Discipline & Pleasure

Chapters

The Dialectics of Desire
Power, Seduction, Cries
Interlude
The Trouble with Silvy
The Trouble with Diamond
The Price of Silver
Discipline & Pleasure

The Dialectics of Desire

Diamond Tiara lay at the edge of her bed, hind legs parted to accommodate the mare between them. Behind her closed eyes she could picture the unicorn, feel the pressure of her body as she held her down, mouth now on hers, kissing her hard on the lips. She gave a muffled moan as the tongue pushed past, gliding along her teeth, pressing deeper. Her sex flooded with anticipation of what was to come and she wrapped her legs around the mare above her, grinding her mound into her, her body pleading with her to continue.

The tongue withdrew, followed by several lighter, gentle kisses. She heard a giggle, “This is so naughty.”

She gave another, unhappy moan as the unicorn's image wavered and dissipated, her eyes opening to see the gray pony above her. Silver Spoon grinned. Diamond Tiara just looked at her.

It had been two weeks since her encounter with the dressmaker. She had not returned to that fateful doorstep. She couldn’t will herself to. It would have been a show of weakness, of submission. Never before had she been treated so disrespectfully by another pony. Her cheeks burned sometimes just thinking about it.

She forced herself upon me, Tiara affirmed for the hundredth time since that afternoon, I had no choice. She was young, immature, a beautiful budding flower shamelessly assaulted by the older mare.

And you loved it, said another, secret voice deep down in her gut. She should have told the older mare that she wasn’t interested, that what she was suggesting was totally inappropriate. She should have run home to her father and told him everything, like she would have done a year ago. But threaded through her thoughts, then and now, was that deep longing she had felt when the dressmaker was running her hooves over her body, caressing her with her voice. The memories evoked not only shame but pleasure as well, woven together by hooves so skillful that they were almost indistinguishable.

You gave yourself to her.

It was the same argument she had been having with herself since then, and she doubted it would be resolved that day any more than it was the day before. She pushed it to the back of her mind with a sigh as she felt her friend begin to shower her neck with small, brief kisses.

Besides the ongoing and sometimes heated internal debate she carried with her out of that dress shop, Diamond Tiara’s life seemed to have been improving since. She sought out companionship soon after that fateful day, which explained why her gray partner was currently mounting a valiant effort to pleasure her. Initially she had been excited by the new relationship. She and Silvy had fooled around a few times in the past, but their activities had been limited to some experimental kissing. She had known her friend wanted more, but when a disagreement about public displays of affection ended with her friend tearfully confessing her love for her, she had balked. Though their friendship had mended with time, the tension remained. It had just taken Diamond Tiara insisting they take the ‘scenic route’ home from their usual trip to the mall one day and jumping her in the garden maze to bring it out.

They had done much more than kiss that day, and since. Tiara had never been so satisfied. Or so she had told herself. Enough to believe it for the first week. But the satiated feeling she got from lying with her friend was waning, and other issues had already begun to crop up - she could feel the same old argument about commitment and respect looming on the horizon, in storm clouds resembling her partner’s coat. The relationship was already wilting under the inattentive hoof of the girl with the crown on her flank.

Silver Spoon was more than willing to overlook her flaws in the name of finally getting what she wanted, though, and maybe that was part of the problem. The mare she waylaid in the maze had yielded without struggle, her kisses urgent and wanting. In the time since, whether in bed or in choosing where to eat out, she had behaved in the same manner. It had taken some effort to even get her on top today.

It all leads back to the dressmaker. Tiara, with an eye well-practiced at finding the root of her problems in the ponies around her, had convinced herself that the source of her growing frustration was behind those blue doors on the outskirts of downtown. She needed to take charge, go back there and...

...and what? Yell? Scream? Threaten her? You let her do this to you, and you loved every minute of it. At this rate you’re more likely to bend over for her than bend her to your will.

No, she replied silently, my father is powerful, she is not. She can’t get away with this. When I confront her she will fear me.

But her inner voice was unsteady, and her gut could tell. Her stomach tightened with stress. No, she will fear him. And will you run back to daddy then? Will he restore your innocence? Is that even what you want?

In her mind she could still see the unicorn’s deep blue eyes, and she sank into them slowly, concentrating on the rhythm of her friend’s tongue between her legs, escaping her inner conflict once again.

Tiara shuddered and cried out as the orgasm overtook her. Caught up in her thoughts about the pale mare, she had failed to notice her friend's downward progress. Her head turned towards the door in a moment of panic before she remembered her father was at work. Even though - per the awkward and brief father-daughter chat the day before her cuteceañera - he had no objection to her being intimate with mare friends, she was fairly sure he was unaware of the degree to which she was involved with Silvy, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Her gray companion lay down next to her, smiling with hazy satisfaction. “That was really hot, I can’t believe how quickly I got you off.”

Tiara didn’t return her offered affection, though, eyes trained on the ceiling so intently she appeared to be contemplating the infinity of space above, her signature frown in place. “What’s got you so distracted?” her friend prodded gently.

The magenta mare stared at her after a moment, the ghost of a frown still on her face, “I just had a thought, nothing important. I think I need a new dress.”

It was 12:15 in the afternoon, and Rarity was hard at work. Needles soared through the air and scissors sheared with precision at her command, evoking the artist’s vision in the medium of cloth. Bolts of delicate fabric lay discarded at her hooves, the shredded remnants of the break she had forsaken for the past two weeks. The dozens of dresses, suits, and giant hats that decorated dummies all around the showroom were a testament to her untiring ability to avoid thinking too hard about the problems in her life.

First and foremost on the list of things not to think about was the memory of that day. The pleasant afterglow of her fitful coupling with the filly had faded as soon as she had had closed the shop and was left alone with her thoughts. With the evening shadows had crept a feeling of dread which had lingered since, growing stronger with each day, staining her doorway and bedroom a deep, dark black.

The next on the list, close to the first, was the whereabouts of the filly herself. What if she doesn’t come back? What if she does? The tolling of the bell on the front door signaling the entrance of each new customer echoed in her heart as well, triggering the sudden self-consciousness she was accustomed to feeling only around a potential mate - that conflicted and terrifying space between rejection and acceptance hidden beneath an artist’s practiced distance from her audience and the confidence of the unconventionally beautiful. She was, always, both relieved and frustrated when she turned around and greeted anypony but the one she was expecting.

Finally, not unrelated to the first two, was her heat. She was at the end of her cycle, but she hadn’t found a partner to relieve her increased desires this summer. Not that she couldn’t, of course, but her voluntary semi-hermitage had left her too busy, too nervous, and altogether too distant to tend to herself. Which was pretty much the idea in the first place.

The only bright spot she had kept with her since that day was the fact that the blue barrier at the front of her shop had not yielded to the conga line of blustering police officers, stern judges, angry parents, crying relatives, concerned social workers, and confused friends following a vengeful, flaming princess which haunted her dreams. If nothing else, the filly hadn’t told anypony.

She was absolutely not thinking about any of these things as she worked her magic on the inanimate bodies before her. Stitch by stitch, thread by thread, she wove her troubles into the work at hoof.

When the doorbell rang, all movement ceased. An orchestra of materials and instruments formed the floating audience to the entrance of the young magenta mare through the front door. Rarity remained poised at the center of the room, unmoving. The fresh silence of the room was disturbed only by the heavy breathing of the visitor. As abruptly as it stopped, the symphony of construction resumed.

“Welcome to the Carousel Boutique,” she intoned with an even voice, “if you’ll just hold on a minute, I’ll be right with you.”

She rested the universe of fabrics and tools upon the floor, circling towards her customer, “Oh, Ms. Tiara! However can I help you today? I do hope you’re enjoying your new dress, your father had nothing but nice things to say about it-”.

“You’re in big trouble!” the smaller mare shouted. The girl’s nostrils were flared, eyes narrowed on the dressmaker, “You- you violated me. If I tell somepony, you’re going to pay.”

Rarity’s mind raced, exceeded only by her heart, which at that point was making its way through her upper intestine. Outwardly, however, she was the picture of composure, and that’s really what counts when you’re being accused of molesting a customer, isn’t it? It’s all about the presence you project, not how you feel.

Using her magic, she sealed the door behind the filly, “I’ll pay, will I? Interesting. Frankly, dear, I don’t recall you saying that when you were lying on my bed, begging me to let you come.”

Tiara blushed a deeper, angrier shade of red, “I never did that! Besides, you can’t prove it. Nopony will believe you. If I tell my father, you’ll be in big trouble!” The filly tried to continue, but found her mouth zipped closed.

