Dream Cycle - Applejack

Applejack waddled along, only for the ground to suddenly sink a bit beneath her hooves. She stumbled backwards, falling onto her rump as the floor sank further down. It was quickly apparent by the sight of the other end of the floor rising up that she was balancing on some large stone beam. She tried to climb forward, but the stone was smooth and slippery, and several times she was sent sliding back to her end. She grumbled, forced to crawl slowly up, up, up towards the other end. As she lay atop it, however, the stone refused to budge despite how easily it had shifted from her weight alone on the other side.

Applejack grumbled to herself as she lay on the stone, wiggling her rear left and right. In all the fuss, she had forgotten just how much water she had drank back in the other chamber, and it was starting to catch up with her. A pressure was building between her legs, and she wasn’t sure what to do. Until she remembered she was wearing diapers, and chuckled to herself again. What else was she supposed to do, that’s what diapers were for, wasn’t it? She gave a sigh as she wet her padding, feeling it grow warm and the inner diaper swell ever so slightly from the dampness. It was this swelling that caused the stone to move downwards a bit, as if Applejack had just grown heavier… well, hadn’t she? Bloated diapers weighed more than dry ones… right?

Deciding the fundamentals of complex physics were more trouble than they were worth, Applejack did her best to wet herself a second time – to tilt the beam down by sheer sog!

It quickly became a challenge she was determined to beat, so she suckled hard on her pacifier to get better concentration and urge herself more towards wetting. It seemed to help, and she let go twice more in quick succession – not really sure how that worked, but not really caring either so long as it moved her closer to her goal.

The balance beam creaked a little further down with each wetting, before stabilizing still too high to let her through, and Applejack groaned around her pacifier before sitting down with a squish.

She just needed one more wetting… so she needed to think about something that would help her wet.

Perhaps it would help to think about waterfalls? Maybe the water puzzle she solved earlier?

That would do!

Applejack began to daydream about the puzzle, flowing waterfalls, rushing rivers, jets of water splashing onto her padding and making it swell as her fluff guzzled it up… She thought of rainstorms and floods and hoses, her legs spread slowly wider and wider as she wet her padding again… and again… and again. It wasn’t until her muzzle pressed up against the wall that she noticed something was amiss. Opening her eyes, she found the doorway a couple feet above her, the platform having sank too far from all her wetting. She scrambled back to her hooves, forced to jump up to reach the doorway. Thankfully, there was a vine that allowed her a bit of extra grip, though even climbing that still led to much diaper waggling and squishing as her hind legs struggled to hoist her up to the hallway.

Applejack wiped her brow from the effort, suckling a bit on her pacifier as she looked over her shoulder at her diapers. Despite how thick they were, it was quite obvious they were wet, now bloated to nearly twice their original sizes. Her tail was wrapped up in a large amount of fluff, and her legs had to lift high into the air to allow her to move anywhere. The embarrassment of it all, however, only made Applejack grin a bit to herself. Just imagine how any other adventurer pony would’ve given up on the first task! They wouldn’t have gotten such thick, cozy, squishy diapers! Only she was brave enough to delve so deeply into the dungeon. She turned about and began to slowly move forward, still suckling away happily as she made her way to the next room…

As smug as she was, she almost didn't notice the four small objects on the floor. Stopping just before she would have stepped on them, Applejack leaned down to look closely – though her wet diaper acted as a kind of counterweight, lifting her up and making it much harder than she was expecting to look down at the little piles of fabric.

In the event, however, she realized they all had little labels describing what they were, and leaned closer to read them – as the Booties of Comfort +1.

Comfort sounded nice, so she duly slipped them on – one hoof at a time – and moved her hooves around to feel how comfy the result was, pressing them against the floor a few times to feel how much softer they made the hard stone before continuing onwards.

It was only a few cozy minutes before she reached the door, and opened it before waddling into the room with a swagger. That soon ended, however, as she heard a rattle from to her left.

Rattlesnake!

She looked to the side, and saw it – and it didn't quite look like she expected, but after a moment she realized it made a great deal of sense. After all, it was called a rattle snake, so why would it be anything except a plastic toy rattle on the tail end of a plush snake body?

Another rattled from the other side, and she jumped slightly.

Applejack watched as a few more rattlesnakes slithered out into the light, their tails shaking back and forth quickly as their plush tongues flicked into the air to smell her. She carefully took a step forward, breathing deeply to try and relax. After all, they weren’t that dangerous, just a few snakes. She wasn’t Twilight, after all.

