet and handed the clipboard back to the delivery mare.

“You want a little help taking them up?” she asked. “Especially that one.” She pointed at a rather large and heavy-looking box that sat at the center of the pile.

“Yeah, that’s fine…”

As Trace and the blonde pegasus mare carried up the boxes, Trace spied the labels on the packages again. They’d been sent from an address he didn’t recognize in… Canterlot. Trace’s eyes narrowed.

A brief, bitter thought meandered through his head. Why was it fair for others to pull strings in his life, but not for him to pull back? The answer was a painful reminder with a less painful solution: He could, after all, refuse to sign, right?

When they went back down for the last armfuls of smaller packages, he said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course!”

“When… would these packages had to have been sent, to arrive here today?”

“Hmmmm…” The mare adorably put a finger to her chin, while one eye rotated out of focus. “These are all Express, and they’re from Canterlot, so… From there, they would’ve been taken to the holding station in Ponyville, then I loaded them up today and carried them here in my cart… So at the latest, they could’ve been put in the system yesterday afternoon.”

“Yesterday afternoon at the latest?”

“Yessir!”

Trace’s right eye twitched. Yep. Strings.

Yesterday afternoon.

Before the dream.

Before we ever even MET.

She already knew I was going to say yes.

Or rather…

She wasn’t going to let me say no.

“Is something the matter?” the delivery mare asked. Her smile was amazingly innocent, and some of his anger was muted. It wasn't her fault, after all.

Trace shook his head rapidly and put on his best fake smile. “No no, it’s fine. Just… haha, a prank, my friend, in Canterlot, is pulling, on me, haha…”

The mare didn’t looked fooled by his forced mirth and stilted vocal patterns, but she seemed to let it slide. “Well okay then.” Since all the packages were now on Trace’s doorstep, she headed back down the stairs. “Have a good rest of your day, sir!”

“You too…” Trace muttered. Someone should, right? Then, once she was gone, he proceeded to unlock his door and shove all the boxes through the doorway with his legs and feet.

He wondered if he was going to get an exercise regimen, too.

10 minutes and one beer later (because he sure as hell wasn’t going to do this completely sober at this point), Trace’s living room floor was a mess of paper and cardboard. From the boxes, packages, and crates of varying sizes, he’d uncovered a veritable treasure trove of random items:

A large bag of mixed seeds.

A songbook of zebra folk tunes. A pair of… bongos?

A piece of paper with some kind of runic script scrawled over every inch of it, back and front. A book entitled Pre-Equestrian Languages.

A set of dumbbells – 2, 5, and 10 pounds. (Exercise, check.)

A tin box containing a brand-new wood carving knife. A box of wooden blocks.

And in the biggest box of all: A high-end magically enchanted tent, boasting features like Sets Itself Up! and Temperature-Controlled Interior! and Bigger on the Inside!

“Am I going camping…?” Trace asked aloud to the empty room, as he sat on the couch looking over his new hoard.

There were only two items left. One was a thin package with “Inspiration” written on it in big letters (including the quotes), which filled Trace with a small amount of dread. The other was a simple letter envelope, labeled Open Me First! ...Whoops.

Trace reached over and tore open the envelope. There seemed to be two papers inside. One was a message, which Trace read first.

Hey Trace! It’s Mist Melody.

With any luck, all of this stuff will show up at your door right after our talk, and we can avoid wasting any time. (And before you ask: No, I wasn’t going to force you to say yes, but on the off chance you say no, I’ll just visit your dreams again tonight and take another shot at convincing you. It really is in your best interest, buddy.)

Trace growled incoherently in his throat, rolled his eyes, and continued reading.

Either way, I hope all this proves that I’m serious about this little endeavor of ours. Putting all this together and sending it to you will cost me a few pretty bits, so don’t think I’m going to all this trouble just to prank you.

What’s all this for? Simple. Your apartment’s a terrible place to train. We gotta get you out, breathing fresh air, all that jazz. Time to brush up on your Colt Scout survival skills!

“I dropped out of the Colt Scouts,” Trace grumbled.

I’ll share more of the plan in your dreams tonight. But I want you ready to go first thing tomorrow morning, and there’s a few things that I can’t pack for you, so check the list on the other page and make sure you’re ready for a trip.

See you soon… ❤

The letter carried the same unmistakable scent as last night; the soul-deep aromachologist in him wanted to know how. Then the impact of Melody's plans hit him.

Trace’s brow furrowed. A trip? But didn’t he need to stick around in case he was needed on Happy Hoof Farms? Oh hell, what are even the chances they’ll need me with Orchid Blossom around… He pulled out the other page, which had a short shopping list on it written in the same handwriting.

– At least a week’s worth of clothes, water, and non-perishable food (you can come back and resupply later)
– Bedroll, blanket, pillows, etc.
– Some firewood and fire-starters (matches or flint, your preference)
– A campfire cooking pot
– Your leftover plant extracts and brewing equipment
– Fap material (to go along with the “Inspiration”)

The young stallion sputtered at that last item, and looked around nervously as though worried he was being watched. How does she know…? he almost thought, his mind wandering to what was hidden under his bed, before realizing it was a stupid question.

Though what did that last part mean, going along with the “Inspiration”?