In the gap between the girl's first stormy entrance into the shop and their current face-off, Rarity had distracted herself with reading as well as sewing. Foalsitting: A Guide for Resourceful Unicorns Without Remorse had yielded a number of useful spells, including the one affixed to the younger mare’s face. All it had required was a visit to Twilight's library and an inquiry into resources for particularly irritable sisters. She had also secured the girl’s hooves to the floor for good measure, although she made no move to bolt or struggle. This was good. Her intent was to assert her authority, not to scare.

“Young lady, I would rethink my position were I you,” her tone was sharp, commanding - she may as well be lecturing her younger sister as the filly she pleasured in her own bed, “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you come - alone, might I add - into my shop if your intention was to get me in trouble? Especially if I, as you say, violated you.”

She was pacing slowly around the filly as she admonished her, and as she passed her rear she caught the telltale scent of desire. As easy as apple pie. She lowered her voice, “Besides, who is to say I wouldn’t violate you again?”

The earth pony shuddered as Rarity brushed her tail over her inner thigh. A ghost of longing and fear passed across her blue eyes. The speech had achieved its desired effect, “Now, I’m going to let you speak again, but if you start yelling, there will be consequences.”

As the gag released, Tiara inhaled and readied herself to raise her voice to decibels previously unreached in the boutique, which was both ambitious and impressive all things considered. When she tried to shift her hooves, however, she found them immobilized. Her frown was gone, brow now knitted in apprehension, “What do you want?” the girl asked, her voice small and nervous.

Rarity felt a surge of relief in her heart - her gambit had worked. However, she was still in authority mode.

“What I want? Darling, I’m not the one who stormed into your home all hot and bothered, screaming accusations at you. What I want is of no consequence. What do you want?”

The words hung heavy in the air between them. The unicorn could see gears turning behind the girl’s eyes, no longer staring at her but through her. In that moment, Rarity saw herself reflected in miniature - in the sapphire-ringed opal irises of the girl’s eyes, in the passion of her arguments, and in her newly assumed composure as she straightened her shoulders to address the dressmaker.

“I want you. To take me - um, like last time. I - I really liked it, I’ve never felt like that before.”

It took all of Rarity’s self-control not to take the young mare into her hooves at that moment and ravish her. She wanted to leave them both panting, covered in the excess of their intimacy, unashamed, unburdened before any customer that might walk in. But that was not how the game was played. She knew what the girl wanted, could see it in her eyes, and she knew how to give it to her.

Rarity didn’t release the spell on her visitor quite yet. There was business to attend to first. With a frown, she began, “Young lady, I won’t have an ill-mannered, spoiled girl trotting around in my boutique.”

As the shock on the filly’s face gave way to a frown, the unicorn stamped her hoof once on the floor, firmly.

“Don’t make that face at me - I know your kind,” Rarity continued, raising her shoulders, “Like I said before, you’re in need of some instruction - some special attention, if you like. I still consider you a victim of circumstance, and as such you will be taught, severely if necessary, how to behave like a lady.”

“And as I said, this is not about what I want. It’s about what I will have,” she crept closer to the young mare, maintaining eye contact.

“You are to go home and convince your father to give you 500 bits, which I doubt will be too difficult. When he asks what it is for, you will inform him that I am leading an etiquette class for the duration of the summer. You will bring the money here this Friday at 6 p.m.”

Rarity narrowed her eyes, frowning back at the girl, “Do not be late. Your instruction will begin then, and will run until 9. In the meantime, you are to obtain a copy of The Young Mare’s Guide to Etiquette and read the first two chapters. If you have any questions or concerns, you may let me know now.”

Diamond Tiara took a moment to respond. Shifting against the unseen weights on her hooves, she complained, “Friday? I have plans though.”

Rarity pierced her with her stare, “If you can’t comply with this simple instruction, we should consider this discussion concluded. I am already making time in my schedule for you, and you should be grateful. Now are these plans with your family, or with somepony else?”

The girl shifted again, “A friend.”

“Then break them. We begin this Friday,” Rarity instructed, now so close to the girl that she was standing over her, “If you aren’t here at 6, the door will be locked and this offer is rescinded.”

Before Tiara could respond, the unicorn closed the small gap between them with a kiss. The earth pony’s lips parted for her tongue without resistance. Their kissing was mad, frantic. Leaning into the other mare, Tiara moaned into her mouth.

Rarity broke the kiss, and looked into the girl's eyes. “This Friday, 6 p.m. I will be expecting you.”

Power, Seduction, Cries

Diamond Tiara’s week rushed by. She thought she would be conflicted upon leaving the dressmaker’s shop, much as she was last time, but by the time she had returned to home she had already affected the proper stance for a daughter intent on getting what she wants. The money wasn’t the issue. Breaking her date with Silver Spoon, however, took a little more cajoling. As pliable as her friend was in their relationship, she was still all sharp edges when it came to commitment.

Friday evening found the earth pony scuffing at the doorstep of the Carousel Boutique ten minutes before her appointment. The Boutique, per the cheerful sign posted outside, had been closed for an hour. It was that gap in the day, between the end of work for many ponies and the beginning of their weekends, when that usually low-traffic section of Ponyville was practically deserted. Nervous, she surveyed the empty street and imagined herself as the last pony in the world, like in one of the stories she was told as a foal, going to bargain with the Mare at the End of the World over the fate of the universe.

“And she raised her hoof to the door,” she recited quietly, her hoof hovering in the air, “and though she knocked, there was no answer,” she brought her hoof down on the door, once, twice, three times in succession.

Yet this was not a ponytale, and there was an answer. The door opened slowly, and the unicorn stood in the doorway wearing a gown of deep red, beckoning her in. She followed, feeling self-conscious about her lack of formal apparel.

“Right on time. I do hope you’re hungry,” the dressmaker gave her a welcoming smile as she led her to the kitchen.

The young mare was surprised by the simplicity of the food - a soup of grains, carrots and flowers sat simmering on the stove, with a side of wheat bread on their plates. Tiara had been expecting something else entirely. Where were the roses? Where was the cake? She looked up at the dressmaker, frowning out of habit. “Is there more? Or is this it?”

Rarity’s eyes went wide, and she coughed in surprise. It was her turn to frown. “Well I-. Apparently, Diamond Tiara, your your attention span is as short as your fuse, otherwise you would have remembered this from your reading.”

Her host levitated their dishes, ladling the soup with a precision that belied her heated tone. “Attitude, my dear, is everything. First and foremost, you must never insult your host in such a crude way - insults, when appropriate, are most appropriately delivered in a backhoofed manner, which leaves your target unable to respond without seeming rude themselves.

“Secondly, and more to the point, the meal I’ve prepared is fine. Eat it or don’t, we must set some terms before we continue.”

They seated themselves at the table, Tiara still frowning as she ate a soup which is even more disappointing than she expected. Rarity sighed and continued, “It’s good I got to you when I did - that frown is simply dreadful for your visage. Now then, we have 8 weeks until school starts again. I trust you brought the payment?” The filly nodded, chewing on a piece of bread.

“Good. Now, dare I ask, did you actually do the reading you were assigned?”

Tiara nodded again, mouth still full.

“Excellent. Tonight you will have a chance to demonstrate your knowledge, and I will introduce you to the basics of etiquette, an area in which you are sorely lacking and will serve you well in the future.”

She swallowed, and then frowned. This wasn’t what she had been expecting at all. “When are we gonna...you know...?”

The grin that crept onto Rarity’s face was practically lecherous, “Did you expect me to jump you after I let you in the door? No, young lady, I wasn’t lying when I said you needed to be taught manners. Besides, whatever would your father say if after two months his daughter was the same spoiled girl he had handed over to my capable hooves? I have a reputation to uphold, you realize.”

Rarity nudged the magenta filly in consolation, “I do think you’ll enjoy these lessons a bit more than Ms. Cheerilee’s, however, unless I’m quite mistaken about her methods of instruction.”

The meal concluded, she followed Rarity up to her bedroom, which was darkened but for the constellation of candles scattered throughout. On one wall, there was a table draped in black velvet.

“Take a seat on the bed,” the unicorn instructed as she moved to the table and began rifling below the velvet. The earth pony watched with curiosity.

“Now, as I have said, I consider your case rather serious. To think, that at your age you are still acting like a child. Unacceptable.”

Her horn glowing, the unicorn levitated a variety of objects above her head, “Therefore, you must be taught, severely. But you must also agree to this, because I wish to minimize the amount of whining I must suffer.”

