For the love of Anon

Man, this castle has too many fucking stairways. When you arrive at the kitchen, your legs are really starting to hurt. You walk over to the table and collapse into one of the chairs closer to the door. Starlight seems better off, as she just walks to the fridge with seemingly no issues. Probably because she has four legs to distribute less weight onto. You wonder how she would fare trying to walk on just her two back legs.

After a minute or two of her rummaging around the fridge with her magic, she levitates a reasonably sized bowl of salad out.

"I can provide you with lunch this time. I made this myself last night but saved some for today. There's enough here for both of us I think."

"Yea it should be fine. It'll be nice to see what you're cooking's like, and even if it isn't enough for both of us we could cook dinner together for us later anyway."

"Before I dish this up then, could you, um… put the collar on me? I wanna see how well it fits and it's not like anypony's gonna see us in here anyway."

You pick the collar up off the table, which you dumped there as you sat down, along with the leash, and motioned for Starlight to come over. She put the salad bowl on the side and walked over to you, sitting down at your feet and lifting her head up for access. Adorable.

You first off wrap the collar around her neck, then grab the strap round the back and loop it through the buckle. You put a finger between the collar and her neck, and tighten the strap till it becomes tight around your finger, after which you remove it.

"Comfy?"

She nods an affirmative. The whole time her cheeks have been getting redder and redder, as you just pull the collar round so the blank metal panel is at the front. You sit back a bit to admire your work.

"It suits you. We'll need to thank Fluttershy for it later."

Her eyes go wide and she adopts a scared look on her face. You boop her, laughing.

"I'm just joking, Glimmy. I wouldn’t do that."

She looked somewhat confused when you called her by that nickname. Her ears started going as well, indecisive about where they want to stay. They settled on down after her blush got even more intense. So much for her managing to hold back the blushing more. You'd rather it this way though. In fact, you're surprised she didn't squeak at all of that. Most ponies would. Especially Fluttershy.

Hell, she wouldn’t just squeak, she would have literally melted through the floor.

You decide to get up and walk over to the salad bowl after about half a minute of Starlight just sitting there. As soon as she realises you got up, she rushes over to the salad and grabs it with magic.

"it's okay, I said I was gonna make us lunch. In fact I could make all your meals for you… master."

Well then. You weren't expecting her to be quite that forward with you. It's like the instant you put the collar on her a switch flicked in her brain that turned on 'pet mode'. You ruffled her mane a bit and you went to sit back down.

It didn't take you two long to finish the salad. It wasn’t very big, at least for you. It was very nice though.

"That was actually really nice, Glimmy. Are you sure you're not secretly a chef?"

Yet again the blush comes on. At this rate you may as well say her face was permanently red when you were around. It was cute.

"T-thanks… master."

You move to pick up both of your plates, but as you go to grab them they are covered in a magical aura.

"let me do the cleaning up. I said I was going to be the one to feed you now, and that involves washing up."

Her version of washing up wasn’t filling up a sink and using a sponge to wipe the dishes down with; it was simply her magic aura getting slightly brighter around them, then dimming again. When she put them on the side, they were spotless.

"Simple cleaning spell. Makes chores like washing up ten times easier." She answers your silent question with a slightly proud smile.

"Impressive. It would be useful if I had you around the house when I did my washing up. The time I could save…"

After you said that, Starlight mumbled something that you couldn’t quite make out, but sounded something like:

"I would love to live with you and do that for you."

You're starting to get suspicions about Starlight. You decide not to voice anything yet though, and so you just stand up and move to the door. Of course Starlight follows you.

"So, how would you like to practice magic and I help you? I doubt there's much else to do here that doesn’t involve either reading or petting you."

Her eyes lit up a bit when you said that, but went back down a bit when you said that last part.

"Sure, I always enjoy practicing magic, and it'll be ten times better with you there. I can even show you some of my new spells that I've created. Or rather, combined old ones to do things better."

"Neat. Throne room then? I believe that’s the biggest room. Unless you want to do it in the main hallway."

"Throne room is fine. I'll, uh, try not to cause the map table to vanish this time. Even though that was Trixie, not me."

You laugh as you remember when Starlight and Trixie came hammering on your door about a month ago now, asking if the table had randomly appeared in your house. If that thing was there, you would've fucking known about it. It would've probably torn a hole through the side of your house.

You can't remember where, but they found it in the end. You just hope Trixie doesn’t decide to start randomly teleporting things willy nilly again: you don’t want to risk it.

