Vacation Gone Right

Celestia’s mouth went dry and her stomach heavy. In less than a minute she was washed by a copious wave of sweat. One part of her wanted to run away and forget about Luna and their deal; another cursed her sister’s personality and her esoteric whims.

“What’s the matter, sister?” Luna calmly asked.

Unable to move yet shaking, Celestia pointed her right hoof at the pond. The part in front of them was crowded by koi carps, silver, orange, yellow, red. Celestia had the feeling that the fish knew they were coming to this spot; and this fact intensified her fright.

As Celestia observed the big blob composed of tiny multicoloured points that looked like some pointilist painting come alive, she held her breath and was unable to exhale it all out. Every single muscle of her body felt so tense it was ready to crack and burst. Her mouth was cotton dry while her eyes seemed to notice every movement of every little fish swimming in the transparent water of the pond.

“W-w-why did you take me here?” Celestia asked through chattering teeth.

Luna looked at her frightened sister and smiled, calm. “You can’t spend your day in Western Paradise resort without feeding the carps. It’s tradition.”

“But t-t-t-they look scary.”

“They’re just fish,” Luna said and proceeded toward the wooden fence around the artificial lake.

Celestia, tiptoeing, followed her.

Like a good sister she had tried to enjoy Luna’s activities, but the present day tested her to the max.

The Western Paradise resort looked magnificent, indeed. Hidden in a valley amid five forest covered mountains, the resort recreated ancient kirin architectural conventions with terraced and slanted roofs, tranquil lakes and ponds with willows dangling over their surface, and rock gardens scattered in the secret corners of the place. While they were strolling through the thick bamboo forest, resting in its twilight shade from the rather humid day, Celestia started to get Luna’s addiction to peace and quiet.

What Luna wanted to do, however, made Celestia question which of them was the relic and which still young.

The morning they had spent sitting still and staring at a wall. The numb legs didn’t bother Celestia that much – she was used to it after sitting most of her life on a throne – but the whole point of doing nothing and just staring drove her mad from boredom alone. It was the most pointless activity she had ever engaged in. You just sit and watch your thoughts. That’s all.

By the end of it Celestia felt cheated and robbed, worse than after the decade long negotiations with griffons that had led to absolutely nothing for both groups.

Luna, on the other hand, looked radiant and happy.

“Did you like it?” She had asked.

Celestia furrowed her brows. “It felt like watching paint dry but without the paint.”

Luna giggled. “You’ll get it with practice. Come on! Let’s go to the tea ceremony.”

The ceremony had been more pompous than a royal dinner. Celestia felt jittery and angry while walking slowly into the spacious minimal room with walls made out of yellow paper and then bowing after every little deed performed by the master of ceremony and waiting for the tea to chill. It seemed to her that everything in the resort lived at half the speed of normal existence, as if everycreature here was stuck in syrup. If it weren’t for the promise she gave she would gallop away and go hiking on Mount Transformation nearby, known for its perilous paths etched in rocks and creaking wooden planks instead of roads.

The tea, however, had been wonderful. So good, in fact, that Celestia felt guilty for all the brooding thoughts she had about this tranquil little valley.

The weird gymnastics after it, slow and stretchy, once again had thrown her back into the void of absolute boredom. How could Luna enjoy this? And even look better after it? Celestia was sure that after the session Luna’s movements seemed more fluid, graceful, than before. She herself, however, felt like a drunk acrobat balancing on a tightrope.

After the stretching session they had some respite before participating in something called “Sharing the Breaths.” Whatever it was, the name already sounded boring to Celestia.

And in this interlude she had to confront Luna’s weirdness once again: her fondness for animals rare and exotic. Celestia first alarms had went off when Luna enveloped a bag full of bread crumbles with her blue magic and made it float. She had asked the meaning of it but Luna smiled and, cryptic, said “You’ll see.”

Now she was seeing the purpose of it: to feed the critters of the pond.