With growing trepidation, Trace set down the papers onto the end-table and reached out to the final unopened package. After a quick effort to tear the giant envelope open, he peered inside. There seemed to be… photos? Trace reached in and pulled one out…

Trace bit and sucked on his lower lip before he fully comprehended what he was seeing. The only coherent word that came to mind was, “Oh.”

It was an instant photo of Mist Melody, in what was presumably her office, wearing the same skimpy negligee she’d been wearing in his dream. Her pose was… She had her back to the camera, she was bent slightly forward over the desk. With her short purple tail flagged to one side, her titanic (and barely covered) glutes were fully displayed to the viewer’s lens, along with a hint of her sculpted, powerful gray thighs. One hand was reaching back and stroking her own ass, while the other hand braced against the table. Her bat wings were folded against her back, which meant there was almost nothing covering the acres of Q-cup backboob visible from behind – she was actually twisting to the right a bit, so that the way her enormous silk-garmented breasts rested on the table was easy to see. And her head, turned so that she was peering back over her shoulder, shooting a smouldering look into the camera with one glowing, golden eye.

Oh. Inspiration.

Trace’s neck creaked as he slowly turned his head back towards the envelope. There were over a dozen more photos inside.

Snapping out of it and cursing the betrayal of his own overactive libido, Trace tossed the picture back into the package and stood up, adjusting his pants. He was going to go out shopping and get his mind off all this! Off Mist Melody and her machinations.

Besides, he was probably going to jack off before bed anyway. But not to those pictures. Definitely not to those cheesecake pictures.

Night 1

Trace came around to awareness in a place he’d been to a lot in the past few years:

Sunny Days’ office.

Trace looked down at his hand and winced. There it was, the little porcelain pot with the special freesia bloom, in his hand again.

He let the flower roll out of his hand and smash on the floorboards, but it was already too late. Sunny was already moaning in lust, rubbing her hands all over her petite, curvy body. Her long tongue licked all over her muzzle. Sunny’s clothes melted away; her larger-than-life breasts bounced up with almost comical perkiness. The desk separating them disappeared, and she took a few steps closer. Trace backed up against the door, which refused to open.

“Do it again... Do it again. Do it again! DO IT– hrrrk!”

That was new.

A large – if elegant and supple – hand had reached out and grabbed the sexual caricature of Sunny Days by the neck, interrupting her mantra.

Trace looked over to the left and saw the frankly rather frightening shape of a huge, hyper, and armored thestral, keeping his former business partner in a chokehold with merely one hand. The armor was a no-nonsense mix of plate and chain, tightly fitted to the guard’s hyper-muscular form but arranged for maneuverability and colored in the blues and blacks of Princess Luna’s night. A longsword was sheathed at the Dream Warden’s hip.

Strange. She looks more real than… Oh. Right.

Mist Melody grinned back at Trace. With extra fang. “Hey, cutie. Is this mare bothering you?”

Her massive arm flexed and her hand squeezed the nightmare-Sunny’s neck. Trace shuddered, waiting for a snap… that never came. There was an odd sound, like a balloon rupturing and deflating, and the mare in Mist’s beefy hand began to shrink, and shrink, and shrink, and… change color?

Sunny Days almost completely disappeared into Mist Melody’s fist, save for the head, which had shrunk down to a fiery and horned blue ball of anger, glaring at Trace with its wispy eyes.

“The actual ffffffuck?” Trace managed to spit out.

Mist regarded the tiny monster now captive in her hand. A disdainful sniff preceded her explanation. “This is a Lesser Fiend. Nightmare creature. Feeds off guilt or greed, tries to stoke ponies into either punishing themselves or doing something they’ll regret.”

Trace watched as the little horned devil tried to pull itself out from between Mist’s big gloved fingers. It gave him a toothsome snarl, that came out as more of a squeak. “Oh,” he said, “so… this is the cause of my problems?”

“Mm-mm.” Mist shook her head sadly. “The angst is all yours. You just have an annoying stowaway who’s making it just a little bit worse.”

What happened next was so quick Trace barely saw it: She let the fiery blue ball go, but her other hand instantly went down to the hilt of her blade and, in one smooth motion, unsheathed it and sliced the monster in half. Her expression never changed. The blade’s arc ended just above Trace’s head – it glowed faintly turquoise and hummed with magical power. The Lesser Fiend faded away into mist, along with the rest of the dream-office.

As the dream reverted to the default ‘field of stars’ dreamspace, Trace stepped back, looked around, and then glanced fearfully back up at the powerful thestral. “Is… Is it gone?”

Mist let out an aggravated sigh and sheathed her sword. “No.”

“What??”

She shrugged her big shoulders, the chains of her armor clinking with the motion. “I didn’t get the core. It’ll reform in a few hours and probably burrow into the membrane of your dream-sphere, lay low for a while. But it likely won’t stick its head out when it knows a dreamwalker’s in town.” Trace could not believe how profoundly meh her expression was.

“Wait wait wait.” Trace rubbed his eyes briefly, trying to regain a sense of what was going on. “That sounds like something we should take care of first!”

“Lesser Fiends are tricky,” Mist Melody admitted. One hand idly played with the hilt of her sword, running her thumb in slow, sensuous circles over the pommel. “They’re not super dangerous, unless you’re already on the edge of… something, but they can hide like the dickens. You need– The fastest way to reveal their core is to get the victim involved, get them over their guilt. And like completely over it, not just a momentary epiphany. That can take weeks. We’ve only got three. So either we can hunt down one minor nightmare creature, or we can find out what you need to make you happy in your life. Easy decision.” Her thoughtful look transformed into a confident smirk. “Besides, if it all works out the way I hope it will, a Lesser Fiend will be a chump.”

