Moon Shoes and Pixie Fry loved each other very much.
It was clear to anypony who saw them—they practically walked hoof in hoof everywhere, to the point where it was almost as if they were in some bizzare six-legged race. They turned heads when they did this, occasionally stumbling over one another as they kept their hooves locked together.
Moon Shoes and Pixie Fry didn’t care.
The others could stare, and laugh, and talk behind their backs about how stupid they looked (as if the townsponies had learned nothing of friendship in the whole time that Ponyville had been inhabited by the Elements of Harmony)—none of that mattered to them.
They had each other.
And that was enough.
The two of them had a nightly ritual that meant almost as much to them as each other. Since it involved getting to spend time close and personal, it only made sense for them to be attached to this ritual as much as they were to one another. Moon Shoes would gallop straight from her work at the Ponyville Market as a toy seller, and meet with Pixie Fry behind Caramel’s sweet shop. They’d head home, make dinner, and then spend the night cuddling and snuggling until they drifted off to sleep.
“Oof! Heya, hon!” Pixie said, nuzzling Moon Shoes as she tackled her from the side with a splayed hug.
Moon Shoes wrapped her grey wings around Pixie, gently grinding her muzzle against her marefriend’s neck. “Heya! Missed you so much while I was at work today.”
The two started their journey home, hoof in hoof as always. They could have flown of course, as they were both pegasi—but that would have gotten them home faster. Moon and Pixie loved to take as much time as possible walking home, enjoying the small sights of Ponyville as they sauntered through it.
“I was just thinking,” Pixie said to Moon, shuffling her wings to make them more comfortable at her sides around her saddlebag.
Moon chuckled. “Already off to a bad start.” Pixie playfully swatted at her with her tail, and Moon’s chuckle elevated into a high-pitched giggle.
“Oh, stop you. No, I was just thinking—it’s almost time to plan for our vacation again!”
“Oh! That’s right! You wanna go back to Mexicolt this year?” Moon asked.
Pixie shook her head, mane bobbing back and forth. “Nah; while it was fantastic for the most part last time, the water made me sick to my stomach. But good thinking! Someplace warm. Winter’s just around the corner.”
As if the wind itself were listening in, a biting chill blasted the two of them. Pixie shivered and buried her snout into Moon’s chest; it was warm.
A lot warmer than usual.
“Woah,” Pixie mumbled into the fluffy expanse of fur. “Mmph, your floof is never this thick.”
Moon smiled. “Yeah, I did notice that this time around. No idea what’s caused it.”
Pixie stopped in her track, holding her head in place. “Ah! It’s like a nice, thick shag carpet. I don’t wanna take my muzzle out. It’s cooold.”
Moon tightened her grip around Pixie’s hoof, blushing softly as two nearby ponies stopped and stared at them, muttering to themselves at the intimate display. Generally, she wasn’t one to care about the chatter of passersbys and their comments, as she was used to them... but there was something about how Pixie had already pointed out that her floof was uncommonly thick that made her strangely embarrassed.
“Easy, hon. Let’s save it for after dinner, huh?”
“Nah,” Pixie said shortly. “Too cold. Must stay warm in chest floof.” She buried her muzzle deeper, blowing a soft raspberry into her lover’s chest. Moon Shoes giggled, a small tremor running down her spine as the sensation of Pixie’s lips tickled her.
“St-Stop!” she gasped, her head swinging and turning to make sure that the nopony could see them. She was sorely disappointed—quite a few had taken note of their snuggly engagement, and a tiny crowd had gathered a little ways away. The blush on Moon’s cheeks deepened from rosy to crimson as she could feel them staring at them.
“Pixie...” she whined. However embarrassed Moon felt, though, she couldn’t deny that the feeling of her marefriend’s muzzle was electrifying. She tried her best to keep her wings locked to her sides, but the instinctive splaying of them was quite inevitable. In no time at all, she sported a wingboner for the ages, wings stiff and sticking straight up. Her feathers ruffled slightly as the sharp autumn chill cut through them.
Her shivering had nothing to do with the temperature, though; that was all due to Pixie’s incessant public snuggling of her chest, the other pegasus throwing her forehooves onto Moon’s shoulders, tenderly rubbing and massaging them as her mouth opened slightly.
“Bleh!” Pixie disengaged for a moment, spitting out some errant fur that had gotten on her tongue. Moon tittered softly.
“You dork,” she teased affectionately. “But really. Let’s go continue this at home.”
“What’re you afraid of?” Pixie said, snorting softly. “Don’t think I didn’t notice those other ponies; let ‘em stare. I want them to see how much I love my lovely Moonie.” She immediately reburied her snout into Moon’s thick chest fluff.
Moon Shoe’s wings grew stiffer.
By now, she knew she wasn’t getting out of this. Surrendering to the assault snuggles, Moon lifted a hoof and ran it through her lover’s mane, humming softly as she closed her eyes. Pixie was colder than she, but not by much. She could still feel the warmth of her body radiating against her, from her muzzle pressed into her chest, and from her neck against her hoof.
Gently running it down to her back, Moon leaned down and kissed the top of Pixie’s head. Pixie had stopped moving her muzzle into her chest floof. Moon Shoes took little note of it, and pressed her hoof down against the top of her back, grinding a small circle against her.