The objects came to a rest at base of the bed. “This,” Rarity said, “is cloth, obviously. It would be used to bind you in a position more pliable to my instruction.”

The unicorn levitated a short, tapered black rod with a flat piece of material at the end before her. Its earthy smell filled the girl’s nostrils.

Leather. Real leather. She had no idea where the older mare had obtained something like this, as material produced from dead animals was only made in very limited quantities in a few parts of Equestria. Even her father didn’t have access to those kinds of resources. The mystery that suffused the object was as deep and rich as its scent.

“This is a crop,” Rarity continued, tapping the object in question upon the nightstand. Her speech was punctuated by the soft tck tck tck of leather against wood, striking in time with the clock. “You might recall it from history class.

“The punishment for a wrong answer is one lash, on your flank, at my discretion. The punishment for backtalk is the same. Correct answers will be rewarded as I see fit.”

Instructions completed, the dressmaker eyed her intently. “Will you agree to this?”

Diamond Tiara was surprised, to say the least. She had been expecting to be taken, perhaps forcefully, by the older mare, but this was a different level of intimacy. She knew some ponies indulged in this kind of thing but had no idea the dressmaker was one of them. It was perverted, weird, and embarrassing.

Or it was supposed to be. As surprised as she was, she was also curious. Rarity, wielding the lash over her - her, helpless, restrained. Dominated. Forced to follow the whims of her teacher. She felt a familiar wetness creeping between her haunches.

“Will it hurt?”

“Yes,” said Rarity, with a stern look, “but only as much as you want it to. If you wish me to stop, you need simply to tell me.”

“Then I agree,” Tiara replied. The bargain was struck.

The unicorn cleared her throat, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders. “Now then, I want you to bend over on the bed, flank facing me.”

Tiara began to adjust her position, smirking as she did so. As she raised her flank, she swished her tail back and forth over her rear, watching her teacher bite her lip at the view between her haunches. Bringing her tail to rest on her back, she leaned forward, pushing her backside towards the unicorn, opening herself to her. The earth pony could feel how wet she was, and wanted her teacher to see as well.

“Now, bring your forelegs in front of you, and place them next to each other. We can’t have you running away during the lesson,” Rarity was staring at her, consuming every inch of her.

The cloth levitated over the prone filly, caressing her magenta coat as it wrapped around the joints in her back and forelegs. The knot at her front was simple yet somehow elegant to the filly. In the bedroom, like in the dresses she had seen in the showroom below, the unicorn put the utmost care into her work.

“How does that feel? Do you consider yourself sufficiently restrained?” the unicorn questioned her.

“It’s fine, not too tight,” she pushed against the binding, testing its resistance. There was some room to move, but not enough to remove unassisted. The earth pony felt herself getting wetter with anticipation.

When she glanced behind her, she saw the unicorn had shed her garment. Beneath, she was wearing a brilliant green corset, with matching stockings clipped to it. Her rear was covered in what appeared to be dark blue panties ringed with lace.

“Let us begin then,” Rarity levitated the crop, running it along her haunches, dragging it along her cutiemarks and rubbing briefly over her teats and mound. Tiara shivered at the sensation.

“We will start with a review of this week’s reading. I do hope you enjoyed the book as much as I did when I was your age. I will ask you some simple questions, you will answer as promptly. We will begin with the five basic elements of etiquette, if you could please name them.”

Her mind set to work. She really had tried do her reading, although in truth the book had been as dry as the withered old crone who had written it, and she had skimmed over large portions of text proclaiming the virtues of modesty and chastity.

“Style, poise, manners, lifestyle, and...”

The crop traced a slow ring around her cutiemark as she tried to think of the last rule. The sensation on her rear was not helping her think, and after a minute of this she sighed in frustration.

“I don’t know.”

A light rhythm began on her cutiemark, the crop tapping to the beat of some nameless song in the unicorn’s mind. After a moment the tapping ceased, and she caught her breath in anticipation of what would come next.

She waited. And waited. Releasing that breath, she peered behind her to see the crop suspended above her flank, surrounded by a purple aura. The dressmaker stood a few meters behind the bed, chewing on her lip.

When she noticed Diamond Tiara looking at her, Rarity withdrew the crop, the look of concern replaced with an uneasy smile.

“Well, you didn’t actually expect me to use this on you, did you?” the unicorn’s laughter was brief and nervous, the first time she had heard the mare stumble.

“Puh-leez. I would never. Well, not until we had a developed a rapport, that is, gotten to know one another a bit better. And on somepony who had never engaged in this kind of thing before? I would never! There are levels to how we do this, you understand.”

The dressmaker began to turn away, towards the table that the materials had come from, “I’m not just going to lay into you with a medieval torture device on your first day.”

“I want you to use it.”

“Pardon me?” Rarity froze, smile still on her lips.

“I want you to use it - the crop. I agreed. That’s what matters, right?”

“Are you absolutely sure, dear?” The expression on the unicorn’s face was pained, “I have plenty of paddles, and feathers - why, I think I’ve even got an edition of the Foal Free Press I could use if you like.”

“No, we agreed. I’m not some child, I can make up my own mind. And I want you to use the crop.”

She spoke without certainty, but the choice had become a point of pride. She was curious, though, and the enigma of the crop lingered in her nostrils.

“This is about my consent too, you realize. I’m not just going to whip you with anything at your command.”

“Fine,” Rarity said after a pause, conceding defeat to the younger mare's insistent silence. The implement in question still hovered in the air. “Very well. But before we continue, you must understand - this sort of accessory will leave marks very easily. It can also hurt. More than you think.”

Tiara nodded as much as she could from her position in the bed.

“And once again, I must remind you that we may end this at any time, if either of us are feeling less comfortable than we wish. You need say the word.”

The unicorn straightened her shoulders once again, eying Diamond Tiara’s rear with purpose. The hint of a smirk appeared on her lips.

“Now, where were we? Oh yes. Your answer.”

The filly jumped as the crop swatted her left flank, holding back a yelp which came more from surprise than pain.

“The last element of etiquette: being lovely. Don’t feel too bad, dear, it’s the easiest one to forget, but also the most important. A lady is lovely in all aspects of her life. To quote: “Elegance must be combined with loveliness, because one usually does not desire to be elegant simply for themselves, but to shed a little joy around her and beautify her world.”

Rarity huffed, pacing on the carpet. “Words to live by, young one. Remember them. Live by them.”

“I trust that didn’t hurt too badly?”

The earth pony scowled behind her back. The glancing blow hadn’t hurt much, but her ego was bruised. “But I got most of the answer right!” she raised her voice, mustering what dignity she could in her compromising position, “I didn’t deserve that!”

She cried out as the crop struck harder across her left flank.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, young lady. That was for the backtalk, and I’m certain you’re feeling the difference between the first strike and the second.”

The unicorn’s tone softened, caressing her ears, “If you cannot treat me with base level of respect, this will go very poorly for the both of us. If you would like, we can find a more appropriate tool for the rest of our discourse, but it’s up to you.”

Diamond Tiara’s rear burned where the crop had come down on her. Her head buried deep in the maroon sheets of the bed, she was brought back to another time, very long ago, when her father had come home from work to discover that she had broken a new, very expensive toy. It was the only time he had ever spanked her, and he had apologized almost immediately afterward, returning home from work the next day with gifts which must have cost twice the price of the broken gadget.

She felt humiliated by the older mare. Here there was no apology to be had. But mixed with the pain was another warm sensation coming from deep within her, pulsing outward towards her teats and slit. She could feel her anger rising, tempered by her arousal and the mare’s warning. With some effort, the earth pony pushed it back down.

“Yes, I understand. It won’t happen again,” Tiara asserted, “and no, I don’t want to stop.”

The crop had begun making circles on her right flank.

“As you wish,” the unicorn sighed, shaking her head to dismiss the doubts that still nagged at her, “before we continue, however, I would appreciate a lovely apology.”

The filly felt her temper jump again. Before she could stop herself, she was yelling, her legs straining against the cloth tying them together, “Are you kidding me?”

Pain streaked across her right flank and she cried out again in surprise. Her breaths came in deep, shaky sobs into the covers as she processed the visceral consequences of her actions. The red covers stained with tears when she dragged her cheeks across it, burying her face. She was a foal again, a child unable to control herself. She was being punished. It was what she deserved.