“So… we’re just going to leave it be?”

“Hey, you’ve got a personal dream-bodyguard for three weeks,” Mist pointed out with another of her toothy grins, then flexed one of her tremendous biceps to a full peak. She kissed it slowly, sighing happily. “Fiend will know better than to fuck with that. You’ll be fine.” She clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “Now! You got all the stuff I sent you?”

Still unnerved but unable to pursue the previous line of questioning, Trace rubbed his somewhat thinner arms through his pajama top (When had his clothes changed?) and muttered, “I think so. You didn’t exactly provide me a manifest.”

Mist ducked her head as a perfect replica of Trace’s apartment began to materialize around them, complete with the shredded paper that he had forgotten to clean up from the unpacking. Mist stepped around the couch, her massive footfalls slightly shaking the cups on the end table, and peered over the pile of boxes. She smiled and said, “Yep, looks like everything.”

Trace looked around in confusion. How could she know for sure from a dream? Were they actually being projected into his home somehow? Was she drawing from his memories? Was he subconsciously volunteering the information?

Cheekily, Mist spied the opened package of photos. “I see you opened up the ‘Inspiration.’ Have you knocked one out to it yet?”

“No!” Trace quickly lied.

She giggled at that. Her massive armored breastplate, adorned with a symbol of Luna’s moon, was necessarily roomy and designed to deflect blows away from the center of mass, but it was still impossible to miss a certain shifting of contents underneath as her chest bounced. “And you went and got the rest? All ready to go first thing in the morning?” Her prodigious rack was still bouncing; that was definitely a breastplate.

Trace forced himself to look her in the eyes, held back a sigh, and scratched the side of his head. “I’ll have to get my cart and load it up… but yeah, more or less. What am I doing?”

“Lemme show ya.”

The ground fell away from Trace’s feet – suddenly he was floating an inch or two off the floor. Then, without any more warning than that, the apartment moved to one side rapidly, and he was propelled towards the door. He phased through like a ghost, then shifted direction and flew down the hall and the stairs without losing any momentum. All Trace could do was keep himself still and watch as the world flew by. In fact, something was preventing him from closing his eyes.

Trace watched as he was forced out of his apartment building, flew down the street, then made a turn for the southeast path leading out of Hoofbrook. Faster and faster he flew, miles of hot farmland rolling by. And in the distance – rapidly approaching – were the gnarled black trees of the cursed woods. The evil forest where all the magical monsters of the Plaguelands once made their home.

Nowhere a sane pony went, but he was increasingly doubtful of Mist Melody's participation in that category.

He flew down the road and into the woods, unable to stop watching, like the images of this journey were being burned into his retinas. The path wound left, then right – and then he made a sudden right turn into a clearing. The world stopped moving, and the now thoroughly dizzy stallion collapsed back onto the ground in a heap.

Trace shook his head vigorously and tried to regain his bearings, blinking a few times to make sure his eyelids had starting working again. He looked up and around, seeing a ring of black trees all around him. He scrambled to his feet in fear – he knew what kinds of creatures were in this place: Thunderblights, fearcrows, timberwolves, tatzlwurms…!

The clearing erupted into chaos. Buzzing, crowing, howling, hissing. Thunderblights filled the air beneath the tree canopy, sparking and zapping everything in range! The giant black fearcrows flew up to Trace’s face, using their glowing red eyes to freeze him with visions of his worst nightmares! A pack of timberwolves leaped out from behind the northern hill of the clearing and surrounded Trace! The ground rumbled and exploded upward as a giant tatzlwurm burst through the ground, then spread its sharp tri-jaws and screamed at him, hissing with its black tendrils!

“Okay, STOP.”

Everyone and everything in the entire area froze awkwardly, looking up at one of the trees. Mist Melody was hanging upside-down from a gnarled branch about fifteen feet above the ground, using her knees to stay hooked around the limb. She glared at everyone beneath her, her anger tinged with annoyance, and then flipped off the branch and landed on her feet, creating a loud and dramatic boom and kicking up soil and dust.

“First of all,” she began, standing up to her full 7’10” height, “you’re the pest control guy, Trace. Bring some frickin’ Thunderblight repellant and you’ll be fine.”

Out of nowhere, there was now a pole with a pheromone well in Trace’s hands, and the Thunderblights scattered.

“Second,” Mist continued, rolling her eyes, “the fearcrows aren’t out until mid-autumn. Your bosses told you as much. It’s still summer; they’re asleep.”

Hanging their heads in embarrassed shame, the horrible crows landed on the ground and marched out of the clearing single-file. Trace was less surprised to note one of them was wearing his brand of pajamas.

Mist rounded on the timberwolves that were surrounding Trace, who flinched in nervousness. She rolled her eyes, cocked her head and hips, and stared at him. “Thirdly… yes, there’s a pack of timberwolves in this forest. But I have it on good authority that their territory is further in, and they’re not the type to go out of their way to hunt ponies.”

The wolves’ wooden ears flattened against their heads. The largest of them, presumably the leader, let out a howling order. The wolves retreated back over the hill.