Pixie was still. Moon slowly lifted her other hoof, half balancing on her hindlegs and half leaning her weight into the other mare. Pixie yielded ever so slightly against Moon’s slightly heftier weight, but made no other resistance as Moon brought her hoof beneath Pixie’s chin and softy disengaged her from her chest fluff.
They had gone this far in front of the slowly growing crowd of ponies. Surely a step further wouldn’t hurt.
Moon tilted Pixie Fry’s chin up, and leaned in. Closing her eyes again, she pressed her muzzle against her special somepony’s, and parted her lips with her own.
She heard a small cat call from the crowd, the sound distant to her ears. That wasn’t her focus; her focus was on her marefriend’s shallow breaths into her mouth, and the soft feeling of Pixie’s tongue on hers. Moon slowly grew more adventurous, pressing the bottom of her tongue flat against her marefriend’s, grinding them slowly together. Pixie jolted slightly, stiffening like a board.
And that’s when Pixie clamped her jaw shut.
Moon squeaked agonizingly, her eyes widening in surprise and pain. She could feel the warmth of some liquid pooling in her mouth, and dripping down her throat. But she could barely taste the tell-tale iron tang that usually accompanied blood.
Pixie’s powerful jaws and crushing teeth had cleanly cut through her tongue, severing it roughly about two-thirds down the length. Moon broke the kiss, pushing herself roughly off of her. A trail of pinkish fluid connected their two mouths for a moment before a red waterfall began to gush from between Moon’s lips.
Moon Shoes stumbles, her still hard wings flapping feebly as she fell back onto her haunches, tears welling in her eyes as the pain began to fully start to work its way into her. Still reeling from the shock, she opened her mouth and tried to speak. All she could manage were a few garbled words as a mix of blood and thick saliva splattered the ground in front of her.
Pixie tilted her head back, mouth slightly agape, and gulped like a chicken swallowing a centipede. Slowly, a bulge traveled down her throat as Moon’s severed tongue slid into her stomach. Turning her gaze back down towards Moon again, her marefriend saw her eyes were bloodshot and vacant. She could almost swear she saw something wriggling and swimming beneath the surface of the glassy orbs, but this detail was lost as terror gripped her when Pixie slowly started trotting towards her.
Moon tried in vain to speak yet again, an amaranth-pink froth foaming at her lips as she blubbered futilely. Her cheeks were streaming with tears now; she could hear the horrified screams of ponies in the background, their hooves pounding into the dirt and cobblestones as they scattered from the scene.
Pixie had reached Moon Shoes, thrusting a hoof painfully against her chest. The excessive fur of her thickest winter coat did nothing to stop the dull force, knocking her into her back. She gurgled out in agony as her erect wings crumpled beneath her body’s weight against the ground, hollow bones snapping and cracking.
Pixie pinned her with surprising strength, and in flash, put her teeth against her lover’s neck, biting down hard. Moon let out a strangled cry as she felt the flat but powerful maw tear into her jugular. Fresh blood poured down the sides of her neck, pooling around her head.
Her vision was growing blurry. She had already lost quite a lot of blood, and her head was pounding from the intensive agony that was shooting from her wings, neck, and tongue stump. The adrenaline was doing nothing.
Pixie Fry tore rough, meaty chunks from Moon’s neck, her herbivore’s teeth making the ordeal a far bit messier than if Moon had been mauled by a manticore. Strips of furred skin tore up and down from the site of the bite as she yanked hunks of muscle and sinew free, the mare hardly bothering to chew as she gulped down her lover’s flesh.
Moon blearily gazed up into Pixie’s eyes as she felt her partner’s hooves reposition her neck. They were still unlike she had ever seen them, but they weren’t so glossy any longer; there was an aberrant and almost otherworldly hunger present in them.
And there was that writhing, swimming movement again, like a swarm of leeches just beneath the water of an otherwise still lake.
Pixie dipped her head down again and hooked her jaws around Moon’s esophagus. With a sickening crunch, she crushed her lover’s throat, blocking off the trachea. Moon gasped, her tilted head causing the blood that had pooled in the back of her mouth to flood down into her gullet. If her windpipe hadn’t just been pressed shut, it would have filled her lungs. Small miracles, and all.
Pixie started to pull up on Moon’s throat, but that’s when a teal aura surrounded her head. She was yanked roughly off the body of her exsanguinated partner, blood and viscera matted around her chin and cheeks like oatmeal on a messy foal. She hissed in a most unequine manner, globs of unswallowed flesh falling from her tongue.
Starlight Glimmer stared stony-faced at Pixie before a jerk of her aura twisted the pegasus’s neck around one hundred and eighty degrees. It snapped like a twig underhoof, and her body fell like a sack of manure as Starlight released it.
She trotted over towards Moon Shoes. It was too late; the mare was already dead. She had bled out in the time it took her to wrench Pixie off of her.
Starlight turned from the corpse and looked at the other. Slowly, the once-again vacant eyes of Pixie Fry began to undulate and pulse with life, like changeling nymphs bursting from an egg. Slowly, they split open, oversized and plated maggots writhing from their insides, attempting to crawl away before several well-placed blasts from Starlight’s horn incinerated them.
“Parelaphostrongylus tenuis equiis,” Starlight muttered. “Big ones, too. Must have been in there for nearly a year.”
She turned her head back and forth from one corpse to the other, sighing and rubbing her hoof against her temple.
“This is why you always filter your tap water from Mexicolt,” Starlight advised the dead bodies, before turning tail and trotting away, humming softly and mentally congratulating herself for a job well done.