As the immediate pain faded to a dull burning, she felt a tingling sensation in her inflamed rear. The pain itself was bearable, calculated with care by the unicorn, but the rush of blood when the crop had struck her had been dizzying, almost orgasmic. She had arrived at the edge of a great bright abyss, from which there was no return. Looking down, she saw its spectral depths beckoning her, embracing her with tendrils tinged in azure.

One more strike and that would be it. No more Diamond Tiara. She would be plunged over the edge into the unknown, dissolved, and doomed to whatever future lay on the other side.

Interlude

With slow steps, she pulled herself back from the brink.

Once her breathing had steadied, she looked up to see the unicorn standing by the side of the bed, a frown of concern styling her face.

“Rarity, I - I can’t continue tonight. I didn’t do the reading as carefully as I should have.” The tang of salt bit her tongue as she spoke.

“I understand,” her white counterpart consoled, “We certainly wouldn’t want that cute little behind of yours getting worn out, and Celestia knows at this rate you’d be more bruises than pony. However, I do hesitate to let you up without at least an apology.”

Despite the compromising position she was in, Tiara began to blush at the compliment. The unicorn’s horn glowed with a light purple essence, and she felt the bonds on her legs loosen and unravel. Her limbs free, she began to get up before the pain shooting from her croup made her crouch down again with a whimper.

Tiara gritted her teeth and swallowed the last remaining bits of pride she had for the evening.

“I’m...sorry, Rarity,” she murmured, the sentence ending as little more than a grunt.

“I appreciate that,” Rarity moved around the bed to the nightstand, “That can’t have been easy. I expect you’ll want something for your derrière as well.”

Diamond Tiara felt the weight of the unicorn as she seated herself on the bed, below her rear. A hoof rested on her back, above her tail. “I will need you to raise your flank for me, dear,” instructed the dressmaker, “this will only hurt for a minute, but it will be worth your while.”

She lifted her haunches, gasping as pain shot through her once again. Her tail was lifted over her back, and she whined as the unicorn’s soft hooves met inflamed flesh. The earth pony gasped as a wet, cooling sensation smothered the burning.

Hooves ghosted over her rear, spreading a thin layer of the substance over the trails left by the crop and lingering over her cutiemarks. The burning faded to a dull ache, and she sighed as the dressmaker began to rub her flank.

“If nothing else, young lady, I do hope you’ve learned something about manners,” the unicorn tutted behind her.

“I cannot for the life of me understand how you get along with such a bad attitude. Beauty is not a cheap gown to be worn and cast off when inconvenient. It is something we wear inside, demonstrated through our actions.”

She absorbed Rarity’s lecture in silence, eyes closed as she concentrated on the skillful hooves kneading her rear.

“I know it must be difficult for you to understand, especially at your age. Goodness knows I wasn’t always the picture of perfection. But if you are under my tutelage, I expect better from you.”

The hooves were working their way inwards, massaging her cheeks. A warming returned to her rear, one emanating from the wetness between her haunches and extending to meet the unicorn’s firm grip.

“Did you mean what you said about my behind?” Tiara asked with a tired glance behind her, “That it was cute?”

Rarity shook her head and stifled what sounded like a giggle before she affixed the proper degree of seriousness to her face. “I don’t appreciate being interrupted while I’m teaching you a valuable life lesson, Ms. Tiara,” a smirk played upon her face, “And yes, I think your flank is very cute. Despite the deplorable state of your manners, your physical charms are quite becoming.”

She watched as Rarity leaned closer, planting her lips briefly on her cutiemark, lingering for a moment.

“How are you feeling? All better?”

Before she could respond, the unicorn was running her tongue over the crown on her rear, sending another bolt of pleasure to her crotch. Teeth nibbled her rear as Rarity worked her way over the scored plane of her flank, towards her aching slit.

“No - I - I still feel some burning,” stuttered the filly, teeth clenching as the massage resumed on her, now closer to her fountain of desires, “it’s more towards the back.”

The tongue moved backwards, gliding over her butt, moving up towards the base of her tail before going down again, hovering on the rear of her flank.

“Here?” quizzed the unicorn in a low, sultry voice.

“N-no, close, it’s more towards the center,” she pleaded.

A hoof brushed over her leaking slit, and the young mare gave a small sigh, tensing her leg muscles. Rarity’s hoof returned, spreading her juices over her small teats and around her rear as she cooed.

“Oh, upon second glance I do think I’ve discovered the source of your discomfort! Be a dear and let me know if I get it right this time.”

Diamond Tiara cried out as the unicorn’s tongue found her slit, brushing along her outer lips in a long, slow lick that left her breathless.

“Y-yeah, that’s it,” she clenched her teeth again as Rarity lapped at her mound.

She writhed on the bed as Rarity’s tongue plunged into her, burying her face in sheets soaked in her sweat. Tiara pushed her hips back against the mare’s muzzle with a whine, willing her to go deeper. However, Rarity’s forelegs held her in place, leaving her lower body stationary as she was wracked with pleasure.

Pressure had been building inside of her since the beginning of the evening and she could feel that release was close. The tongue massaged deep within her, leaving her backside coated in a combination of salve, saliva, and her own lubrication. She pushed against the restraining hooves. Her back arched in an attempt to drive the fleshy intruder still deeper.

Tiara cried out again as the tongue withdrew - the feeling of Rarity pulling out was almost orgasmic. “Please don’t stop. I’m so close.”

She turned to see Rarity standing behind the bed, muzzle glistening with her juices. Stray hairs of deep violent fell across the mare’s face from her ruffled mane, shadowing crystal blue eyes that burned with lust and authority. The scent of lilac and musk pervaded the room. A rhythm had began deep in her heart, echoing some half-remembered tune she would always associate with the unicorn. In that moment, Diamond Tiara beheld not the dressmaker, but her partner.

Moving over the bed, she came muzzle to muzzle with the older mare. She could feel the other pony’s labored breathing upon her face. Tiara pressed her mouth to the unicorn’s, kissing her hard on the lips. The unicorn kissed her back, biting her lower lip, causing her to give a yelp in the back of her throat.

Rarity moved onto the bed with a grace that belied her heated appearance, coming to a rest on the pillows at its head. Her hind legs spread in front of her, underwear stretched between them, opaque enough to shroud the jewel beneath, yet tight and soaked with her juices.

Not a word was spoken between them then. Rarity had given her young charge the universal Equestrian signal for ‘fuck me’. The girl hungered, not only for release, but to please this mare before her.

The magenta filly closed the distance between them in a few quick steps. Taking the waistband of the panties in her mouth, she pulled them off between her teeth. Ducking her head between the jeweled haunches, she ran her tongue over the older mare’s slit, already dripping with excitement.

She moved upwards, circling over the unicorn’s pearl. Rarity was panting and moaning, one hoof running through Tiara’s mane as she slipped her tongue into the unicorn. The hoof on her head was gentle but firm as it urged her deeper.

At her rear, she felt her tail being lifted up and peered behind to see Rarity’s magical aura upon her. Levitating beside her tail was the crop. She looked up at the unicorn with curiosity.

“Don’t worry, we’re quite done with those games for now,” Rarity assured between ragged breaths, “This is for your patience.”

She saw the crop vibrate as it began to buzz. It floated beneath her, and she felt a jolt of pleasure run through her as the leather made contact with her underbelly. The crop’s leather handle skirted her teats, running along the sides in a lazy, agonizing figure 8 before moving towards her soaking slit.

As the second jolt hit her, she thrust her muzzle towards the unicorn’s slick nether-region, burying her tongue deep in the silky pink folds. The crop massaging her labia drove her wild, and as she rubbed her hoof over the unicorn’s clit she heard a cry from the mare above her. The end of the crop pressed against Diamond Tiara’s button, and she gave a small moan as an orgasm rocketed through her body.

The mares lay next to each other among the dwindling lights of the candles, each considering the ceiling. To Diamond Tiara, there was something imminent about the shadows which blanketed them. The orgasm had been more powerful than any she had experienced before, and it had left her feeling weightless. She closed her eyes and dissipated into the darkness surrounding her.

“I really did try to do the reading,” her voice sounded distant in her ears, disconnected from the rest of her.

She felt the other mare shift her weight. “I know, darling, I was impressed you could remember any of it. That book is dreadfully boring.”

“Why did you have me read it, then?” Too tired to be angry, the question lacked force.

“Why, I wanted to see if you would. It not that it’s useless, the author was simply, well--.”

“Dull?” finished the filly.

“Passionate. Her heart was elsewhere. She was born for the stage of the world - ballrooms and high society functions. When she set down to write the book, she brought a similar attention to detail.”