Mist twisted around one more time and looked up at the tatzlwurm that had invaded the center of the forest clearing. It hissed at her one more time; she hardly reacted at all. “And tatzlwurms, seriously…? They live in the canyons, Trace. They’re miles away from here. And they don’t like digging through old growth forests anyway! The roots grab and tangle deep in the earth. They hate burrowing through that stuff!”

The tatzlwurm looked down at the ground, as if suddenly realizing it didn’t have an exit strategy. It hissed and howled, writhing its body through the air as it slowly faded away into nothingness. The hole in the ground disappeared like nothing had ever broken through.

Mist Melody walked back over to Trace, who was now on the dirt in the fetal position clutching his repellant pole for dear life. She reached down and effortlessly pulled him up to his feet.

“Why… Why here?!” Trace demanded, still breathing heavily. “Why camp here, in the cursed woods?!”

Utterly annoyed, Mist rolled her eyes and replied, “Because they’re not actually cursed anymore. They were cleansed years ago. Here, check this out.”

The thestrals eyes and wings glowed with some kind of pinkish-purple magic, and the sky swiveled. The black night was chased away by the golden light of morning in a matter of seconds, filling the huge forest clearing with light.

“Hehehe, I love doing that,” Mist giggled impishly. “But take a look at the trees now.” For a moment, though, he just wanted to look at the twinkle in her eyes. Wait, no. No he did not.

Trace took a look. The black and gnarled trees from the night before were now… well, still gnarled and evil-looking, but the blackened wood now had streaks of healthy brown running through them that were more visible in the daylight. And when he looked further up, the canopy was filled with an adornment of natural green leaves, like any other forest.

“See that?” Mist said, squinting her eyes a bit at the light she was a little unused to. “Natural magic, natural life is returning. This land had all its power sucked away for an evil purpose, but now it’s starting to heal, bit by bit. It’s starting to bounce back. All you gotta do is give it a chance.”

She smirked down at Trace like she was saying something really clever. She even did that one-eyebrow-raised trick. Trace didn’t notice at all; he was rubbing his eyes and still trying to calm down from the adrenaline rush of being surrounded by monsters, imagined or otherwise.

“So!” Mist declared. She walked around the clearing a bit. “It’s private, it’s accessible – only an hour’s walk from Hoofbrook, 20 minutes max by flight – it’s reasonably safe, AND it has all the natural resources we might need for your ‘curriculum.’” She put her hands on her gorgeously curved hips proudly. “It’s perfect!”

Trace groaned and tossed the repellant pole to the ground. It faded away. “...I go camping here in the woods, and then… then what? What do I do?”

“Exactly what I say,” Mist Melody purred. She had a tone of threat and promise both. “I’ll have instructions for you daily. Tomorrow I’ll let you get set up and look over the reading materials. But after that, buckle up.”

The earth stallion threw up his hands in resignation. “And when do we stop?”

Mist walked up to Trace and leaned down to his level so they were seeing eye-to-eye, intimidating him a little bit. Very seriously, she said, “When we know your hidden potential. No sooner or later than that.”

Day 2

Trace grunted and sat up from his dingy mattress, covering his face with his hands to keep out the morning light in the room. Peeking between his fingers, he spotted the luggage bag he’d half-heartedly stuffed a week’s worth of clothes into. This is it, he thought sluggishly. This is my last chance to just say no and drink myself to death instead of getting mauled out in the woods.

After taking a minute to think about it, Trace got out of bed and zipped the bag closed.

Chapter 4: Tough Loving Care

Night 2

The formerly cursed woods were certainly not still and quiet at night. Wind and crickets and owls and bugs and even the occasional timberwolf made sure the air was filled with a steady foreboding ambiance. The sounds were difficult to ignore (and more than a little scary if it was your first night camping in the wild since you were a teenage colt begrudgingly on vacation with your parents).

Still, at least the tent was worth every bit that must have been spent on it! The floor of it was padded and comfy, and it was compact on the outside, roomy on the inside, likely built for a hyper or two to have room to spare. The resulting magical internal size difference made it feel like there was a portal between the tent’s fabric walls and the daaaaangerous forest. Trace couldn’t shake the feeling that all this had been a concession to keep him out of his house – as if Mist Melody was saying from the past, “Fine, I know you’re going to be a big baby about it, so here, have the most luxurious tent I can afford!” Still, it was a concession he was grateful for now that he was officially in this.

So somehow, despite his nerves, Trace managed to curl up in his sleeping bag and doze off, his mind full of the books he’d skimmed that afternoon.

A short while later, the door to his tent unzipped open from the inside.

Trace – or rather Trace’s body, his eyes glowing with pinkish-purple magic – stepped out into the forest clearing in the stallion’s pajamas, grinning as if to reveal a nonexistent fang.

The campsite’s fire had long since lost its embers, so the only light came from the faint beams of moonlight that shone through the tree canopy. Poles carrying wells of pheromone-based repellent were placed at the edges of the clearing, keeping the camp clear of magical pests. Trace’s cart was parked nearby, carrying the bulk of his non-camping supplies, with a sheet tied over it to protect it during the night.

Trace – or rather Mist Melody in Trace’s sleepwalking body – walked over to the cart. His movements were a little sluggish. After all, they were not entirely the result of conscious motor control! Nonetheless, he – or rather she – was able to manipulate the average-looking earth stallion’s body with enough dexterity to untie one of the ropes and reach into the cart to pull out a few items. Specifically, some spare paper and a quill (extra items that Mist Melody had planted in Trace’s mind as a last-minute mental suggestion).