As she walked further into the room, however, more and more snakes appeared from the gloom. The surrounded her, shaking their tails and coiling in on themselves as she stared at them. She tried to shake her head, but that only seemed to make the rattling noise worse. Her eyes roamed around the room, which seemed to swim before her from the slithering of the snakes’ colorful bodies and the constant wiggling of their rattles.

A soft squish could be heard among the rattles as she fell onto her rump, her eyes still stuck to the snakes as they slithered about. A few began to coil around her hind legs, curling up closer to her and pressing their plush bodies into her diaper. She blushed a bit, gently nudging to try and push them away, but it did little to dissuade them.

Trying to focus, AJ did her best to ignore the rattling and the shifting of the snakes. She took a step, then another, but then a rattle right next to her made her look to the side as a particularly large rattle-snake shook its tail at her.

The sound echoed inside her mind, and she blushed – oddly enough, she wasn't afraid of the snakes so much as she was interested in them. The idea of looking closer, even playing around with one, just didn't seem to want to go away – and with every shake and rattle it was harder to focus on just walking (or waddling) across the room.

She managed another uncertain step as the rattles shook around her – visible in the corners of her vision, audible all around her, coiling around her Booties of Comfort and squeezing them temptingly.

It couldn't hurt to just sit down and play for a bit, could it? Just playing for a few… hours… or days… until she got bored?

Applejack closed her eyes, focusing on suckling her pacifier instead, and waddled slowly forwards in the direction she was fairly sure the door could be found.

She took a few more, slow steps forward, her legs growing heavy as a more snakes wrapped around them. She dared another glanced down to them, and found herself unable to help smiling at them. They did look awfully cute, and those colorful patterns were so intricate and soothing to look at, she found herself slowing even more. One reached up and bit into her tail, its rattle shaking as it tried to pull itself up around her.

Her rear swayed side to side as she continued forward, still wondering if she should stay. It wouldn’t hurt, would it? They looked so cozy, and comfy, anypony would want to just scoop them up and snuggle them as they coiled so tightly around them, wouldn’t they?

She almost tripped as her hoof stepped on something soft, and a particularly loud rattle could be heard as a snake as thick as a tree trunk coiled up on itself, eyeing Applejack warily. She stared up into its eyes, barely even noticing as other snakes began to slither up to her, one poking at her rump and slipping between a few of her diapers. She giggled, wiggling her rear as she felt the plush snake slithering between her padding, tickling and squeezing her rear.

Applejack sort of lost track of time, and distance, and anything other than colourful eyes and scales and the endless rattling, rattling, rattling…

...until she tripped over something on the floor, waddling a few steps and nearly falling over.

Looking back, she saw that she'd tripped on the threshold of the room. There was a large rattle-snake coiled up at the edge of the room, tail shaking and rattling and eyes dancing with coloured light-

-and she looked away, blinking, as she felt a bit of a dizzy spell coming on.

Blushing, she wondered for a moment how long she'd been stuck in the room, but there wasn't really a way she could think of to tell. She shook her legs, trying to get the rattle-snakes clinging to them to fall off, and then waddled onwards with the dizzying rattling fading slowly behind her.

It felt like there was still something squirming around inside some of the layers of her padding, but the rattle sound was muffled by the thickness of the diapers so she could still concentrate – sort of, at least.

Felling proud for having made it past the sneaky snake trap, Applejack strutted on into the temple ready for anything… well, anything that didn't require her to move fast, at least, as her strut had quite a waddling sway to it provoked by her thick diapers.

Deeper into the dungeon Applejack delved, shivering a bit from the cold as she waddled onward. She soon came to a large circular room, glancing around as she found, much to her confusion, that there was no exit door.

“Consarnit, don’t tell me somepony else has already got the treasure!” She said to herself, crossing her forelegs and falling back onto her diaper in a pout. Then again, this room didn’t look all that much like a treasure room. Something had to be wrong here. Her eyes travelled upwards, noticing the room was domed, with something like a small tunnel at the top. Did she have to climb up there? Even if she could reach, would she be able to fit through such a thin tunnel?

She wandered towards the center of the room, gazing up at the tunnel to try and discern what to do, when she heard a soft grinding sound as her hoof sank into the floor. She lifted her hoof off the pressure plate, gulping and glancing over her shoulder as the door behind her suddenly slammed shut. There was a moment of silence before Applejack felt something pouring down onto her.