Luna levitated the bad to her right side and let it drop to the ground. As the sack hit the cobbled ground with a loud plop, a few bread crumbs jumped and escaped it confines. Luna turned around, smiling, her eyes inviting, beckoning Celestia to come.

Celestia gulped, sighed, and went to Luna’s right, the bag between them.

This little corner of the resort looked spectacular: a crystal clear pond with an island in the middle that featured a chapel amidst willows, smalls bushes, and the twisted branches of other trees; the three tiered terraced and sloped roof of the chapel with golden flames decorating its rafters and the emblem of a dragon, twisting, waving, at its peak; the high green mountains in the background, their summits lost in fog; a forest of deep green to their left, right, and behind, with willows bending and bringing their branches almost to the ground and casting leaves on the cobbles and making the road look as it were covered in tiny sequins coloured green. Fantastic place if it weren’t for the horde of fish swimming languidly in the lake.

With her forelegs placed on the deep red fence Luna observed earnestly the carps. Celestia rarely had seen her sister so enthralled.

Shaking outwardly and inwardly, Celestia tiptoed to the edge. Following Luna’s manner she placed her hooves on the fence.

When Celestia looked in the still water below, with the fish and the rocky bottom, she felt her stomach drop as if she were standing on smallest piece of rock jutting into a bottomless abyss. Her head went spinning and cold perspiration washed her coat.

“They aren’t carnivorous, right?” Celestia asked, her teeth chattering, her voice trembling.

“Of course not,” Luna said.

“What if they need to taste meat to become flesh eaters.”

Brows furrowed, Luna looked at Celestia. “That’s not how it works, sister.”

“What they’ll do to me if I fall down there?”

“Scatter away, probably. They’re more afraid of you than you of them.”

“Really?” Celestia asked, her eyes wide, her fear gone. Partly.

Luna nodded. To prove her point she ignited her horn and sent a ball of deep blue into the tranquil waters. The moment the sparkling ball went beneath the surface all the fish quickly darted away from it. Only when it disappeared did the carps return.

“Will you do us an honour and start first?” Luna said.

Celestia nodded. She enveloped the bag in the yellow scintillating glow of her magic, lifted it to the level of her head, and brought from it a little clump of bread. She moved the small ball of bread crumbs further into the pond and let the magic disappear.

When the bread plunged into the water, however, Celestia dropped the bag down and stepped, whimpering, back. The fish who had been so lazy a moment ago jerked into frantic motion. In front of them the pond became swarmed with fish, golden, red, and white, bumping and pushing each other, turning the water into froth.

Like nothing out of the usual happened, Luna lowered her right hoof into the bag, lifted it, and threw the bread ahead. The clumps of bread flew fanwise; and when they hit the lake several clumps of hungry fish, jumping and emerging from the water, formed around the drops. The sight of so many fish, piles on top of piles, sent a cold tingle down Celestia’s spine.

Luna continued taking bread and throwing into the water to the avaricious throngs of fish, her face serene, as if the simple act of feeding soothed her troubles and pacified her nerves. Seeing Luna so relaxed relieved Celestia a bit. She wondered why she had never seen Luna so tranquil before and regretted not paying attention to Luna’s little joys.

For Luna, she must overcome this fear.

Despite shivering from the sight of myriads of fish sliding over each other to get some crumbs, Celestia went back to the rail and propped her forelegs on it. She took a bit of bread from the bag and levitated over the lake as far as possible from her. The moment the crumb fell and sent waves across the surface, a line of fish went after it at dizzying speed.

Celestia levitated another piece of bread to another spot. Once again some acute fish separated from the main gathering and went after the lonely bit.

Fear disappearing and curiousity rising, Celestia threw different crumbs of bread all around the pond, from the shore of the island in the middle to the bridges to their far right and left. Groups of carps split up from the main congregation and whizzed to the distant parts.

Looking at their motion, fast and fluid, Celestia started to get into a peculiar state of peace. Observing the quiet life of fish did soothe one’s soul and created the sensation of connection with the bigger outer world. Celestia understood that for someone lost in the chaotic kaleidoscope of dreams the simple act of observing natural life was a kind of tether to consensus reality, to nature where everything happened, evolved, changed without sudden shocks and haste.