There was a stool near the campfire, which Mist-in-Trace’s-body sat down upon. He/She tapped the point of the quill against the paper, thinking about what to write.

She managed to get a few items written, but she didn’t finish before she was interrupted.

The light of the moon intensified, painting the clearing a haunting gray. Silver, unrelenting silver filled the night. No other creature in the forest reacted to this change – for you see, it wasn’t actually happening in reality, only in Mist’s sleepwalking perception.

She was, of course, shielded to the nines. Even, or perhaps especially, when only her mind was present. One pony, nonetheless, held the key to all of Mist Melody's locks: body, mind, and soul.

From the light of the moon, a ghostly figure descended into the clearing. Judging from the wings, the horn, the crown, and the sheer massive size, there was only one pony it could be.

Trace’s enchanted pink eyes beheld the figure. “Princess Luna?” Mist Melody asked – not aloud in reality, in case Trace’s ears would hear it and wake him up, but in the dream half of this channeled experience.

“Mist Melody,” the ghostly Princess Luna replied, her tone and facial expression immediately implying that this was a business visit, not for pleasure. She wasn’t nude, though not armored either – she was wearing a simple royal gown that downplayed her features, combined with a magical glamour to mask some of the more intimidating (or arousing) parts of her natural aura. This was apparently a night for comforting regular ponies in need, not going to war in the shadows on their behalf.

Naturally, Mist Melody was a little confused. She and the Princess enjoyed something of an informal, intimate relationship, but she never imagined that the Unbound Moon herself would check in with her in person. Even less so after only a couple of days, especially in such a complicated way. “Come to check up on me? I thought you were going to let me handle this myself.”

Princess Luna sighed. Uh-oh. That was the ‘I-am-disappointed-in-my-student’ sigh. Mist was in trouble for something. But Luna beat around the bush and looked at the clearing first. “I will admit, this has been an opportunity to sate some minor curiosity,” she said, taking in every detail. The faintly glowing ghostly Princess drew one immensely powerful foot across the ground in the very center of the clearing. Her limb did not disturb the soil, but it did cause some manner of magical lines to briefly glow beneath the dirt, crossing like a vertex of a very, very large grid. “Upon an intersection of earthley, no less,” Luna observed. “You certainly have stacked the deck.”

“I’ve only got three weeks…” Mist pointed out. She used Trace’s face to pout at the Princess before shrugging his shoulders and saying defeatedly, “Alright, what is it? Why are you here?”

Luna’s lips smacked as she paused and searched for the words she wanted to use. “Councilpony Leaf… noticed something amiss in his dream last night.”

Mist Melody winced, hard. “Fuck.” She recovered for a moment and demanded, “Okay, how?”

“A book in his mental library had been left slightly crooked.”

“...fffffFUCKING mind palaces!” Mist cried out, rubbing Trace’s forehead in frustration. “Ugh, I hate mind palaces. Wonderful resources, but – rrrrgh!”

Luna broke out into brilliant, full-bodied laughter, setting her Z-cups off into a jaunty jiggling beneath her royal raiments. “Similar to the first night I caught you, is it not?” she said amidst her giggling.

“Okay, that one,” Mist rebutted, pointing a finger at the Princess, “was more of a mind penthouse, and that’s being reeeaalll generous.”

But eventually, Mist’s indignation couldn’t hold up, and she started to laugh a little too.

When they both managed to calm down and collect their virtual breath, Luna said in a much more conversational tone, “You covered your tracks well. He does not know who invaded his sleeping mind, hand-copied a page from one of his memorized books, and attempted to cover up the evidence of said copying… but he has brought it to my attention. I have promised him that I will find the perpetrator and, if necessary, apply discipline.”

“Mmm. Discipline,” Mist Melody echoed, waggling Trace’s eyebrows. Given the smirk on Luna's lips, she felt it'd be permitted.

“The sort of discipline I might delegate to my High Priestess.”

Trace’s face fell. “Awwwwww,” Mist moaned. She really didn’t like the Archmage of Illusions’ schtick. There was no denying Trixie’s mastery of the craft, nor her worthiness for the position, nor her ability to absolutely mindfuck her lessers in the bedroom (and provide loving care afterward). Mist didn’t even mind the illusory mindfucking part – quite the opposite, in fact. She just… wasn’t a fan of that particular rollercoaster ride, least of all its conductor. “But I had your permission for that, though!”

Luna smirked playfully at the possessed earth pony. “You still deserve a little something for getting caught.”

“Caught by the most anal – okay, fine. Fine.” Trace’s hands went up in surrender. “Once this is over, I’ll accept my ‘discipline’ with grace. And only a little bitching.” She looked down to the paper on her lap and, after a moment’s thought, added another item to the list.

“Did you at least talk to Tree Hugger like I asked?” Luna said.

Mist looked up and replied, “Oh, yeah. She was actually kinda helpful, which was a nice change a pace from all the other ponies you pointed me to.” She sighed and added, “Just… the advice Tree Hugger gave me… wasn’t for this part. It was for the part in the future. The Akashic one.”