She glanced up, only to cough, splutter, and back away as sand began to drop down from the top of the ceiling, slowly filling the room…

As Applejack moved, the room began to sway back and forth. Only a little at first, but the stream of sand falling from the tunnel in the ceiling began to waver – oscillating back and forth, forming an elongated pile rather than a simple round one.

The swaying made Applejack frown, wondering what was going on, as the sand built up and up. Something felt unstable here, and she began to waddle around the room as she tried to work out what it was.

Her movement made the swaying increase, and increase, until suddenly the room tipped past a balance point – and swung dizzyingly around her, sending her bouncing butt-first off the wall of the room twice. Her enchanted booties didn't have the grip to let her cling to the steeply tilted floor of the now-inverted dome, and she finally ended up sliding down to the pile of sand – now stuck in the tunnel she'd seen before.

On contact she disturbed the sand a little, winding up stuck with her hind legs buried in the sand and her diaper just at the top edge of the tunnel.

“Oh, come on...” she groaned. “This ain't a trap, it's more like some kind'a art project...”

She had to admit, though, it had certainly caught her.

Applejack struggled to remove herself from the tunnel, but her wiggling only managed to dislodge a few grains of sand as her diaper was stuck rubbing up against the tunnel. She grumbled, trying to find somewhere on the stone that would allow her to pull herself through. Her hind legs attempted to push back, but with the weight of the sand, they were only able to budge a few millimeters.

The sand flow hadn’t seemed to stop, however. After a few minutes Applejack was sure the sand was pressing more heavily down on her rear, squeezing her diaper slowly further into the tunnel. Applejack struggled again, wishing she could see the end of the tunnel, but was, utterly, thoroughly, stuck.

She let out a grunt of dissatisfaction, trying not to think too much about how good it felt for all that fluff around her rear to be squeezing and squishing into her tighter and tighter. She inched forward just a bit more, the sand still filling behind her, when she felt something soft brush against her hooves.

Applejack peered into the darkness, trying to figure out what she had just bumped was. She inched a bit more, only for a soft rumble to be heard. The sand had filled the room behind her completely, and yet whatever mechanism the room had was still pumping more in. She felt the pressure above her grow, and grow, and grow, until…

POP!

The change from stuck to not-stuck was so sudden that Applejack felt like she'd been fired out of Pinkie's party cannon, or something like it. She hit the odd soft obstruction at high speed, ending up completely tangled up in it, but it wasn't held in the tunnel nearly as strongly as she'd been and the force of her momentum pushed it entirely out of the tunnel as well.

Applejack fell through the air for a few seconds, getting a confused impression of her surroundings, then landed with a thump on a pile of soft material – it felt like pillows or something – and rolled over and over down it to fetch up at the bottom.

“Whoo...” she mumbled to herself, a little indistinctly. “That was one wild ride...”

Picking herself up, she looked around at the area – which was, indeed, covered with pillows, though they had a fine dusting of sand on them as well.

As she turned, however, she caught sight of her hoof – which led her to look closer, baffled.

There was a purple paw on her hoof. On all her hooves, in fact, and further inspection showed her that she was wearing a complete dark-purple sleeper from head to hoof. With four cats-paws on her hooves over her enchanted booties, a pair of decorative wings on her back, a tufted tail twitching behind her and even some costume jewellery incorporated into the outfit, she was unmistakeably costumed up as a sphinx.

On a second look, however, it made a lot more sense. She was sneaking into a temple, after all, so this would be good camouflage – and it was comfy, too. (Burglers were supposed to wear cat-suits, and this was sort of like a cat suit.)

Applejack didn’t bother to question the suit as she prowled ahead, though she did shake one of her hind hooves a bit in an attempt to dislodge some bit of sand that had gotten stuck between the toes. The padded soles of her suit’s paws muffled her trotting as she continued through the temple once more, sure that she had to be approaching the center soon. The halls were growing steadily darker as fewer and fewer torches hung on the wall. She squinted, trying to see into the gloom ahead of her, only for her hoof to miss the ground, and send her falling forward.

It was a thankfully short fall, and a rather comfortable one as Applejack bounced across something rather springy. She shook her head as she came to a stop, lowering her eyes to the floor to try and make sense of what she had just landed on. It was difficult to tell in the dim light, but from what she could feel through her suit, it was silky and smooth, and was very stretchy the more she bounced on it. Glancing about, Applejack tried to spot some way out of the room. Far up in the distance she could just barely see the glimmer of torches through a hallway located closer to the ceiling than to the floor.