When the bag became half empty Luna looked at her sister and said, “Do you want to throw the remnants or should we proceed further?”

Celestia lifted her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I like to throw the remaining bread all across the lake when little of it remains,” Luna said. “It’s quite a spectacle: all the fish spreading around the pond at the same time.”

Celestia imagined the view – the tangled knot of fish exploding and thousands of blobs ranging from white to red spreading flower like throughout the lake – and her spine tingled with excitement.

“Yes. I’ll do it. Yes,” Celestia said.

She turned her horn on and wrapped the bag in her yellow magic, shining and transparent. Celestia lifted the bag above her head when two spots of grey flew to her left, landed on the ground, and started making eldritch guttural sounds. All of her control lost, Celestia jumped, screaming, ceasing to hold the bag aloft.

Jerked to its side by the last tug of Celestia’s magic, the bag turned down and dropped all the remaining crumbs on the princess of the sun, on her white coat and her delicate iridescent tail and mane.

Luna giggled at the sight of her big sister covered in crumbs, dry and white.

Celestia cowered and moved away from the pigeons that picked the bread around her legs with total disregard to her shaking state. She shook her body left and right to remove the bread away. Only a few fell. The majority remained on her coat and hair.

Smiling, Luna loped near Celestia.

“Let me help you, sister,” she said and put a hoof on Celestia’s lower back.

Celestia, still trembling, sat down on her flanks. Luna moved behind her and shifted her hooves through Celestia’s multicoloured mane. She removed the string that hold Celestia’s mane together and let Celestia’s hair flow down Celestia’s shoulders and neck.

“I’ve never seen anypony be afraid of pigeons,” Luna, giggling, said. “They’re the most harmless birds around. They never fight with other avians.”

“B-b-but they make these strange sounds,” Celestia said. “And their eyes. I swear they understand us.”

“Like a little bird is a dangerous threat to us. Come on, sister.”

Celestia looked left at the pigeons feeding. At first there roamed only two, the ones that had scared her so much. Then, another landed. And another. Soon the place swarmed with pigeons quickly moving and pecking quickly the scattered remains of bread.

Celestia wanted to jump and fly as far away as possible from this garden. The top of Mount Transformation overlooking the valley from the north sounded like a great place to be: lost in clouds and unknown to all save the few intrepid explorers willing to ascend the mountain paths, dangerous and narrow.

Only Luna’s touch, soft and soothing, stopped Celestia from her flight. What was the last time she had time enough to enjoy Luna’s strokes? Celestia giggled when she remembered the occasion thousand years ago.

As Luna removed the breadcrumbs from her hair, strand by strand, and brushed them from her coat, Celestia allowed herself to relax. She again looked left at the pigeons still busy with their meal. The little birds lost some of their malicious intent; and she could get absorbed in their motions, mesmerized by the way the moved, cooed, jerked their heads. There was, indeed, a special kind of tranquil pleasure in the behaviour of the animal realm.

Something ropey fell on her right shoulder. Celestia turned right and saw plaits floating gently from the breeze. She turned around and cast an inquisitive look at her sister.

“I couldn’t hold myself back,” Luna said, her cheeks aflame. “You know how excited I can get when I’m around your hair.”

Celestia sighed, smiled. “It would be lying to say that I don’t enjoy it. It brings memories back about-”

“About the time when Equestria didn’t depend on us,” Luna finished for her. “That was the best time, when we studied magic with the best and the only thing that really scared us was the monthly exam and the rest of the time was just us being stupid. Do you know why I chose this place?”

Celestia shook her head right and left, eyes closed. “Sorry, sister. I forgot.”

“No problem. It had changed a lot. Everything is like a bubble in the void.”

Celestia opened her eyes wide. A smile spread across her face. “Now I remember. This was a retreat for all the best magicians in Equestria, and you liked to visit Yakarjuna Nagarsson here and listen to his ontology of magic.”