That got a chuckle out of the Princess. “Yes, I suppose that is the risk you run with her.” She glanced over at the cart. “So the page you copied is…?”

“In the tent.” Trace’s glowing eyes looked pointedly at Luna. “You gonna confiscate it?”

“Oh, no. I… trust your judgment.”

Which was coded Princess-speak for ‘that document, though archaic and perhaps inconsequential, is still technically illegal to possess, so you better make sure that you two are the only souls that ever lay eyes on that copy.’

“I understand,” Mist replied professionally. A flash of inspiration came to her, and she scribbled down one more item to the list on the paper. Then Trace’s body stood up, walked back to the tent, and carefully placed the paper face-up on the inside to guarantee that Trace would see it first thing in the morning.

The specter of Luna observed this passively, then said, “Well, my curiosity is sated. I’m quite impressed with your preparations.”

Mist stood up straight, a squareness of nature that somehow managed to get Trace to a facsimile thereof, and sighed. “I’m glad you like it. Truth be told, I’m kinda improvising my butt off here.”

“Then you are fortunate you have so much buttock to work with,” Luna replied, a wide grin growing across her muzzle.

“Ahaha, aha…” Mist smirked and waggled a finger back at her. “You’re one to talk.”

With a great flap of her wings, Luna took into the air by a few feet. The faint light in the clearing brightened once more, as if to reabsorb her ghostly form back into the moon itself. “I bid you good hunting, little Melody.”

Mist in Trace’s body grinned back. “Same to you, Princess.”

Luna nodded, then disappeared. The vision ended.

Trace’s body stepped back into the tent, closed the door behind it, then carefully got back into the sleeping bag and rolled onto the side he’d originally been sleeping on, as if nothing had happened.

Though before she ended the possession, Mist left a little smirk on Trace’s face. She could feel the hardening bulge being contained by Trace’s briefs.

Remote-piloting a pony’s sleeping body via dream magic was an incredibly complex feat. Having a conversation with another dreamwalker’s projection at the same time without waking up the host, even more so.

Going from possessing a sleepwalking pony to simply entering their dreams… That was as easy as falling.

Mist Melody let Trace’s dream-world materialize around her. Using her capabilities as a dreamshaper, she also created a casual outfit for herself: A pair of too-tight daisy dukes and a t-shirt with DJ PON-3’s logo on it (a souvenir from one of her late-night concerts) – both stretched obscenely by Mist’s hyper endowments. She left her feet bare, though, to let her sharp-nailed toes breathe a little.

Trace’s dream was taking place at night in some kind of tiki hut village surrounded by trees. The buildings were generic, not sensibly placed, and somewhat blurry to look at, for they weren’t the focus of the dream. The real action was taking place in the village square.

In the center of the village was a great big totem pole reaching far into the night sky. A ring of fire illuminated the lowest parts of the pole, each segment sporting a gnarled visage that was vaguely reminiscent of a significant antagonistic figure of Trace’s life. If Mist looked all the way up to the top, she might have even found a likeness of herself. But again, the totem pole was not the clearest part of the dream.

The real stars of the dream were the zebra dancers.

Eight mares, taller than Mist herself, swinging their exaggerated hips and enormous titties to a resounding, heart-pounding drum beat coming from nowhere yet all around. Heat far more than fire seared off every sway and thump. The dancers were clad only in grassy headdresses and skimpy loincloths that made no attempt at wrapping around anything naughty, letting the cloth drape loosely and swing with every wild motion, revealing their scrumptious treasures with every alternate step. Their ultra-thin waists and racetrack curves were silhouetted and highlighted by the firelight, creating an enchanting display of flesh as they danced vigorously all around the totem pole.

And sitting upon a tree stump between Mist and the dancers, distant enough to be ignored but close enough to see every detail, was Trace, eyes wide open and mouth forming a little ‘o’ shape. He was dressed in a safari explorer’s outfit, complete with pith helmet like a mini Daring Do. His cargo shorts were dented by the presence of a throbbing erection.

Mist smirked and walked up behind him silently, shifting her weight carefully on her toes. When she was standing behind and to the side of him, she casually said, “You know–”

“GAAAH!” Trace started, jumping nearly out of his skin. Proof once again that Luna was right about everything: nervy stallions were adorable.

Without missing a step, Mist continued, “–this is really more of a Pony-Islander thing than a Zebrican thing, but…” She shrugged playfully, baring her fangs at Trace. “Eh. I still dig it.”

Trace’s head zipped back and forth between Mist and the zebra mares. “What are– What–” And then it all hit him again, and he put a hand to his forehead. “...Right. Dream.”

Mist crouched beside Trace. As she lowered down, her powerful thighs flexed next to his body, which he tried valiantly not to ogle. “We really gotta get you some lucid dreaming training,” she said to him. “It would make these little introductions go a lot faster, and you’d be having way more fun in scenarios like this one instead of just going with the flow.” She openly admired all the hyper zebra girls still conducting their... stimulating ritual. “Y’know, getting in there instead of sitting back here because you feel like all that female bounty is sacred and unattainable. Still, though – you sure your special talent isn’t as a glassblower? Because those are some mighty hourglasses you’ve created.” She actually wolf-whistled at the display. “Damn.”