“Consarnit, can’t anything in this dungeon be properly designed?” Applejack mumbled. She leapt into the air a few times, her forelegs waggling desperately, but there was no way she would be able to reach it from her current height. With each jump, however, the springiness of the material beneath her kept lifting her slowly higher and higher, and soon Applejack was bouncing about, soaring through the air as she jumped on the trampoline to reach her exit.

Each bounce seemed to make the suit just a bit tighter and snugger, which made her inclined to just keep bouncing more and more, the torches at the exit going up and down in her vision as she bounced higher and higher in sequence.

The two little lights kept her attention, making her bounce higher and higher, steadily putting more and more energy into each bounce than the previous one, and Applejack sort of lost track of why she was bouncing a little bit. She knew that she was bouncing, that that was what she was supposed to be doing, and the why she was bouncing dropped out of her memory slightly…

It was just too much fun to bounce! Bounce more and more, the springy trampoline below her absorbing all the energy of her landing and then bouncing her up again with more force than ever, and her snug kittysphinx suit all around her keeping her feeling snug and safe-

-until she bounced just a bit too high, and got stuck on something hanging from the roof.

It was almost like a reverse trampoline, a springy layer of something, but it stuck to her suit and stopped her from falling back down. Brought out of her reverie, Applejack looked up in surprise to see what she was hanging from, and caught sight of a lattice web of closely-spaced strands hanging like hammocks from the ceiling.

Applejack struggled against the sticky material, tugging and pulling with all her plushly cocooned might. All she managed to do, however, was jiggle and wobble around on the web. Though the web seemed to be shaking a lot more than it should have from just her struggles alone…

Applejack tried to twist her head to look behind her, but the web kept her well in place as she got the distinct feeling something was looming above her. The web’s shaking came to a stop, and Applejack could have sworn she heard something rather… squeaky.

Suddenly several legs reached around and grabbed her, their thick, air filled vinyl pressing tightly into the captured pony. She resumed her struggling, but was finding it rather difficult to maintain it against such an oppressive puffy force.

The legs squeezed and ran themselves over her, and Applejack felt her suit tightening even further. Rather than her suit fluffing up as it had while bouncing, however, she was just able to see plush threads wrapping themselves around her, squeezing worringly comfortably into the bulge of her diaper and pinning her forelimbs to her sides. It wasn’t long before Applejack was wrigged through the web above her, held tightly by what she could now see to be an enormous, creaky, inflatable spider.

“Darn it, let me go!” Applejack demanded, wiggling as hard as she could to try and get out and making the puffed-up-plastic of the spider's legs squeak as they rubbed together.

That only seemed to help by producing sound, however, and apart from that her efforts were in vain – making the web bounce a bit, but not helping her get away in the slightest.

The spider continued spinning web around her diaper and lower body barrel, pinning her in place, before weaving thick plush-thread mittens and booties around her existing suit mittens and booties and tying them all together with more of the thick plush threads.

Applejack was juggled about by the strange arachnid critter, which tied her pacifier's ring to a necklace so she wouldn't lose it, and then found herself abruptly having to deal with a milk bottle stuffed into her muzzle by three of the spiders' eight legs.

The milk was a bit bland, nothing amazing, but it was warm – and it tasted better and better the more of it Applejack had, making it a little hard for her to come up with good reasons to not just suckle and forget everything else for now...

Eyelids lowering, Applejack just stared forward into space as she drank more and more, unable to focus long enough to think of why she didn’t just want to relax here. The milk was warm and tasty, and she felt so snug wrapped up in all that silky fluff surrounding her. Her belly bulged a little bit as she drank, slowly filling up with milk from the bottle that seemed to empty much more slowly than it should have. The big puffy spider rolled onto its back, slowly rocking itself in its hammock-like web, which only made Applejack more and more sleepy. The steady rhythm of the swaying, along with the milk and the occasional squeaks from the swollen spider all lulled her into a sense of security.

She squeezed her legs together, feeling an all too familiar pressure building once again. And soon a hiss could be heard as she wet her padding, a dopey smile crossing her face as she felt the padding bulge beneath the suit and bindings, swelling comfortably between her legs.

Muzzy and vague, Applejack felt a blanket of silk being drawn over her to cover her up, and yawned – then yawned again, snuggling against the squeaky spider a little as she drifted down into slumber…

...when Applejack blinked, it was later, but she didn't know how much later. The spider was gone, and she was snuggled against a great big knitted-silk toy crocodile in the spider's hammock.

A pacifier was in her mouth, the same one from before, and she suckled on it a bit before starting to think properly and looking around – then down at how she was snared in the spider silk.

