Pajama Problems

“No, I’m excited, too,” said Starlight Glimmer. “I mean… it’s our first time together. It’s just… Do we have to wear the pajamas?”

Maud Pie blinked at Starlight. “I like prim pajamas. I have a prim pajamas fetish.”

Starlight sighed, and plucked at the itchy woolen fabric of the dock-to-neck romper Maud had asked her to put on. They hadn’t even changed together!

“How do you even have sex in these?” said Starlight.

Maud blinked at her. “It’s more of a cuddling thing, really.”

“Ooooh,” said Starlight. “That makes more sense. I guess.”

She laid on her side on the bed in Maud’s underground bower. Actually it was a fold-out hide-a-bed, presumably purchased at Quills and Sofas, the only furniture store in town. Its metal springs creaked underneath her weight. Maud laid down next to her. And laid still. Legs stiff, poking against Starlight’s barrel. Starring at her. Starlight looked down at Maud’s wool-covered hooves. She stroked one. Maud didn’t move. She looked into Maud’s eyes. Maud’s face was expressionless.

Starlight’s heart began to beat faster. And not in a good way. What the hell was this? What was she supposed to do? Was Maud enjoying this? Was she supposed to enjoy this?

“Errrrrm…” said Starlight. “So… now what?”

Maud blinked at her. “Does there need to be anything else?”

Starlight bit her lower lip. The feeling she was feeling right now was called hyperarousal, or, more colloquially, the ‘fight or flight’ response. It was an automatic response to extreme stress, and it was a very, very dangerous thing for Starlight to be feeling. Starlight was not a sexually inexperienced mare. She had slept with sirens, she’d been gang-banged by griffons. She’d peed on princesses, she’d dallied with dragons — well, a dragon — and had sex inside of a live manticore. But she had never, ever encountered anything like this. She was starting to panic, and when Starlight panicked, shit got wrecked.

Maud pulled her hooves back. “You’re not happy.”

Starlight gritted her teeth. “No. I’m fine. Fine.”

Maud’s lovely, glossy gray lips twitched downwards at the corners ever so slightly. “No, I’m not super good at facial expressions, but I know happy pretty well. That’s not a happy face.”

Starlight hissed, and rolled onto her back, and covered her eyes with her hooves. “No! Okay, I’m not. I’m not happy. I came down here to have sex with you, and then I get hit with… with this pajama shit. Which is extremely hot. If you’re turned on by boring. Which I’m not.”

Maud sat up. The hide-a-bed creaked underneath her. “If you’re not turned on by boring, then why are you interested in me?”

Starlight hopped off the bed, teleported her pajamas off her body, and tossed them in a heap on the floor. “I’m interested in you because you’re weird. I like weird things. I fancy myself a pretty weird pony. I like to keep weird ponies around me. But this. This isn’t weird. This is…” She bit her tongue. Like, literally bit her tongue to keep herself from saying something incredibly cruel. Crueler than what she’d already said, which was up there.

“You think I’m weird?” said Maud.

“That’s one word for it,” said Starlight, letting go of her tongue. That had hurt. She’d better not do that again.

“I like weird rocks,” said Maud.

“What?” said Starlight, opening her mouth and tilting her head to one side.

“I find new and interesting ones and bring them back to study. Mostly I donate them to museums, but I keep some of them. Some of them have souls, and I keep those as friends. Like Boulder. But others are just rocks. Rocks and minerals. I have a collection. I’m having it shipped here from Rockville.”

“What,” hissed Starlight, “is your point?”

“My point is that I don’t want to be part of your collection.”

A burning flower of rage blossomed in Starlight’s heart. “Oh you don’t do you? Well, I don’t want you anyway. I thought you were somepony unique. Somepony interesting. You’re not. You’re pathetic.”

Unlike Maud, Starlight was extremely good at reading faces. It was a useful skill. So it was easy for Starlight to notice the subtle signs of a pony trying very hard not to cry.

“Please leave my home,” said Maud.

Starlight turned, and walked calmly into Maud’s gem studded foyer, up the crude stairs Maud had started carving, out of the cave, and into the forest.

Well.

Realization hit Starlight with the cool night air. She’d fucked up. She’d fucked up hard. She’d broken something beautiful and unexpectedly fragile. Like a geode or something; Starlight didn’t know. Maud would know if geodes were fragile. And now she'd never be able to ask. Tears started to squirt down Starlight’s cheeks. So much for Twilight’s friendship bullshit. So much for being ‘reformed’. Evil is as evil does.

Starlight formed a pair of crude wings out of sheets of magical energy, heated the air around her hooves to create an updraft, and launched herself into the night sky. She spun in a circle over the long thin spur of the Whitetail Woods, getting her bearings. Her studies under Twilight had hardly been wasted. The princess was young and naive, and had allowed Starlight free access to her libraries. Starlight now knew the locations of a number of powerful magical artifacts. Obtaining them would be simple, and then…

“Starlight, what are you doing?”

Starlight froze in midair, and turned to Twilight, hiding her hooves behind her back. “Oh, nothing, Twilight. Just out for a flight,” she said, grinning ingenuously.

Twilight hung in the air before her, flapping slowly on powerful, elegant alicorn wings. She could just hover there forever, floating on the lightest of air currents and… Starlight didn’t know, divine grace or something. Meanwhile, Starlight was having to fold gravity around herself to keep from plummeting to the earth, an inefficient process that was rapidly draining her magical reserves.