Flashes of pink tinged Trace’s brown cheeks as he focused down on his shoes and adjusted his shorts to make his bulge less noticeable. “I-I was just reading the books you sent me, since I’d set up the camp and there wasn’t much else to do…”

“Ooooh, getting a head start, are we? Good, very good!” A powerful hand clasped Trace’s shoulder and shook him around a little bit. Mist’s grin seemed like it would be impossible to remove now. She looked back up at the dancing scene. “So, I take it you peeked at the songbook and got those exotic zebras all up in your head, huh? And the forest is here ‘cuz you can’t stop worrying about where you’re camping, and you probably couldn’t build up the nerve to jack off so you went to bed frustrated and horny… Tell me, what’s the totem pole for?”

Trace shrugged helplessly, wishing he could maybe die from embarrassment and get it over with. The best he could do was keep talking about mundane things to calm himself down. “I… I figured the book on languages and that weird paper with the runic text were connected. Took me a while, but I think I managed to find the right reference… It really is ancient, and a bitch to translate – the grammar doesn’t seem the same, a lot of the words have multiple meanings, and… Well, anyway, there was this one series of runes that kept showing up over and over again, so I looked for the translation… and from what I can tell, it says ‘totem.’ The runic word for ‘totem’ shows up over and over again on those pages.”

Mist did a quick and quiet little fist-pump on the side Trace couldn’t see.

“So that’s why you got me those wooden blocks and the carving knife, right?” Trace muttered and looked up at Mist (who even crouching was much taller than him sitting). “The runes are some kind of instructions, and you want me to carve some kind of wooden totem.”

Mist brought her hands together and gave the earth stallion a little golf clap. “I’m very impressed, Trace. Good initiative! Yeah, you were going to find out in the morning – that’s one of the daily jobs I’m gonna have you do. Keep translating the rest of that page, and try to make a totem that represents yourself. You’ve got enough blocks to make about one or two attempts per day.”

“Wait, totems that represent… me?” Trace asked.

Mist nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I want you to do. Now, what do I mean by that? Do I want you to make a little doll version of Trace? Something more symbolic?” She winked at him. “That’s for you to figure out.”

“So I keep making totems until… what?”

“Until you figure out what they mean.”

Trace threw his hands up and growled out of his throat. “Great.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of other stuff to do that’s way more fun.” Mist grunted and stood up to her full imposing height. “But that’s for the morning. Whaddaya say we take the rest of this night to just enjoy ourselves, hmmm?” She reached down to offer her hand to Trace.

Her hand made him flinch a little bit, and he just sat there looking up at her speechlessly.

“Suit yourself,” she said.

The hyper thestral jogged toward the dancing zebras, her great endowments bouncing without a care in the world with each step. The dream-dancers seemed to welcome her naturally into the fold, making a space for her as she joined the ring and got to shaking what her momma gave her.

No matter how hard he tried, Trace couldn’t resist watching. And the more he watched, the more impossible it was not to notice that Mist was making a lot of moves for his benefit. Swishing her short purple tail across the back of her daisy dukes, shaking her lush butt at him, flexing her glutes, flexing her biceps and pressing them against the sides of her huge t-shirt-bound breasts, shaking her butt at him some more...

Trace’s whole body trembled with adrenaline, arousal, bewilderment, and more than a little anger. He stood up abruptly, knocking the pith helmet off his head in the process. “What in Tartarus is your problem?!” he shouted across the village square.

The dancing came to an abrupt halt. Mist turned around and didn’t move, giving Trace a half-lidded ‘Seriously?’ kind of look.

For a moment, Trace’s sudden case of backbone buckled, and he regretted speaking up against this pony that could probably pummel him into the dirt. But he recovered swiftly. “With the… With the flirting and the… the innuendo and the constant sexualization!” he sputtered, building momentum with every word. “What, do you have some kind of sick fetish for desperate losers down on their luck?!”

The zebra dancers faded into transparency. They had lost all importance in the dream. Mist sighed and rubbed her thumb against her forehead.

“I know why you’re really doing this,” Trace continued, pointing an angry finger at the hyper thestral. “You’re using my libido against me to pull my strings, make me do what you want. On top of all the other power you have over me.”

Mist threw her head back and let out a frustrated “Uggggggh.” She shot a look at Trace that struggled to stay calm and patient. “Buddy… I’m not using your libido against you, I’m using it for you.”

“How the heck does that work?” Trace demanded, waving his arms wildly. At the same time, the village scene wavered for a moment and the distant forest branches bristled.

The thestral took a couple steps closer and gestured vaguely around them. “Because your sex drive is tangled up in all this!” she explained. “The Sunny Days incident didn’t just ruin your career and your sense of self-worth. It convinced you that your fetishes make you an evil person, so you always feel guilty indulging in them! All I’m trying to do is be supportive. Because hey, as long as you’re sane about practicing it, there’s nothing wrong with sizeplay and powerplay. I like it too!”

Trace felt equal parts shameful and incensed. “Well– Well great! You get to live in a sexual utopia where all your kinky dreams come fucking true! But the rest of us, we mere mortals down on Planet fucking Epona, don’t get any of those luxuries! Down here, if we want that shit, we gotta make do with the table scraps of all the porn and erotica starring you guys!!”

Before he was even done, Trace knew he was just venting a deranged rant. And yet the words kept tumbling out, needing to be exorcised from his body, even if they were vile and hateful and wrong. He sat back down and wrapped his arms around his trembling stomach, feeling sick of himself.