Luna giggled. “That’s right. It looks so different now. And Yakarjuna is gone.”

“My spies said he disappeared in some grotto in the Western Lands.”

“We should find him!”

“Maybe another time?” Celestia pleaded softly.

“But I need to know the practical side of his knowledge,” Luna, whining, said. “If his theory is correct, it implies anypony can be become Magic entire. I need to see if he did achieve that, and if he did then how. I’ve read multiples times his ‘Root Treatise On the Middle’, but it’s just his ontology explained, nothing else.”

“Oh, he did achieve that,” Celestia, smirking, said. “But then he vanished. He understood like no one else the danger of giving that kind of information into everycreature’s hands.”

“Did he explain it all to you?” Luna, excited, asked.

“Maybe, but I’m not allowed to give it you. Not yet.”

Luna stopped fiddling with Celestia’s mane. “May ask you why?”

“What did he use to repeat to you when you pried too much for knowledge out of your league?”

“You do not accepts things as they are,” Luna said, croaking, mimicking the raspy voice of the old yak master. “You cling. You suffer. When you see everything void of essence, you stop clinging and become free. So master yak said. Thus have princess heard. You think I still have to work on it?”

“Definitely.”

“How can I be sure you’re not withholding it from me just because, to feel the better sister than me?”

Celestia turned around and giggled when she saw Luna’s angry scowl. “Gotcha,” she said. “He didn’t reveal anything to me. He said that I have some defilement to remove – some very hidden self-importance – and then left Canterlot sitting on a flying cobra’s head that he conjured without a single sweat. A yak conjuring, Luna! I was, still am, in shock.”

“You’re cruel, sister.”

“Come on, Luna. It was a bad joke, I admit, but hearing that I withhold something away from you when I share everything with you hurt more.”

“Like how you shared the admiration of your subjects with me?” Luna asked. She started to plait Celestia’s mane again.

Celestia furrowed her eyebrows. “You know you just had to tell me and stay with me for some part of the day. If ponies see that we have two princesses, they’ll respect both. How can they honour you if you are so distant and reclusive? Truth to be told, your remoteness gives that feeling of you being a cold tyrant which only increases their fear and distrust. Like I said before, speak to me. Don’t boil and then explode.”

Luna sighed. “I’ll try. I’m sorry, sister. It just slipped from my tongue.”

Celestia smiled. “Don’t beat yourself over it. I still love you, sister.”

“Love you, too.”

For a while and in silence Celestia enjoyed Luna twisting her hair, making braids out of her iridescent strands. As she watched at the pond brimming with fish slowly moving and the swaying canopy of trees, Celestia slipped into peculiar but deep peace. Instead of making her bored out of her skull, the resort got more and more exciting and attractive. Celestia understood in a silent flash that one thing is sitting on a throne and dealing with administrative problems and such while resting amid nature, vibrant and pristine, is absolutely another kind of deal. She could definitely sit into oblivion on the shore of this lake with Luna to her side.

“I’m finished with your front,” Luna said, breaking the stillness. “Please, stand up.”

Slowly, languidly, Celestia lifted her flanks and stretched her legs. She felt Luna’s hooves glide down her back and reach her flanks, sending pleasant shivers through her trunk. The strongest pleasure she felt when Luna descended down the curves of her rump then ascended up and removed the ribbon that hold her tail in a round lump.

Luna’s touch, delicate and smooth, turned Celestia so strong that her legs shivered from the caresses of her own tail, soft and silky, alone. What was the last time they touched each other in that intimate way?

When Luna stroked her, Celestia understood how much she longed for that pleasant sensation of loving hooves caressing her tail and flanks. She was willing to spend all day staring at a wall or feeding birds and fish if it meant having Luna excite her most private and sensitive parts – so starved she was for some intimate and loving touch.

Each time Luna took a few strands of her tail to twine them together, her hooves delicately brushed the inner side of Celestia’s thighs. Each such caress, light as a breeze, soft as a rose, sent shivers through Celestia lower body and down her legs. A familiar epicentre of warmth and tingling, demanding satisfaction, appeared in her groin.