“How do you know so much about her?” She felt Rarity’s hoof running through her mane. The gesture felt intimate, almost familiar.

The unicorn was silent for a minute, collecting her thoughts. “When I was about your age, my parents sent me to a boarding school - one for fillies who wished to learn the art of grace.

“I expected to mingle among the elite, to meet other ponies who yearned for refinement. Instead, well - I found a finishing school for Equestria’s young, wealthy, and clueless. So instead of mingling, I ended up spending more than a little time in the school’s modest library.”

The hoof stopped. “That was that - I discovered the book, and read it from cover to cover before I ended up leaving.”

“My father threatened to send me to boarding school once. He wasn’t serious, of course. That would be ridiculous.”

Rarity shifted her weight again, and the mattress leveled as the unicorn stepped off. “You mustn’t underestimate your father. Even the most indulgent of parents can go to extremes when their child is involved.

“Passion, love - they can make us do very silly things.”

With an hour of lesson time to spare, they strolled through Ponyville’s darkened streets, taking their time. As they walked, quiet conversation drifted into the heavy summer air.

They reviewed that night’s activities (perhaps the crop wasn’t the best thing to start with), the lesson plan (the reading would be optional, but their sessions would have to include a lecture at the beginning before they indulged in other things), and the fate of the marks on her rear (the salve Rarity re-applied in a more chaste manner before they had left would have them almost gone by the morning).

Diamond Tiara found herself opening up despite herself. With Silvy, she tried to maintain a certain distance between them, fearing to add weight to the tiresome chains forged in their relationship. But with the unicorn, things felt different. Even the conversation about sex - something she had never discussed with her friend - was frank, honest - even funny, with the filly giggling as Rarity recounted her shock at negotiating the use of the crop with her young student. She felt a twinge of disappointment when they arrived at her doorstep.

Conversation between them ceased as they watched each other in the light from the small window in the door which bathed them both in its yellow glow. After a few moments, the unicorn broke the silence, “Well, I do hope you learned at least a few things, though we did get a bit distracted.”

A blush rose in her cheeks. Why was she acting like this? She felt more uncertain of herself than she ever had been around another pony. She coughed, and began to frown, “Yeah, well, it was fine.”

The unicorn raised one eyebrow, but before she had a chance to respond the door opened to reveal Filthy Rich.

“I thought I heard something out here!” Her father stepped through onto the porch, still dressed in his suit from work. “Rarity, I appreciate you walking my daughter home, though I have to say, I wasn’t expecting you back quite so early.”

Rarity was all smiles and courtesy. “Mr. Rich, it was a pleasure. I realize we’re a bit off schedule, but your daughter was - beat - as it were. Altogether too tired for a full three hours of teaching today.”

Her father nodded, his attention shifting to his daughter. “And another dress! Diamond, have you paid the young lady for that yet?”

The unicorn had given her something ‘simple’ to wear to cover the bruising on her rear for that night - although simple by her standards was somewhere in the realm of fine evening wear for most. The scattered sequins on the black gown sparkled in the light from the house.

Before she could respond, Rarity spoke again. “No need, thank you, I do appreciate the offer but this is my gift to her. No charge.”

“Really, how much can I offer you?” the stallion protested, “I’m a great believer in hard work, and obviously you spent a lot of time on this--”.

“It’s fine, Dad, it’s a gift. I’m tired. Can we please just go inside?”

“Of course, honey,” he turned to her, the dressmaker already forgotten, “Your friend Silver Spoon came by the house earlier, she wanted you to call her to set a time for your sleepover tomorrow.”

Diamond Tiara felt flushed. Thoughts and emotions cascaded through her. Silver Spoon. The name was a spark in the tinder of problems surrounding her heart, things she had set aside for tonight. She hadn’t told Rarity about her extra-curricular activities with the gray pony. Not yet, at least. Not that the unicorn should have reason to suspect anything. And besides, that was never part of their agreement. And for all she knew, the sleepover was just that, a chance for young mares to tell ghost stories and style each others' manes.

The thought of being seen as foalish in front of the older mare increased the heat radiating from her cheeks. Now? Not when you were tied up on her bed, crying? Not when she was spanking you? Since the appearance of her father, she had been struggling to reconcile the girl that had walked out of of the dress shop with the filly she would have to be tomorrow, the filly she would be once she passed the threshold of the doorway into the house.

Silver Spoon. Her eyes were tearing up. She wanted to cancel the sleepover. To cancel her lessons. She wanted to go to her room and barricade herself in, subsisting on a diet of rainwater and cloth from her dresses until the school year began.

She felt constrained in the dress now, she needed to get it off. Her father, the sleepover, her friend, it was too much for her.

She looked at Rarity. The mare was watching her, face unreadable.

“Thank you. For the dress.”

The earth pony followed her father inside, leaving Rarity at the doorstep, alone in the dark.

The Trouble with Silvy

The minute hand on the clock in Rich’s Barnyard Bargains was broken.

Or at least, that’s how it seemed to Diamond Tiara. How else could she explain the excruciating amount of time it was taking to reach four o’clock? She had pointed this problem out to the shift supervisor a number of times, only to be assured that, in fact, that clock was functioning just as well as it had before she had arrived there. None of the employees seemed to notice anything, or if they did they weren’t saying anything. To her, at least.

“Excuse me young lady, I’d like to sample Fame by Sapphire Shores.”

Turning her attention from the clock, she found a red-coated mare waiting at the counter, eyebrows raised. The filly leaned under the counter to the display case, shifting boxes around and reading a few of their labels, in no hurry. After a moment she surfaced with the sample bottle in hoof. She sprayed it in the direction of the customer, the air misting with perfume.

The perfume counter was the easiest job in the store - ponies would point out which perfume they wanted to try out, she would spray it at them, and they would either buy it or leave. Being the daughter of the store’s owner didn’t hurt, either, on the occasion that somepony complained. As usual, the customer sniffed and left without saying another word, leaving her alone again.

As the scent of Fame dissipated she looked back at the clock, bringing her hoof down on the counter in frustration. If anything, the minute hand was going backwards. Replacing the bottle among the other samples, another box caught her eye. White Diamonds by Ruby Tuesday. The fragrance dreams are made of, or so the box claimed.

She knew that perfume - it was Rarity’s. Closing her eyes, she could picture the unicorn standing before her, crop in her mouth, beckoning her. Taking a deep breath, she smelled something - White Diamonds. Her eyes snapped open again. Coughing, she caught her breath - four white hooves had gathered themselves in front of the counter.

Diamond’s head shot up from the display case. Rarity. The ugly, perpetual daylight of the store’s lighting was washed clean before it touched her unblemished coat, projecting an aura around her. The filly’s eyes widened as she took in the shopping bags on the dressmaker’s back. Sticking out from one, announcing its presence to the whole store, was a long, thin black rod.

“I have another lesson for you, young lady.” Rarity’s voice was low and sensual, turning the otherwise innocent statement into something lewd and exciting. Diamond’s rear throbbed with the memories of the last ‘lesson’ she had been taught.

“Here?” Diamond whispered, eyes darting around them to see if anypony was listening.

The unicorn said nothing, mouth sliding into a smirk as she eyed her pupil. Diamond ran her tongue over her lips as she took in what the unicorn had said, eyes trained on the crop. Here. In her father’s store. While she was working. It was totally inappropriate. Extraordinarily dangerous. If anypony caught on, well, she couldn’t even imagine the consequences. Her mind was pleading for reason, but her body and her heart would have none of it.

“Could we go to the back?”

“And why should we? There’s plenty of room out here.” said Rarity, raising her eyebrows.

Diamond was speechless. Stuttering, she tried to collect herself. “Rarity, I would prefer my lesson in the back room, instead of in front of the whole store. Please.”

“If you insist,” Rarity sighed, “But understand I won’t go any easier on you because we’re away from prying eyes.”

A nervous excitement swept over her as they made their way towards the rear of the store. She kept looking over her shoulder, eyes scanning for coworkers or managers, but the aisles they passed through were almost deserted. Only a few customers, busy hunting down the day’s specials, none paying attention to the unlikely pair.

When they entered the breakroom, Diamond breathed a sigh of relief. No ponies in sight.

Diamond Tiara began to turn, intending to ask Rarity what was going on. Before she could, she felt hooves grip her under her forelegs. Without a word, she was lifted onto the well-worn beige table at the center of the room.

Hooves pushed against her upper back, forcing her to kneel her forelegs on the dirty, stained plastic. Her rump rose, legs spread, presenting her to the older mare.