“I noticed some unusual levels of magical activity in the area,” said Twilight. “So I popped over to have a lookie. Is everything okay, Starlight?”

Starlight gulped. “Everything’s fine. Just fine.” She tried to stay calm, but her voice cracked. Stupid feelings.

“Uh huh,” said Twilight. “Just as I thought.”

There was a flash of purple light, and they were sitting at the big marble prep table in the kitchen of Twilight’s palace. Spike shrieked and jumped, dropping the armload of cupcakes he’d been his way out the door with.

“Equus, Twilight,” he said, scooping up cupcakes as fast as he could in a desperate bid to make the five second rule, “Stop sneaking up on me like that!”

“Sorry Spike! Friendship emergency! We need two quarts of chocolate ice cream, stat!”

———

“Feelings,” observed Starlight, pushing her spoon through the last drops of melted ice cream at the bottom of her quart. “Taste like chocolate.”

“So they’re not so bad, right?” said Twilight, levitating up a napkin to daub her face clean.

“I don’t know. I really bucked this up, didn’t I?”

Twilight nodded. “Yeah, you were extra special super mean.”

“I’m evil,” said Starlight, pushing aide her carton and laying her face on the table.

“You’re not evil,” said Twilight. “I mean, even on the scale of evil things you’ve done, this is pretty far down there. It’s pretty far down there on the scale of evil things I’ve done.”

“I called her pathetic.”

“I mind controlled a whole town to compensate for my emotional inadequacies,” said Twilight.

Starlight quirked an eyebrow and looked over at Twilight. “Really? Are we going there? Because I did that for longer.”

“My point is that everypony says awful things to the ponies they love sometimes. It sucks. It’s never worth it. You should try never to do it again. But it happens. Don’t beat yourself up.”

Starlight raised her head off the table. “Wait, what’s up with the L-word? I never used the L-word. Why are we using the L-word?”

Twilight smirked and put her head in her hooves. “Because the Starlight who peed in my mouth one night was all business the next day.”

“You two did what?” shouted Spike. “Oh, I did not need to hear that!”

“Well why are you even still here! Go back to bed!” Shouted Twilight, waving her hooves.

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” staid Spike, hefting his second round of cupcakes.

Twilight turned back to Starlight. “And when I said I never, ever wanted to do that again, you just took it in stride and we never talked about it again.”

“Until just now,” said Starlight.

“Right. My point is, this stuff normally rolls right off you like an uncharged solute off a phospholipid bilayer. You’d think a disappointing sexual encounter would be something Glim Glam could totally deal with, no problem.”

Starlight grunted. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“So. My hypothesis is you have feelings for Maud.” Twilight grinned.

“Oh no,” said Starlight.

“Yep. I think you’re in love. I mean, I’ve never been in love, but you’re exhibiting all the symptoms. Dilated pupils, wild mood swings, irrational behavior.” Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Either that or you're on drugs. Starlight, have you started doing drugs?”

Started doing drugs? Starlight ignored that. “No!” Starlight gasped. “I just met her!”

Twilight nodded. “Love at first sight. It’s supposed to be very romantic.”

Starlight shivered. Out of all the bad things that could happen to her, this was the worst possible thing. “So what do I do?”

Twilight magically evaporated the chocolate stains on the tabletop in front of her, and summoned a paper and quill. “Friendship assignment! ‘I, Starlight Glimmer, will attempt to apologize to Maud Pie, and salvage as much as I can of the relationship.’ Good luck with that. You picked a tough one.”

“Aspirational. Thanks.”

Twilight looked up from writing. “Oh poop, Pinkie’s the only Rockville Pie you’ve met, isn’t she? She might’ve given you a wrong impression of what her sisters are like.”

“All crazy? No, I got that.”

Twilight shook her head. “No! Well, I mean, yes, they are all pretty eccentric, but they also had an incredibly hard time growing up. Their parents are very strict, and very conservative — not abusive, I don’t mean to imply that. But strict. And worse, they were poor. So poor! I’ve done my best to make things easier for them — as much as I can without embarrassing them; they’re a very proud family. But I can’t undo the past.”

Starlight’s eyes narrowed. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards. “Well, actually…”

“No, Starlight.”

“I’m just pulling your leg. So. Foalhood trauma. Got it.”

“You can do it. I believe in you,” said Twilight, resuming writing. “‘Extra Credit: In the event of exceptional success, share any juicy details with HRH Twilight Sparkle.’”

“Twilight, even I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“Just pulling your leg,” said Twilight, folding the note in half and pushing it towards Starlight. “Go get some sleep, and get on this in the morning.”

Starlight took the paper in her magic, and slid it into the small pocket dimension she used as a purse. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep, but I’ll try. Good night, Twilight.” Starlight slid off of her stool and headed for the stairs.

“Oh, before I forget. One more thing,” said Twilight. “I’ve noticed you’ve been looking up the locations of powerful magical artifacts in my library. That’s fine. It's a really interesting topic. But I also know it’s tempting to revert to old patterns of behavior when under stress. So, you know, if you’re ever in a bad mood, and think you might like to try looking for one of those things? Don’t. Just don’t. Okay?”

Starlight cringed. Busted. Twilight was a pretty sharp kid.