You get up again and head to the throne room, with Starlight tailing you. At least your legs are feeling a bit better now.

The next few hours consisted of you and Starlight practicing magic. Or rather, her casting it and you being the training dummy. At least she didn't hurt you. Although you did get slightly knocked around, and each time you did she would come rushing over to see if you were alright. But soon you were sat down in one of the thrones around the table with your feet up on it, and Starlight perched on your lap with you idly stroking her mane with one hand.

"So now my legs are well and truly dead, what now? It should be close to dinnertime I'd imagine though."

At least the throne room was one room that did have a clock in. you gazed over to it above the doorway. It was around half five.

"Yea we probably should get some dinner started soon. All that spell casting made me hungry. But first lets just lay here for a while longer." Or more specifically, you sitting down with legs that refuse to obey commands and her laying on top of them. At least she's cute like this, even if it is at the expense of your legs. Legs are overrated anyway.

"What should we have for dinner then? I have an idea but I don’t know if you'd have all the ingredients for it."

"What's your idea? If you give me a list of ingredients I can tell you if we have them or not."

You sit there for a minute, trying to think of everything you'd need.

"When I was back on earth, my mother used to make and cook the most amazing macaroni and cheese for me every other Sunday. I know that’s not saying much seeing as you guys probably have to make it from scratch if you wanted it at all, but my mother's was amazing. Would you want to try making that? I think I remember how she made it but haven't tried it."

"Ponies don’t usually have that, partially because it's too complicated to make the sauce, and because pasta is relatively hard to come by as it needs to be imported, but I'll make a guess and say Twilight's got some in the kitchen somewhere. She'll have access to all kinds of imported stuff as a princess. As for cheese, that’s easy to come by. I know we have a decent amount of it in the fridge."

"Ok, well I'm gonna need to have a look to see if you guys have the other ingredients for the sauce. The only other ingredients are mustard and flour, and of course milk, but you guys'll have that anyway."

"We should have flour, but I have no clue about mustard. I guess we'll just have to look."

"Well, it's not too big of a deal if you don’t have it, it's just there to give it a bit more flavour and bring out the taste of the cheese."

For another few minutes you just sit there, stroking Starlight.

Once it gets to six, you decide to finally get up and head to the kitchen to start on dinner, much to Starlight's dismay. You ended up carrying her to the kitchen though because when you picked her up to get her off you she asked you to. So when you get to the kitchen again you just sit her on one of the seats, then she immediately gets off to go find the ingredients you mentioned. As it turns out they did have mustard, by the looks of it never opened either.

Starlight insisted on doing as much as she could to help you. The only thing you really did without her asking to take over was measuring out the amount of each ingredient to put in the sauce.

It was at least somewhat fun, but boring at the same time. It takes you both around an hour to have the dinner ready to dish up after cooking the pasta, then making the sauce, mixing them and then cooking the whole thing again. You get half each, of course.

You take the plates over to the table and set them down next to eachother, along with a knife and fork beside each. You take a seat in the same place as before, and Starlight takes her seat next to you.

"This smells delicious. Lets hope it'll be as nice as my mother used to make…"

You pick your fork up and stab some pasta then put it in your mouth. It's certainly good, but not quite as good as your mother used to make. You're not really surprised. It's probably the cheese, or the milk, or something. She did used to use soya milk. Eh, it's definitely something you could make for yourself for dinner sometimes though, and was better than most you cooked.

"Wow Anon, this is lovely." Starlight said after she swallowed her first bite. "Makes me wish I'd tried this before today."

You smile, happy you're able to make a good dinner and please Starlight.

"Maybe we can make dinner together again at some point. I promise I wont beg to help you so much next time." She smiles sheepishly at that. Boop time.

'Boop'

"Eat your dinner." You say with a grin.

She decides to stay silent and just continues eating her dinner with a smile on her face. And a blush. No surprise there.

By the time you were done and had the dishes cleaned up again (thanks to Starlight's magic), it was around half eight. Although getting up quite late, you were still getting tired. You'd done a lot more exercise than normal today, even though most of that was walking around a castle and up and down countless flights of stairs.

You took a glance out one of the kitchen windows. Still raining.

"Fuck, I'm gonna have to walk back in that." You mutter to yourself. Of course Starlight hears you though, seeing as you're currently sitting there petting her again. Ever since she came and asked you today about the whole 'pet' thing, you haven't been able to help yourself. She's just too adorable.

"You don’t need to walk back. You could stay here tonight. It's not like there's anyone here other than us, and it could be like a sleepover."

