Author's Note

When Withania met Rune Chisel, she took the opportunity to rope him into an experiment she'd been thinking about - turning a pony into a potted plant.

Contains oral soft vore, soft digestion, and plant transformation with implied reformation. A gift for Rathalos.

8. Rune Chisel (F/m, SV, SD, Plant TF)

“Oh my, your reputation is well deserved, Withania…” complemented Rune Chisel, as he tested a rune-enhanced figurine with the dried herbs from Withania’s sample. The two of them sat in the large, sun-drenched greenhouse in Withania’s back garden, where Rune had visited all the way from his shop in the city. “As I mentioned, my enchantments are designed with convenience in mind, and with component materials as potent as these, my customers would no longer need a bag of extra materials to augment certain runes.”

“Thank you, Rune, you’re very kind. You’re interested in a recurring purchase order then?” asked Withania, sitting back from the bench where Rune was inspecting her product.

“Oh absolutely, I thought I’d need a couple of days to run experiments, but this exceeds all my expectations! Now I’m gonna have to decide what to do over the next few days until I’m due to head back home!”

Withania smiled to herself, as her client was still bent over the workbench. A few days with nothing to do, huh? she thought to herself, before saying aloud; “Have you got somewhere to stay?”

“Uh, actually I forgot to book somewhere. But I’m sure there’s an inn I can book into. I don’t suppose you have any recommendations, do you?”

Withania quietly walked up behind him, inhaling and then gently blowing toward his face, her breath carrying her aromatic pollen. “Well as it happens,” she said, getting closer and exhaling toward him again, “I was hoping to run a little experiment of my own this weekend, and what better partner to have than another professor, you’d love to help me out, wouldn’t you?”

Rune Chisel’s nose twitched and he blinked as the invisible cloud Withania had been exhaling around him entered his sinuses and lungs, being absorbed into his bloodstream. In an enclosed space like the greenhouse, Withania knew her pollen breath could sway a pony’s mind under her influence in seconds if she was trying. The plant pony draped herself over Rune’s shoulders from behind, the sudden physical contact lowering his defences even further.

“Y-yes…” he stammered, “That smells lovely… w-what do you need me to do?”

She spun him around on the bench stool so he was facing her, and then kissed him, her tongue slipping into his mouth and putting the taste of her nectar onto his lips, and more of her intoxicating scent into his lungs. “Just gulp down as much nectar as fast as you can,” she said, “The quicker I can digest you, the quicker I can get to work.”

His eyes were out of focus, and his smile suggested that all he was aware of was the attention he was getting from the green earth pony with the flaming red hair, rather than the strange things she was suggesting. In any case, when Withania opened her mouth as wide as she could, its green interior framed by strings of golden nectar, his only response was to lean in closer and inhale more of her sweet aroma. Which made it all the easier for her to press her jaws over his muzzle, then his face, and then with a grunt of exertion, his entire head. Withania pulled his shoulders toward her for a better angle as she swiftly gulped her way down his torso, her neck and chest bulging out with the other earth pony’s shape. Normally she would take her time and savour the moment, but she had other plans for this pony and wanted to jump ahead to the moment where her experiment truly began.

Rune’s world went dark as he was engulfed by a slick tunnel of pulsating flesh, it clamped around him and pinned his legs to his sides before his instincts could even try to resist. Everything smelled of that sweet alluring liquid he’d tasted when she kissed him, and while he could hear - and feel - the beat of a heart, the texture of the soft tube was like that of a plant. But before he could wonder any further about this strange experience befalling him, the convulsions around him squeezed his body into a rounder chamber, filled to the brim with watery nectar. Had he been of normal mind, Rune would be panicking for air. But the instructions that the sweet voice had spoken into his ears rang in his mind, and without even thinking he began to gulp down the watery liquid. Moments later his breath gave out and he tried to inhale - only succeeding in flooding his lungs with the same liquid, but rather than drowning, his lungs continued to function. He hiccuped and felt the fluid rushing in and out of his body with every breath, swirling in his stomach, and finding its way into every other orifice of his body.

Withania lay on her engorged belly, gently rocking back and forth in lewd bliss. She’d been feeling peckish for days, and coupled with the idea she’d had, she was eager to work this pony down to mush as fast as she could. She could feel his twitching movement and sense that he’d been claimed by her nectar, and now she gently kneaded her stomach, waiting for her prey to dissolve into more sweet nectar. “Well, I’m gonna snooze while you melt in there, else I’ll get distracted and waste energy on… other activities…” she said, slouching on her belly bed.