She looked to her side to see the unicorn standing behind her. The switch was in her mouth - no magic this time.

“Rarity, please,” she protested. What if somepony came in? What if they heard what was going on in the room? The thoughts rushed through her mind, but none rose to her lips. The silence following her plea turned it into a lusty invitation.

The rod danced over the magenta inner thighs of the earth pony, stopping before it reached her aching pussy. Diamond growled. After all of this hassle, the unicorn was teasing her.

“Rarity, please.” She thrust her rear backwards towards her teacher. The end of the crop slid over her flank, coming to a rest near the base of her tail. The pressure near her tail let up after a moment, and Diamond braced herself for what would come next.

The rod struck her upended rear with a loud slap, causing her to moan. She could imagine the sound echoing through the whole store. As the crop crashed against her rear a second time, she had to muffle her muzzle with her hoof to keep from crying out.

Bolts of pleasure shot through her body. Diamond ran her tongue over her right hoof, coating it with saliva. The painful red stripes crossing her rear had driven away the fear she had entered the room with. All she wanted was to feel the tool against her flank again.

“Rarity...” Black leather bit into her flank, stinging her soft flesh. Diamond yelped. The break room wavered and faded out of existence as waves of ecstasy washed over her. It was just her and the unicorn now.

Diamond leaned into her left foreleg as the right plunged between her haunches. Passing over her hardened nipples, she cried out again as her hoof brushed the pleasure button at the top of her dripping sex.

Again the rod struck her, and she screamed, driven wild by the unicorn’s ministrations. She had never been this wet. Juices ran down her inner thigh as she swept over her clit again, then dipped lower, her hoof slipping over the folds of her flower.

“Diamond?”

“Rarity!” She screamed the unicorn’s name, rocking against her hoof. Her orgasm erupted like a fountain, coating her inner thighs.

The magenta mare’s eyes shot open, the table below her coming back into view. Between her legs she saw her father standing in the doorway of the break room, his face pale with shock. Behind him was the floor manager, and behind him was the rest of the store’s employees and customers.

“What are you doing?” His voice wavered, attention turning to the unicorn. “What are you doing to my daughter?”

Diamond removed her hoof from between her haunches, lowering her rear and turning around to face the gathered crowd. She sat down, conscious of the cooling puddle beneath her which clung to her coat. Rarity stood to the right of the table and looked to be on the verge of tears. Clearing her throat, she addressed the ponies before her.

“I can explain.”

Her father walked into the room, closing the door behind him. His eyes were intent upon Rarity, as if she were a rabbit caught in a trap. She knew that look.

“Dad, no, please!”

Everything happened at once. Her father charged at Rarity. Diamond tried to get up, and found herself slipping in the puddle.

“Dad!”

She struggled to get up, to stop her father from hurting the unicorn. When she pushed herself up again, her rear legs gave out, face slamming into the table.

Diamond gasped as she opened her eyes.

Predawn filtered through the curtains covering the windows of her room, tinting the room in shades of gray. She could hear birds singing outside. Shifting, she realized that her hoof was between her haunches. The bed, and her, were soaked.

With a choked cry, Diamond sat up, green sheets sticking to her hind legs. Scenes from the dream kept running through her head - Rarity, her father...the way it had ended. She pushed the sheets back, peeling them off and huddling into a ball on the pillows. Diamond bit back a sob. Sitting on the bed, she felt exposed, still fragile from the nightmare.

Between a gap in her forehooves, she glimpsed the clock. Drawing in a slow, shaky breath, she watched the minute hand ticking across the numbered face. It was four in the morning on Saturday. That was real - the clock's hands were moving properly. The night before, she had her first lesson with Rarity. That was real. The unicorn had walked her home, but her father didn’t suspect anything. Why would he? Tonight, she had a date with Silver Spoon. Maybe. Unless Diamond broke up with her first. Either way, Silver Spoon was coming over. Also real. And - Diamond shook her head, clearing away the cobwebs of the nightmare - she had just been caught having sex with the unicorn in the breakroom of one of her father’s stores. Just a dream. And not exactly a bad dream. Well, until the end.

As she changed the soaking sheets for new ones her eyes glanced beneath to check for any lurking parents or other authority figures. The act of checking under her bed made her feel foalish, but she couldn’t shake the memory of all those eyes watching her. It was only when she had replaced the soiled set that she saw the decorations adorning the fabric. Smiling moons and stars drifted across the bedspread - sheets she had had for years. Given the content of the dream she had just woken up from, they seemed inappropriate. With a sigh, she contemplated returning to the closet, but her body was too tired to make the effort.

Despite the early hour, Diamond lay in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling as she listened to the ticking of the clock. One part of the dream kept running through her head, when her father had first found she and Rarity together. The feeling she had felt then wasn’t fear - that came later, when he attacked the unicorn. Instead, she had felt something else. A sense of relief. As if her life had become so much less complicated. It had all made sense when she was asleep, in that weird way dreams did. She was still trying to decipher how she felt when she drifted off to sleep.

“Silvy, I’m breaking up with you.”

“But Di, I can’t live without you!” said Silver Spoon, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“It’s over, Silvy. I hope we can still be friends.”

Silver Spoon hesitated. Diamond held her breath as she waited for the gray mare to say the words: of course we can be friends. The silence between the two mares grew heavier as it dragged out.

“Fuck it.” Diamond Tiara spat the curse as she threw the two pony dolls into a corner.

She had been at this all afternoon, playing out the end of her relationship with Silvy, always with the same result. The gray mare would end up storming out, in sadness or in fury. The response was always the same: Never. I never want to speak with you again. I hate you, Di.

When the magenta filly had woken up, late in the morning, she had risen with purpose. The dream and the doubts she had felt after parting with Rarity after their lesson must have been related. Her feelings for the unicorn were stronger than she had thought. Breaking up with her friend would simplify things, if just a little.

But breaking up with Silver Spoon and losing her as a friend were two different things. It had been months before they had spoken to each other the last time Diamond had ended things between them. Given that they had only just become involved again, this time would be worse. Retrieving the dolls from the corner, she frowned at the smaller one she’d labeled ‘Silvy’, shaking it.

“You know it’s best for both of us. Why are you making this so hard?”

There was a knock on the door downstairs. Looking up, the late afternoon sun glinted in her eyes from the stand-up mirror by her closet. She hadn’t realized how late it was.

Diamond moved with quiet steps to the top of the stairway. Controlling her breathing, she stood with her eyes intent on the front door. After a minute passed, she heard another knock.

Maybe she’ll just go away. It was a ridiculous thought. Still, she made no move towards the door.

Her heart jumped as she heard the doorknob jiggle. Of course it wasn’t locked. Bounding back into her room, she heard her friend call out from below.

“Di? You home?”

“Silvy! How’s it going?” Diamond called out, moving into the stairwell once again. She hoped her smile didn’t look as strained as it felt.

The gray filly stopped halfway through the door. “Okay, I tried knocking, no-one answered.”

“Sorry about that, I was busy,” she hesitated, grasping for excuses, “Napping,” she concluded, swallowing hard.

“Long night?”

“What? No!” she yelped. Her cheeks burned at the outburst. “I mean, yes, sort of. I didn’t sleep well.”

“I’m sorry, do you want me to, like, come back later?”

“No, it’s fine, come in already. I just need to freshen up and and we can go eat.”

It was Silvy’s turn to choose, which meant ten-bit barbecue at Appaloosa Al’s Smokehouse. Diamond found the place incredibly tacky, but tonight the ridiculous portions would help keep her mouth full while she considered how best to end their relationship without the whole thing blowing up in her face in a mess of hurt feelings and hot sauce.

They were seated underneath a mural, an impressionist nightmare of gaudy colors and crudely drawn figures that made Diamond wonder whether she was dreaming again. Appaloosa Al, or a blob of orange wearing a yellow smear that served as a stetson, was armed with his signature brand of sauce and chasing a herd of avocados, or really dark apples, across a yellow desert plain littered with smaller gray blobs, which she assumed were either rocks or sheep.

“So, you’ll never guess who I saw coming out of Sugarcube Corner together, holding tails.” Silvy leaned over a heaping plate of sweet potato fries as she delivered her announcement. “Snips and Twist.”

“Eew. What a gross couple. They definitely deserve each other.”

“Totally gross,” affirmed Silver Spoon, shaking vinegar on her plate, “Can you imagine an uglier couple?”

“We need to make sure to tease them about it this week,” said Diamond, “We can call them ‘Twips’!” The fillies giggled in unison.