She's right. You don’t exactly have any real responsibilities back at your house; you don’t have a pet to look after or anything. Heh. You could take back over your old room in the castle. You're willing to bet it's stayed how you left it. Even if not, you can easily make the bed again.

"Yea, I think I will. I don’t particularly want to go back out in that weather."

To emphasize your point, you hear a crack of thunder from outside. Yea it's getting even worse out there now. It just makes you wonder even more about how the hell pegasi can control the weather. And even unicorns for that matter. This fucking world of pastel horses, man. Shits crazy weird.

Starlight claps her hooves together in happiness when you agree to her offer.

"I guess I'll have to set up my old room again, unless you guys left it how it was."

She visibly deflated when you said that. And her ears went back. her eyes also started darting around the room for a few seconds, before she started talking:

"Your old room, is, uhh, currently in use. Yea… we had to use it for, um, extra storage space, seeing as we had nowhere else."

Suspicious horse is suspicious. And adorable with her flushed face as she looks at you hopefully.

"Uhh… huh." You decide not to question the obvious lie, just to see where she was gonna go with it.

"Well then, where should I sleep tonight? There are plenty of other spare rooms I could take, aren't there? Or are they all in use as well?" You had a suspicion where she was going anyway, what with her questions and behaviour these last two days.

"You could… um, sleep in …my room?" that last part was a lot quieter and higher pitched. And she gives you an even more powerful hopeful glance, with half puppy-dog eyes.

'Hnnnging' intensifies.

"Do you have a spare mattress or bed I could use then?" You continue playing dumb, although at this point you don’t know why, cos you know exactly where she's going with this now.

"N-no. I was more thinking along the lines of… in my bed." Yet again she says the last part insanely quietly. And then she brings on the semi-half lidded look. Man your feels. It does feel good having a cute girl shyly asking you to sleep in their bed though, even if they are a multi-colored miniature horse. Besides, at this point it's not like you'll be going back to earth. Twilight confirmed that much.

You also couldn’t deny that look and that cuteness. You might die of heart attack if you do. You quite like being alive.

"Ok then, I'll sleep with you tonight."

She actually 'squees' somehow, even though you thought that was Fluttershy-exclusive. Yep, definitely can't deny her now. And you'll admit that it does kinda excite you. And little Anon, who decides to make an unwanted appearance. "Bad time, dude." You think at your dick.

Starlight proceeds to get up and starts trotting towards the staircase that leads to her bedroom, thankfully not noticing your semi-boner. Crisis averted.

You also get up, adjusting your pants to accommodate your new 'development'. You follow her towards the stairs, which she nearly ran up. You still need a shower before you go to bed, though. You’ve been sweating a lot today from all the exercise after all.

"Wait up Starlight!" You say as you go up the stairs, taking two at a time. She stands at the top waiting for you. When you get to the top, you say: "I need a shower first, and to generally get ready for bed. Which bathroom should I use?"

"You can use the one off my bedroom. It's got a bath in it, and is big enough for you. You can use it once I finish up myself, if you don’t mind waiting that is."

You internally sigh of relief. At least she wasn’t going to ask to shower or bathe with you as well. It surprises you that she's being this forward with her requests today as it is, especially the whole 'sleeping in her bed with her' thing. You guess these kind of things happen when you request to 'be someone's pet'. And it's not completely unwanted either: You have been lonely in this respect since you arrived here after all, pony or not.

"Great. I don’t mind waiting. How long do you think you'll be?"

"Not long. About ten minutes I'd think."

"Cool. I'll just chill in your room till your done then I guess."

By that point you'd made it to her bedroom door, which she opened using magic of course. You’ve seen Starlight's room before, so it's nothing new, apart from a couple new decorations, including quite a large mirror that’s lined with images of Starlight with each of her pony friends. There's also one of you and her there. You walk up to the mirror to get a closer look. The image is one of you and her standing next to eachother in front of the crystal castle in the crystal empire. She took you up there not long after you moved out of the castle. You were always fascinated by a whole kingdom made entirely out of crystals. According to Starlight, so was the empires old ruler. Some unicorn called 'Sombra', who apparently enslaved the ponies who lived there. The guy striked you as a dick, so it somewhat pleased you when Starlight mentioned he was beaten and practically 'killed' by Twilight and her friends. Although the how was kinda sketchy. Eh, whatever. Shits weird here, as you said before.