It looked like she might be able to get the silk mittens and booties off, if she worked at it. And the bindings holding her forelegs in place had been loosened as well, to fit the crocodile in, so she might be able to do something with that as well.

Still quite dizzy and dazed from her experience, it didn't cross Applejack's mind that she was putting serious thought into how to escape from a 'trap' which wasn't much more sophisticated than putting a foal in a crib with a blanket wrapped around them to keep them warm.

Regardless, Applejack pondered and puzzled, occasionally wriggling a bit within her bindings. On top of the trap simply binding her in place, the most difficult portion of it was figuring out how she was supposed to properly resist how warm and cozy it was. And she certainly wasn’t going to leave behind her new crocodile friend! He could help her on all sorts of dungeon delving adventures in the future!

Thankfully all of her wriggling and squeezing of her toy was loosening her bindings bit by bit. The web jiggled and bounced, Applejack struggling to free herself when there was a sudden snap!

The web around her came loose, and Applejack fell on top of the knit crocodile with a flump. None the worse for wear, though a bit giggly at the silliness of her escape method. But her crocodile was already proving useful, just as she knew he would.

Slinging her crocodile over her back, Applejack waddled forwards, her hooves slipping a bit more with the silk booties on them. Not that she minded it all too much, since they were keeping her warm, and it’s not like she needed traction for much of anything anyway.

Sliding a little as she waddled along, Applejack divided her attention between looking for the right route to take through the temple, the proper snuggling of her crocodile companion, and suckling on her pacifier. Doing all three took a lot of her concentration, and she wasn't quite sure which routes she was taking on the places where she got a left-right choice or that sort of thing.

It probably didn't matter much anyway, right?

After turning right, left, maybe right, possibly left, middle, and then picking the big smily cat mouth out of three big doors with faces painted on them, Applejack came to the top of a long slide that vanished down into darkness.

She wondered if she should send the crocodile down first, but hadn't come to a decision when she stepped just a little too close – and slipped on the smooth stone floor, sliding forwards enough to reach the slide and go slithering down with a muffled yelp!

At least she managed to keep a hold on her toy, though, as she descended into the very heart of the temple...

With several poofy puffs of foal powder and crinkles of her diaper, Applejack went whizzing off the end of the slide and bouncing across the floor. She once again landed in a pile with her plushie, but this time it was the knitted animal that was smushing the foal. Applejack gave it a squeeze and stood up, looking around as she gave a few more suckles on her pacifier. It certainly seemed like she had made it to the end, considering there were no other doors beyond the slide she had just come down (and wished she could climb back up and go down again).

More captivating, however, was the object in the center of the room. Standing on a raised dais, with sunlight somehow streaming down from above to illuminate it was surely the treasure she had been sent here looking for. The legendary Iwannabottle, glistening and glittering in the light.

Unfortunately, some nasty pony had decided the best place for it was the top shelf of daises. And no little foal could hope to reach that high!

Applejack harrumphed and crossed her forelegs, staring up at the treasure. Her mind raced with means of reaching it, but each one seemed like it would leave her just too short to get it!

Looking around for a clue, Applejack considered all the things around her in the room. There had to be something she could do...

After more than a minute, she spotted something up near the ceiling of the room – it looked like a high swinging bar, about ten feet long, though it was currently stuck in place.

Tilting her head, Applejack thought through what she'd be able to do if she got up there. Maybe she'd be able to make it come loose, and then she could swing back and forth on it to get to the bottle!

It sounded like a good plan to her, and she hugged her plushie toy more-or-less on principle.

So she needed to get up to the top of the room, to where the bar was fastened. The only question she had for the moment was, how could she get up there?

Applejack’s eyes continued to wander around the room when she spotted a small patch of the floor that looked just a bit bouncier than the stone surrounding it. Waddling over, the floor gave way beneath her hoof, causing her to slip forward and fall to the center as it flopped beneath her. She looked up to see she was just beneath the long bar. Getting to her hooves, she jumped up in an attempt to reach the bar, her legs flailing about as she did. With each jump she started to spring higher and higher, the floor acting like a trampoline. She struggled and wriggled, but soon her hooves managed to just barely reach the end of the bar, wrapping around them.

Applejack clung to the bar, feeling both triumphant, and a little confused. She wiggled and kicked, trying to dislodge the bar in some manner. Her rump swung back and forth, back and forth, crinkling all the while as she struggled. The stone shifted slightly, and her efforts redoubled, her rump wiggling more and more.