Without noticing it Celestia lifted her tail and stretched backward her behind. Imagining Luna’s surprised face made Celestia warmer than before.

Luna, however, proceeded with plaiting but her touches between letting one plait go and taking bundles of hair from Celestia’s tail, when she grazed Celestia smooth thighs, turned deliberate, became longer. Instead of simply brushing against Celestia’s legs Luna’s hooves stayed there, lightly caressing Celestia’s white coat, and moved upwards only to vanish mere inches away from Celestia’s flower that felt swollen, warm and wet.

Celestia didn’t need to turn around and see how Luna looked. She knew that Luna had that playful smirk on her face, just like she knew that what they were doing was something Luna wouldn’t complain about. After centuries of abstinence they didn’t need neither hints nor words to express their needs for long time refused but now coming to the fore.

Another plait hit her left leg and once again Luna’s hooves returned to her flanks.

“All done, sister,” Luna said, her voice enraptured.

“Not yet,” Celestia responded in a husky pleading tone.

Celestia opened her eyes and turned her head left. Behind her lifted tail, long and braided, she saw Luna’s smiling face. Her heart twisted in a pleasurable way as she observed the lovely spark of Luna’s eyes and Luna’s beautiful grin. Celestia couldn’t take her eyes away from Luna’s coat, dark blue and so relaxing, and from the way Luna’s mane dangled from her ponytail, still sparkling with the replicas of galaxies and stars.

Right now Celestia wanted to turn around and hug her sister and to satisfy her by placing kisses from her upper lips to the lower ones, to feel her writhe from pleasure and hear her moan. And after everything is done and Luna had dissolved, to hug Luna lovingly and stay forever entwined with Luna’s head resting against her chest as close as possible to the beat of her heart, loving and slow.

Celestia couldn’t satisfy her desire right now. Luna had already started her task.

As she felt Luna’s moist warm breath blow against her inflamed flower, Celestia turned her head forward and closed her eyes from the assault of shivering pleasure that rocked her body. Luna’s second breath made the first wave feel like a filly’s play and left Celestia trembling and shaking. If she hadn’t propped herself against the border of the pond she would have fallen bringing her head and chest down, lifting her rear up.

The third wash of breath felt so warm and moist that Celestia guessed Luna was an inch away from her tingling jewel and lips. The next moment Luna would finally place her lips on Celestia’s nethers and Celestia would then explode, her body moving serpentine, thrashed by swells of tremendous bliss.

That moment didn’t come.

When Celestia expected to feel the smoothness, the wetness, the pulsing warmth of Luna’s tongue, she felt cool air instead.

Trying not to look frustrated, Celestia turned around.

Scowling, Luna lifted her right hoof and pointed ahead.

“Tourists,” she said.

Celestia turned her head forwards and indeed saw a couple, stallion and mare, strolling on the road circling the coast of the island in the middle of the pond.

She placed her forelegs back onto the cobbled path and lowered her tail. Her groin ached from want. One part of her mind wanted to go into a secluded place and finish the deed but another reminded that in a resort like this no place was truly hidden.

One part of her, the one craving excitement, wanted to forget about the tourists and continue right here, right now, to Tartarus with the interlopers. A pleasant tingle rushed through her. It definitely seemed exciting to perform an act of loving in front of strangers but there was a catch: they were both princesses, not simple folk. If they were caught like this they would hear tales of it for the next decade that would turn really lurid after about a century or so.

“Why must they come at such a time?” Celestia asked, her brows furrowed.

“Should we go to another place?” Luna asked.

Celestia smiled. “That’s a good idea! In the bamboo forest?”

“Why not?”

When Celestia turned toward the green multitude of bamboo trunks she saw four couple coming from between them.

She sighed.

“I guess we’ll have to delay our pleasure,” Luna, disappointed, said.

Celestia wrapped her right foreleg around Luna’s neck.

“We’ll do it later. I promise. In the meanwhile, I know something that can help us to hold on for a little longer.”