Something on the picture of you and Starlight grabs your attention, though. You take another look, and, wait, is that a… heart? Next to your head? Actually, there's more than one. There's quite a few small pink hearts drawn on around your head. After a few seconds, something dawns on you. And you mentally kick yourself for being so dense about it and not realising, especially in these last couple of days: Starlight has a crush on you. For how long, you can't be certain, but it must be quite a while. She's always been so nice to you since you came here. You were quite a dick when you first arrived as well, mainly due to depression from realising you could never go back home to see your friends and family again… but she put up with you and helped you. You shrugged it off a lot near the start, too. You put it down to Starlight trying to 'better herself', and because this land of magical talking horses is hella weird with it's overused 'friendship and peace' ideals. Although they're still better than the segregated nations and groups of people on earth in some ways. You'd like to think you’ve become a better person thanks to being here at least.

"Man you fucking dense retard, Anon. Great fucking job being completely oblivious to a girl's feelings…" you say aloud to yourself. Not loud enough for Starlight to hear from the bathroom though.

You step away from the mirror, and just move to sit on the bed. At least the bed is a double bed, so it wont be too awkward. Speaking of awkward, something else dawns on you.

"Shit. What am I gonna sleep in? all my clothes are back at my place. And I can't sleep in what I'm wearing, for obvious reasons. And going nude is definitely not an option, especially after learning what I just did."

Your only real option is to go in your boxers and your undershirt. Unless you’ve got any clothes left here at the castle. Very doubtful. You took everything with you when you moved out.

After your both internal and external contemplating and kicking yourself, the bathroom door finally opens, revealing Starlight. Just with her mane wrapped in a towel.

"Bathrooms yours, Anon." she says with a smile. She walks past you to the bed as you walk to the door. She brushes her side and tail against your side as she passes, causing your hair to stand on end, as well as little Anon. calm the fuck down.

You close the bathroom door, then proceed to strip. You leave your clothes on the floor as usual, then step into the bath. As you do, you realise something. You're gonna need a towel. Man fuck aren't you thinking straight today. Fucking cute-ass Starlight messing with your brain.

You look around for a clean towel, and notice a relatively small blue towel sitting on the wash-basket. Why she has a wash-basket in here you don’t even know. It's not like they wear clothes most of the time. Whatever.

You just leave the towel there and proceed to close the curtains and turn the shower on. After getting it to the right temperature you begin. Seeing as you don’t have a sponge and you don’t want to use one of Starlight's without asking, you just use your hands. Yea, you could pop your head out the door to ask, but meh. You did have a shower this morning anyway, so it don’t matter too much.

The shower was boring, as usual, and you got yourself relatively clean without a sponge. Drying yourself was a bit of a pain, though, seeing as you had to use the pretty small pony-sized towel. At least it was more manoeuvrable.

You grab your boxers and pull them up, followed by your undershirt. You're kinda glad you wore it under your regular shirt now. You wouldn't've done if it wasn’t late fall and quite cold outside. Not that you expected Starlight would mind if you didn't. hell, she would probably not be bothered if you went to bed completely nude. No, dick. Down. Bad.

After your slight boner went away, you picked up the rest of your clothes and opened the door. When you walked out, Starlight was laying on the bed in what was probably the sexiest pose a pony could do. Well, waiting for your boner to die was pointless, then, because now it's back in full force.

"Umm, w-where should I put these?" you ask, unable to keep a slight stammer out of your voice.

"Just leave them on the floor. It doesn’t matter." You just dropped them at your feet. Your eyes were glued to the pony laying in the bed. Fuck she's sexy.

NO! BAD BRAIN! SHE'S A HORSE, YOU'RE NOT MEANT TO FIND THEM SEXY!

Your dick is certainly telling you otherwise. You’ve been here for over half a year now. You're not going back. You may as well accept that the only love your going to find is a pony. And after your discovery earlier, it doesn’t help your brain's case.

You’ve only been doing this stuff with Starlight for a day, though. ONE DAY! Not even! You can't just straight up have sex with her like this after that tiny amount of time. Hell, despite what your dick is telling you, you're still not 100% sure whether you'd feel comfortable doing that with a pony. Maybe after a while to think on it, you might be able to. Also this will be your first time since you got here. You want it to be special, not a lust-filled mess. And as it seems, that’s exactly what this'll be. You're not even sure you feel the same way about Starlight as she does for you. You definitely care for her, but do you really… love her?

…

No. At least, not yet. You'd be willing to give her a decent chance though. You're not gonna do this, though, not yet. You're not gonna waste your first time here like this.