With a sudden clunk!, the stone came loose, and the bar dropped down from the ceiling by a chain, Applejack losing her grip and falling on top of her crocodile, squishing it beneath her big poofily padded rear.

Shaking herself and getting up, Applejack then nearly slipped off as her slick booties slid on the stone. Deciding to just crawl for now, she moved a little gingerly along the bar and felt it gently tilt downwards.

It refused to swing back and forth, like she'd hoped, but it was lined up with the bottle! She could just move along and get it!

Collecting her toy, Applejack began to move along – only to find the bar tilting a little too much, making her stop before the angle got too much and she found herself sliding off and falling to the dais below the one she wanted. She blushed at the thought, then shook her head and tried to think.

It was tilting, so she needed it to tilt less. But what did she have that could act as a weight, to tilt it – of course!

It seemed so simple once she realized it. She'd have to leave her nice soft crocodile toy on the other end of the seesaw, and then she'd be able to reach the bottle without falling off!

Satisfied that she had the right answer, she put the plush carefully in place and gave it a pat – then squirmed along the seesaw, ready to reach for the bottle and retrieve it.

As she crawled along the post, however, she found herself climbing upwards, rising up above the bottle and looking down at it. She attempted to reach around the bar, giving a grunt of annoyance as her hoof just barely seemed to miss it. She glared back at her croc plushie, making a note to chastise it after this adventure for eating so many fish and getting so fat!

While she was looking down at the bottle, however, Applejack suddenly remembered one of the previous rooms. If she’d been able to weigh herself down then…

She squeezed her padding, wiggling her rear as she slowly let out a sigh of relief as she wet her padding. Slowly it ballooned out, spreading her legs as her padding grew soaked. The sound of grinding stone could be heard as Applejack was slowly lowered towards her prize, her hooves stretched out with anticipation.

And not a moment after she’d grabbed the bottle, her plush crocodile came loose, slipping down the bar and smacking into her diaper to send her tumbling down to the ground.

After tumbling over a couple of times and landing on a pile of softness, Applejack held the bottle triumphantly. Her quest was complete!

She took a suckle from it, eyes fluttering slightly at the taste, and hugged her plush crocodile to her as she drank down the magically warm, creamy milk.

As she did, however, she began to frown. Something didn't seem right…

She racked her brains as she suckled, trying to work out what was wrong here, then slowly started to realize.

When she'd fallen, she'd landed on some softness, and she'd assumed that was her plush croc. But she was holding her plush croc, and she could still feel the softness underneath her.

That had to mean… she was on something else!

Wiggling a little as she tried to turn over, Applejack saw a blue plush hand come snaking up towards her. She tried to do something to escape – without stopping in her drinking from the legendary bottle, as it was too nice to stop even for a moment – but by the time she'd begun rocking back and forth enough to try and turn over, the strange beast that was Ahuizotl (or a plush version, at least) plucked her into the air with a smirk.

“My, my, who do we have here? A rather regal sphynx by the looks of things!” The plush Ahuizotl said, poking at Applejack’s crinkly tush. She wriggled in the air, still suckling at the bottle as she looked the large beast up and down.

“Nah a sfinx, ah’m avenerur!” she mumbled around the bottle.

“Are you sure? You certainly look like one! And you even have a crocodile. You do know how much a sphinx enjoys those, don’t you?” He said. Applejack squeezed her plush again, shaking her head. Though she really wasn’t sure why she was. It did make sense, crocodiles and sphinxes lived in the same places, right? And she was ~~wearing~~ a warm plush sphinx ~~suit~~ too…

She scratched her head as Ahuizotl placed her on his back, still unsure of what to think about what he was saying.

“Perhaps you just need a small reminder. I’m sure you’d make an excellent dungeon guardian in training…~”

The idea seemed to work, fitting well into Applejack's head, but she still frowned – thinking something was a little off about the idea. It felt familiar, but… hadn't she come here for some other reason?

“After all,” Ahuizotl went on, catching her eye with his own. “A temple guardian gets to play with everything the temple is there to protect… doesn't that sound right?”

It did, and Applejack nodded drowsily.

She liked the sound of being able to play with all sorts of treasures. And she belonged in temples… and hadn't she just been testing the traps to make sure they worked?

That sounded sensible. It wasn't like she was there to steal anything, after all… was it?

Deciding that sounded completely reasonable, Applejack nodded one more time before drifting off to sleep – secure in the knowledge that she would get her proper training in being a temple guardian tomorrow.