Diamond felt a twinge in her heart, something close to satisfaction. They had been catching up on gossip for the past half hour, trading stories about Ponyville’s juicy underbelly. The lighthearted banter allowed her to relax. It felt...normal - something she hadn’t been feeling at all since her evening with Rarity. If they could only spend the whole evening dishing about the mundane ridiculousness of this town, she wouldn’t have to worry about her own, very serious problems.

“So, how was your class Friday?”

Diamond felt her heart sink. So much for normal. She paused between bites of slow-cooked turnips, chewing on the question. Her dolls had been so focused on breaking up this afternoon that they’d never discussed this.

“Fine. Boring.” She leaned over, taking another bite, feeling the words she had been rehearsing this afternoon welling up inside her. I have something we need to talk about, Silvy.

“I can’t believe your father’s making you take classes on Friday nights! It must be so boring to be stuck in that dress shop with that snooty dressmaker.”

“It’s not that bad,” Diamond spoke around a mouthful of turnips, “And she’s not snooty.” Swallowing, she glanced at the mural, wishing she could escape into its orange-lemon sunset. “She’s...passionate,” she added, frowning.

Silver Spoon giggled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means she cares about how she acts and what she says.” Diamond thought about Friday night’s session with Rarity. How the crop had danced over her flank, hard enough to hurt, but careful, always under control. “You should see her, when she’s working. She’s so careful. She puts her heart into everything she does.”

The gray mare sipped her lemonade through a crazy straw. Setting the glass down, it was her turn to frown. “She could still be snooty, though, yeah? She’s still telling you how to act, right? How can she teach a class like that without, you know, thinking she knows better than everypony else?”

“Maybe she does know better,” Diamond snapped. “You don’t know her.” It had been a mistake to tell Silvy anything. How could she expect her friend to understand a feeling she barely understood herself? The feeling of the crop on her flank, the look in the unicorn’s eyes after they had negotiated using it, these were still mysteries to her.

The main course arrived, the conversation between them grinding to a merciful halt. They ate without speaking, surrounded by the ambient noise of wailing foals and the staff wishing a half-hearted Happy Birthday to a table nearby.

Silvy spoke up over the remains of her baked potato. “So, have you picked out a dress for the Summer’s End Festival?” The festival, marking the nearing of the end of summer, would be held in four weeks. It was the last big social event before school started again.

“Not yet.” The question irked her. She turned back to her friend, looking her in the eyes. “I need to talk to Rarity about it. Where are you getting yours?”

“Probably her, I guess, I don’t know yet.”

“Well, it might help to speak more respectfully about her, especially if you’re going to be ordering a dress from her.” Diamond lectured her friend. “If she makes a dress for you, you should think twice about calling her snooty. You don’t even know her.”

“Okay, geez, I get it.”

Diamond stared a hole into the plate of macaroni sitting in front of her. She wanted to say more. She wanted to yell at Silvy. You don’t get it at all. This is why we shouldn’t be together. This stupid argument, it’s your fault. Her friend could be so disrespectful sometimes. Like a stubborn child.

“Di, are you feeling okay?” When she looked up, she saw Silvy watching her, concern painted on her face.

“Yeah, why?” Diamond shot back.

“You’ve just seemed really out of it lately.” Her friend spoke without malice.

Diamond felt a heaviness in her heart. What was she supposed to say? I want to break up with you, but keep you as a friend. Or, I’m breaking up with you because of something I felt on my doorstep last night and a dream I had. I can’t even explain how she makes me feel, but don’t get too angry. All those words she had practiced before in her room had the same result: I never want to speak with you again. She wanted to say something to unburden herself, but the truth would ruin everything.

She took a deep breath and looked her friend in the eye. “Actually, I’ve been feeling pretty out of it. I just... haven’t been feeling like myself lately.” True enough, she supposed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Silver Spoon asked, a beneficent smile gracing her face.

“No, I’d rather not. Not right now. But, thank you for the offer. I’m...sorry I’ve been acting weird.”

“That’s fine, but if you want to talk at some point, I’m here to listen.” Silvy’s voice was tinged with annoyance, but the arrival of the bill, borne by an older mare decked in a bright orange stetson coated with flair, marked the end of any further argument.

The setting sun coated downtown Ponyville in an orange which reminded Diamond of the painting in the restaurant. As she walked home with Silvy, the conversation turned to a discussion about plans for the Summer’s End Festival.

“I was thinking we could get a carriage to ride there. I’ve only ridden in a carriage once, it’d be super fun,” Silver Spoon bubbled.

“Yeah, that sounds pretty fun.” Diamond nodded. In truth, a carriage didn’t sound super fun at all. She didn’t relish the idea of pulling up to the festival with Silver Spoon, their relationship on display for all eyes to see. But the argument at the restaurant had tired her out, and she was willing to agree to just about anything to keep them away from another serious discussion.

Diamond opened the front door to her darkened house. Her father hadn’t been home yet - Saturdays he would go out with some of his managers for drinks after work. When she moved to hit the light switch, she felt Silvy’s hoof on her foreleg.

Silver Spoon’s lips pressed against hers as she turned around. The kiss was gentle but urgent, and soon she felt a tongue slide against her lips. Diamond opened her mouth, pushing her tongue into Silvy’s muzzle, the muscles wrestling with each other. Her teeth played over the gray filly’s teeth, exploring her mouth. When the fillies parted, both were panting.

“I’m sorry, Di, I didn’t want to make you upset at dinner.” Silvy’s hoof rested on Diamond’s shoulder. “I was just worried about you.”

“It’s fine.” Diamond ran her hoof along Silver Spoon’s foreleg. “Don’t worry about it.”

Their mouths met again on Diamond’s bed as they lay next to each other. Diamond sucked Silver Spoon’s lower lip into her mouth, biting her gently, grinning as she heard her friend moan. Diamond’s hoof ran over the soft grey coat of her friend’s belly, stroking her just above her pink teats.

Diamond licked her lips, admired her friends teats. They were smaller than hers, pert mounds capped by small, hard nipples. Silvy’s kisses grew deeper and more urgent as Diamond’s hoof pushed lower, massaging her friend’s teats, making slow circles around the small buttons on top.

She felt a hoof run down her thigh, and parted her hind legs further to give her friend access to the wetness between. The hoof brushed over her stomach, taut with tension, pressing towards her now-throbbing teats.

When the hoof pressed on her her nipples she moaned, pushing towards her friend, seeking more friction.

Their hooves moved in time with each other, stroking hardened nipples, filling the air of the bedroom with moans and the wet smacking of their lips.

Silver Spoon pulled her muzzle away, a string of saliva hanging between them when their mouths parted. “I want to go down on you,” she said, her voice low and husky.

Silvy leaned back on her haunches before Diamond, glistening with sweat. The magenta filly could see another wetness glistening between her friend’s hind legs from the moonlight streaming through the window. She ran a hoof between her friend’s haunches, caressing her mound. Silvy cooed, moving her forehooves behind her to undo the braids which ran down her back. Once her hair was freed, she shook her silvery mane out, cascading it over her shoulders. Removing her glasses, she blinked as she leaned over Diamond and placed them upon the table beside the bed.

Diamond rested against her pillows, spreading her hind legs. Silver Spoon leaned between her spread legs, kissing her hard on the lips and smiling before she moved her attention lower. Her mouth ran over Diamond’s belly, covering her with saliva.

When Silvy paused to lick her swelling teats, Diamond ran her hoof through her friend’s mane, gently urging her towards her steaming slit. The head between her haunches dipped lower, and Diamond sighed as she felt the tongue part her outer lips.

Silvy lapped at her mound, teasing her clit and causing Diamond to writhe on the bed, urging her friend to continue. She watched as Silvy moved a hoof between her own hind legs, massaging her cleft as she stroked her tongue between Diamond’s legs.

Diamond closed her eyes, feeling pressure build within her. Images from her dream played behind her eyelids - Rarity, pushing her down onto the table. The crop whipped her, biting into her flesh, dominating her.

Burying her head in the pillow below, she screamed as the orgasm ripped through her. It left her feeling fragile, as she had after the dream, gutted by pleasure in the wake of release.

Looking up, saw Silvy sitting on her haunches and biting her lip. Her hoof rubbed furiously at her dripping mound. With Diamond watching, the gray mare squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled sharply, giving a soft cry before falling onto the bed next to her.