He didn’t even notice Mist approaching until she was towering above him, looking down past the enormous swells of her souvenir t-shirt. There was a dismissive, vaguely pitying expression on her muzzle. “If I didn’t know any better,” she said softly, “I’d take all of that shit personally. But I do. I said something similar to Princess Luna.”

Surprised, Trace looked up.

Mist took a deep breath and sighed. “I kinda wanted to save this for later. It might be too much of a clue… and I guess I don’t like talking about it. But you deserve to know a little bit of it.”

The thestral sat down on the ground in front of Trace’s stump, crossing her powerful legs just a few inches away from his average ones. She still had a few inches of height on him, and the backlighting of the distant fires cast her body in a stark silhouette, punctuated by her golden eyes. But there was also some warmth to her all of a sudden, and her unique scent (that Trace was still having trouble placing) had an inviting effect upon him rather than disarming.

Somewhat grumpily (and cutely), Mist placed her chin on her fist. “Six years ago,” she began, “I was on the same path as you. On my way to rock-bottom. I got on the bad side of ol’ Moonbutt herself, but… instead of arresting me, she kinda captured me and– well, I guess it was an arrest of sorts, but the point is, she did the same thing for me that I’m doing for you now.”

“The same… thing?” Trace said weakly, his emotions scattered to the wind by this sudden show of honesty from Mist. He looked around at the forest questioningly.

“No, not– not exactly the same. She didn’t make me go camping like this. I mean, y’know, she helped me find what I was missing, what I needed to get out of my garbage life and avoid a stint in Tartarus.” She let out a heavy breath. “I hated it at first. I hated her.”

“You… hated Princess Luna?!” Truth told, Trace didn’t have a high opinion of the royalty himself, but it was surprising to hear one of Luna’s own guards say such a thing – weren’t the royal institutions in direct service to the Princesses supposed to be basically religious cults?

“Well, more like resented. I… had ideas about how the world worked back then, and…” She stopped and shook her head. “Y’know what, I’ve said enough. The point is: I’m paying forward the favor that was done for me. That’s why I’m really doing this.”

“Luna helped you… and now you’re helping me…?”

“Yep. Simple as that.” Mist cleared her throat and pounded her clavicle with her fist a few times. “Guh, now I’ve gotten all sappy. Look what you did to me.”

It took a few more brain cycles to put all the pieces together, but after it all clicked, Trace put his face in his hands and groaned. “Y’know, if you’d just led with all that…”

“If I’d led with that...” Mist argued, “if I’d taken the time to sloooowly earn your trust and talk you into doing all this… we wouldn’t be at the camping stage until like day 10. We’ve only got 21. And the point I’m trying to reach with you? ...It took me two years. I kinda have to hit the ground running here. I needed to shock your system, take you out of your miserable comfort zone. And yeah, pull your strings a bit.”

Trace nodded. At long last, he finally had the answer to the question ‘Why me?’ Finally, Mist Melody’s actions towards him made some kind of sense. “Alright, alright,” he said, much more calmly than in pretty much any other interaction they’d had up to this point. Somewhat sarcastically, he added, “I’ll behave.”

The thestral didn’t seem totally satisfied, though. “All that crap you said about normals vs. hypers… You know that’s not true, right?”

“I know, I know…” Trace groaned. “I lashed out.”

“Hyper and normal ponies hook up on the regular,” Mist remarked. “Frankly, out of all the ponies I’ve seen fuck, those are probably some of the most loving relationships out there. But I get it. That’s the sort of thing you feel like saying when the walls have been closing in for years and your only cellmate is Miss Rosie Palms.”

Despite himself, Trace actually chuckled a bit at that. “Pretty much.”

Mist regarded him for a second, and then scooted forward closer to Trace. So close that her legs pressed up against his, the heat of her massive body warmed his dream, and her outthrust chest invaded a great deal of his personal space.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Cop a feel.”

Trace’s brain stopped working for a second.

“C’mon, there’s a wall of ice between us, and I already said I wanna help you with your sexual problems too. How many years has it been since you had a partner? Touch my boob. Get it over with.”

Trace gulped and looked up at Mist’s golden eyes – for probably only the third or fourth time since this whole dream started. “The teasing’s never going to stop, is it?”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Only if you be a spoilsport and stop making it so fun.”

Trace beheld the shirt-covered Q-cups before him, took a deep breath, defensively shut his eyes… and gently caressed the nipple bulge on his right-hand side. It was… amazingly soft to the touch.

“Mmmm,” Mist hummed pleasurably, and licked her lips. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Wanna go a bit further?”

Reluctantly, Trace removed his hand from her body and scooted back. “To be honest…”

“I understand.” Mist Melody finally scooted back and stood up. “Tell you what – you do your daily exercises and clear my challenges, and not only will I tell you more of my personal story, I’ll even throw in some extra special training.” She looked down at him past her peaks and bounced her eyebrows.

“I’ll… think about it,” Trace mumbled, blushing and holding back a nervous smile.

“I’m sure you will.” Mist turned around and began to saunter away. The dream of the zebra village began to dissipate – without the two of them keeping it coherent, Trace’s subconscious mind was getting ready to move on to some other scene.

Before she left, something about what she said struck Trace as odd. “Wait! What do you mean ‘challenges’?”

“You’ll find out in three days,” she said with one last wiggle of her hips. “Train hard!”