With that in mind, you walk over to the bed and sit down on the side. Starlight crawls up to your, side, and starts nuzzling against your arm. You know what she's trying to do.

"listen, Starlight. I know what you're trying to do." She stops, and looks up at you with a questioning glance.

"I saw your mirror of pictures, I saw the one of us at the crystal empire. I know now why you came to me earlier with the request to 'become my pet'." You turn to look at her fully.

"I figured you would've seen it. I kind of wanted you to. That’s why I didn't hide it." She nuzzles against your arm again.

Fuck that’s so cute. No, you need to tell her. Tell her you'd be willing to give her a chance, but you don’t want this yet.

"Well, I'm not sure how I'm gonna put this. I find you a very cute and attractive pony, Starlight. Certainly one of, if not the cutest and most attractive I've met since I arrived here. You’ve been my best friend since I first got here, and have helped me fit in, despite my dick-like attitude near the beginning."

Her smile drops a bit. "I knew you were like that because you were depressed. You had no way back home, you couldn’t see your loved ones again. I know how that feels, and I didn't want you to go through the same thing I did alone."

You ruffle her mane a bit. "And I'm very grateful for that. Even though this is the first time I've ever said it."

Her smile comes back again, wider this time. "I'm happy to have been able to help you." She says while reaching forward and drawing you into a hug, which you return. But you pull back after a couple of seconds.

"With that in mind, I realised I've been completely oblivious to your feelings at times. It wasn’t until I saw that picture that I truly realised. I'm really sorry for that. I have changed, a lot, since I first arrived. I feel like I'm a better person, not as much of a dick anymore. That is very much thanks to you, as well as the others that have helped me integrate, like twilight."

She pulls you back into a hug. "It's ok, Anon. I forgive you. I'm just glad you're happy now, and become a better pon -er person thanks to me."

Ok, now to address the elephant in the room.

"How long have you felt this way towards me?" She was slightly taken aback by your now forward question, but still smiled as she pulled out of the hug.

"Quite a long time. I'd say about two to three weeks after your arrival."

Holy shit, she's had a crush on you for that long?! That’s over five months! Man you really are dense. And an asshole.

"Wow, that’s a long time. I'm so sorry I didn't realise your feelings before. I promise to try to be a lot less dense from now on…" It's the least you could do, really. Considering this pony's probably had so many sleepless nights and worries over you, and whether you would return her feelings one day.

"Well, I will definitely say this:" you put a finger under her chin, making her look up at your face. "I'll definitely give this a shot. I owe you that, and much more. I don’t mind doing this whole 'pet' thing, I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I wasn’t, but in terms of the more, uh, intimate stuff, I'd rather take some more time. You would be my first pony girlfriend, after all. I'd rather not rush into these things." After saying all of that, you feel a slight weight on your chest, worrying whether she's going to accept it or not. At first, her expression dims. A lot. And her ears fold right back. But as you continue talking, they perk back up, and a hopeful smile appears on her face.

"You're willing to give me a chance?" You nod, smiling. She just adopts a massive smile on her face, and she lunges forward to wrap you in a very tight hug. "Oh, thank you so much, Anon. you have no idea how much I've wanted you to say that! I've always been worried about whether you would reject me, stop being my friend or think I'm weird. That’s kind of why I never mentioned it before. I didn't want to lose you as a friend, like I lost Sunburst back when I was a filly…"

You pat her head to soothe her, assuring her you're not going anywhere. "I wouldn’t do that to you, Starlight. Even though right at this minute I don’t feel the same way, I might grow to, and I'm certainly willing to try it. Besides, you’ve been so nice to me, It wouldn’t feel right to just stop being friends with you because of this."

You feel a slight wet patch on your undershirt. Is she crying? Man, she must've been torn up about this. Well, she just had a massive weight lifted from her heart that’s been there over five months.

"Well, it's alright now, Starlight. I'm here, and I'm not going to leave you. We'll see where this leads."

Little Anon went into hiding a long time ago by this point, thankfully. And you don’t think Starlight still wants to do that anyway. She seems too busy crying into your chest anyway. So you just stand up and cradle her against you, as you turn around and lay back in her bed, with her laying on top of you. Using one hand, you pull the covers over the both of you.

"Night, Starlight. Sleep well."

"Night, Anon. you too. And… I love you…" she mumbles into your chest, hugging you tighter. You just caught that end bit. It brings a smile to your lips. As you start to drift off to sleep, all you can think is, you feel you could definitely come to love this pony.