An hour or so later, Withania was crouched on an empty allotment in the garden. She blew out her cheeks in relief and then turned to inspect the patch behind her. Normally she’d now fill in this hole with fresh soil, but instead, she fished out a hoof-sized seed that she’d just secreted there. The essence of Rune Chisel, his mind and everything needed to regrow his body was condensed into this seed - while his old body was now a plush padding around Withania’s hips and rump.

She carried the seed into the greenhouse and put it in a medium-sized plant pot, adding a nutrient-rich soil, a little grow-fast potion to speed everything up, and her magical craft as an earth pony. She gave the pot a good dose of water and left it in the sun while she went outside to tend the garden.

Rune felt himself enter a dream-like state. He was standing on his hind legs, with his hind hooves braced up to the shins. His forelegs were held out, and his head looking up as if he were trying to embrace the sun. He couldn’t see or hear, but his spatial awareness gave him a sense of being small in a huge enclosed room. He wasn’t sure how long he was there for, but now and then he felt like a huge being entered the room, moving around at alarming speed and inspecting him, and then vanishing again. He wasn’t bored. If anything he was driven by curiosity - he could feel his rigid body lengthening, stretching taller, his forelegs wider and his hindlegs separating and digging deep into the soil around him, sucking up moisture. He had a goal in mind, to get big and bloom into a beautiful flower.

Withania checked in on her seedling’s progress. As predicted, the seed was growing at incredible speed, even by her standards. Not fast enough to see, but certainly enough that there was a visible change every time she popped into the greenhouse to check. Once her Rune Chisel plant was about a foot tall, she sat at the bench with a pair of scissors and assessed him carefully. The tegmen flower was designed to place all its effort into the flower, which was where its main mechanics lay. To stop this from happening and delay Rune’s reformation, she needed to redirect this growth. From her own experience, she knew that the pony trapped within this plant-body would have a vague sense of its shape, but the limbs were abstract, and pruning them was not the same as pruning those limbs on a pony body. With this in mind, she snipped off the very top of the main stalk, where the flower bud was starting to form. Then she trimmed the largest leaf and turned the pot so the smaller leaves and sprouts were facing the late-afternoon sun. The plant was visibly too big for the pot she’d placed it in, but this was also deliberate, to stunt the growth of the root system and further inhibit overall maturity.

“Good night, Rune, I hope this hotel is to your satisfaction!” she murmured with a sly smile, before heading into her house for the night.

It was dawn when Rune felt his consciousness stir again. He felt… bushier. At some point, before he’d faded into unconsciousness, the big entity that zipped around faster than he could keep track of had loomed over him and he felt his extremities cut off. It hadn’t hurt - if anything he felt more balanced than before, as if he weren’t going to fall over while reaching toward the light. Now in the cool dawn, he felt like he had many forelegs all around him. He’d managed to stretch his head up again after it had been trimmed off, but it wasn’t as prominent as it had been. He felt like he had a mane atop him, and that was growing, instead of his face pointing up at the sun. But also he was thirsty… his hind legs were scrunched up in the soil below him and he’d absorbed all the water he could. Suddenly his plant-brain clicked and he realised that he was in Withania’s greenhouse, and the moving thing was her, moving around quickly because he was now living at a much slower pace. But what was he?

Withania yawned and placed her mug of tea on the bench as she entered the greenhouse. She normally started watering the garden first thing in sunny weather, before the sun got too hot and scorched the wet plants, but she was eager to see how her miniature potted pony-plant was doing. And boy, had he filled out nicely! Rune Chisel was visibly a Tegmen-hybrid like the usual regrowth plants that her seeds became, but her pruning and the restriction of the pot had completely altered the proportions. There were many more leaves now, and while a flower bud had formed again, it was nowhere near big enough to grow a pony. Rune would remain trapped in this form for as long as Withania liked now. She added a little extra water, before trotting out to continue her morning routine.

Rune settled into his stance, balanced and stable, drinking in sunlight and the warmth of the greenhouse. Slowly he felt what he considered to be his head ready to burst forth again, and as the sun hit the peak of its apex, he uncovered his face from its protective shield of petals. While he did not see as a pony would, the reflection of light around him gave a strange sense of light and shadow, which is brain slowly adapted to process into a blurry impression of the greenhouse around him. A green muzzle framed by terracotta-coloured hair swam into view, and Withania looked down at the beautiful flower she’d grown from the pony that was Rune Chisel.

Withania cupped her face in her hooves, happy with her creation. Her experiment had worked perfectly. Next, she would prune this plant again to encourage heavy growth into the flower, and replant it outside so it could resume its natural growth cycle to reform Rune Chisel as a pony. But for now, she liked the idea of leaving him as he was, a healthy plant content to flourish in the sunlight.

Rune Chisel swayed his leaves and petals at her, although the movement would be too slow for her to see, and waited eagerly for her to water him and add more nutrients to his soil.