As the fillies lay in bed together, in the quiet of the evening, Diamond felt the same heaviness in her heart she had felt in the restaurant. So much lay unspoken between them. Part of her wanted to tell Silver Spoon everything - about the dream, about her session with Rarity, about that first afternoon with the unicorn. Not talking with her as a lover, but as a friend. The friend she could confide everything in before that day at the Carousel Boutique.

“Did you see the dress Rarity gave to me?” Diamond spoke to the darkness hanging over them. I wore it to cover the stripes on my rear after Rarity spanked me.

“I think so.” Silver Spoon rolled over to face her. “The black one? Hanging near the closet? Totally cute.”

“Yeah, that one.” Not cute, beautiful. Beautiful like the mare who gave it to me. “You know she makes all of those dresses herself? It’s super impressive.”

“She doesn’t have her blankflank sister helping her or something?” asked Silver Spoon.

“No.” Diamond frowned at the comment. “Don’t be stupid. Like I said, it’s just her. She works so hard, I don’t think a lot of ponies know that.” But I know. I know lots of things about her.

“Oh yeah?” The gray filly yawned.

“She had to work today, too. She told me last night.” We were laying on her bed together, just like this. “There was a special order for somepony important.”

“It sounds like she needs to take some time off and get laid.”

“Don’t talk about her like that.” Diamond pushed the pony next to her.

“Whoa, looks like somepony has a crush! You two should-- ow!”. The grey filly rubbed her shoulder. “That seriously hurt, Di. What was that for? It was just a joke.”

“Well it wasn’t funny.” Diamond huffed. It took a moment for her heart to start beating again after the shock of Silvy’s comment. Silver Spoon said nothing. After ten minutes of uncomfortable silence, she turned to her friend.

“Geez, Silvy, it couldn’t have hurt that much--”. The gray mare had her eyes closed, chest rising and falling with the rhythm of sleep. Diamond felt a twinge in her heart. I’m sorry, Silvy, none of this is your fault. You don’t know the half of it.

Extracting herself from the bed, Diamond padded from the bed to the window facing downtown. A sea of stars spread out below her, street lamps and lights shining from inside homes lighting up the Ponyville night. She opened the window and peered out, letting the warm night air caress her. She knew one of those lights was coming from the Carousel Boutique, shining like a beacon.

A soft summer breeze whispered up from the street below, tousling her mane. Come with me, it tempted her. If she followed, it promised to whisk her from her home to the dressmaker’s front step. Follow me, it insisted, speaking of adventure and danger that most ponies could only dream of. Escape with me, the breeze whispered again, kissing her face.

Diamond looked back into her bedroom. Silver Spoon lay on the bed, snoring softly. If I leave, she won’t notice until the morning. She lowered the window again, feeling the chill of the air conditioning embrace her again. Moving across the floor, she lay her hoof on the door to the hallway. She stood at the door, looking at her friend, listening for the breeze to speak to her again, to urge her over the edge.

“Di?” Silver Spoon’s speech slurred at the edge of consciousness.

She lowered her hoof from the door, taking her place in bed without a word. As she lay in bed, she listened still, waiting for some direction from the wind.

Diamond awoke the next day refreshed from an uneventful sleep. She had half-hoped to see the unicorn in her dreams again, but the surprise guest at her father’s store was a pony she recognized as Rarity’s yellow model friend, and she had spent the whole time trying to ask where her father was. Nonsense dreams annoyed her, but she preferred them to nightmares.

As usual, she and Silvy ate before the other filly left. Sitting at the kitchen table, the smell of cooking batter drifting from the waffle maker, Diamond noticed the bruise on her friend’s shoulder.

“Is that from last night?” Diamond gasped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you so hard.”

“It’s okay, Di, don’t worry about it.” Silver Spoon shrugged, “That’s kind of what I figured.”

“Are you sure? Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No, really, it’s totally okay.” The gray mare smiled and shrugged again. “Also, you should probably check the waffles, I think they’re burning.”

Something was wrong. Silvy always wanted to talk about it, whatever ‘it’ happened to be. But after Diamond returned from rescuing the waffles, her friend had already begin sketching the carriage they’d be taking to Summer’s End on the morning paper, something she was prepared to describe in great detail.

Diamond put Silvy’s reticence out of her mind as soon as the front door closed behind her. Trotting upstairs to her room, she stopped in the doorway of her room. The stars and moons scattered on her bed taunted her with their mindless grinning. She rushed to the bed, tearing the sheets off with her teeth.

Her sheets balled up on the floor, she moved to the closet to find something more suitable. She was greeted with layers of playing pastel pegasi, cutesy cartoon cupcakes, and dainty dancing dragons. Throwing it all in the laundry hamper, she unearthed a plain blue bedspread.

Placing the new sheets on her mattress, a lump in one corner of the room caught her eye. She retrieved the dolls she had been using yesterday, tossing them both in the closet. Good that Silvy hadn’t noticed those. Her eyes traveled around the room. Dolls and stuffed animals populated the periphery, staring at her with their dumb, sightless eyes. With a cry of disgust, she charged the menagerie of pinks and purples.

It took Diamond the entire afternoon to remodel her room. After the toys, she had taken down the posters and cut-out magazine articles littering her walls. The wind that had spoken to her last night drove her. Though it had been gentle, there was something understated in its words, something wild and untameable. It called her to something unknown and risky, a world she had glimpsed in her encounters with the unicorn, far different from the mundane life she had lived up to that point. If she wasn’t going to break up with Silvy, she would at least free herself of the clutter that childhood had left in her room.

The scent of dinner cooking brought her downstairs. Her father stood at the stove, sauteing scallions and beets.

“Dad, I want my room repainted.”

“Well, hello to you too.” Filthy grinned, half turning towards her.

“I’d like it painted white.”

“That’s fine, dear. I guess it has been a while.” His attention was trained on the stove. Taking a spoon into his mouth, he stirred saucepan that sat on another burner. “I’ll have to talk to the guy I had do it last time, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Filthy Rich had two passions in his life: business and food. On the nights he was home to prepare dinner, he would spend a good portion of the evening preparing elaborate meals he had taken from Sur la Trough magazine, with varying degrees of success. By the look of things, dinner wouldn’t be ready anytime soon.

“Oh hey, something came for you in the mail, it’s on the counter.”

Something turned out to be a small white envelope with her name written on it. In her room, she turned it over in her hooves, inspecting it. Mail in Ponyville could arrive at any time, but this had no postage and no return address. Inside she found a note, written on plain notebook paper.

Monday, 5 p.m.
Dandelion Café
Come alone.

Downtown Ponyville on Monday evening was bustling with ponies pushing through the humid summertime heat. She wasn’t used to jostling herd of workers which populated the town during rush hour. Clock in, clock out, struggle through the herd to make your way home, rinse, repeat. Twelve months a year, no summer break. It all seemed so tedious. But, she supposed, that was part of what being an adult was about.

Diamond set herself down at a bench off to one side of town square, in sight of the café. The traffic had held her up, leaving her with ten minutes before the mysterious letter-writer said to meet. Her eyes trained on the door to the restaurant.

She had reviewed the writing dozens of times since then, examining the intricacies of the script, seeking some clue as to who had sent it. But there were no answers to be had in the gentle curve of C, or the accent over the e. The note refused to explain itself.

The unicorn. It had to be her. The letter, the mystery, it was like something out of a romance novel. Perhaps Rarity had felt the same tugging at her heart that had grown in Diamond’s since their evening together. Maybe she had also listened to the wind that threatened to spirit her away Saturday night.

But the possibility that Rarity had written the letter left her feeling self-conscious. A date? In public? It felt presumptuous, inappropriate. She glanced towards the outdoor seating to the side of the building. Ponies were scattered throughout, grazing and chatting with each other. Since when did Ponyville have so many couples?

Diamond Tiara’s tongue ran over dry lips. Her thirst was sudden and overpowering, her face flushed. She didn’t dare to enter the café yet for fear of seeming over-eager, but she couldn’t bear to leave her post to buy water elsewhere. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, bringing herself back down to earth. It’s just dinner. You don’t even know what she wants. If she was eating dinner with Rarity, nopony would think anything of it. It was probably just another etiquette lesson. Dining Out with Your Secret Lover 101.

Five o’clock was chiming from the clock in the square. The bells set her heart pounding again. She willed her eyes shut a moment longer, trying to collect herself. What’s the worst that could happen, anyway?

“Diamond? What are you doing out here?”

Her eyes snapped open.

Silver Spoon stood next to the bench, mouth quirked into a sort of half-smile, as if it was amused by something but too polite to admit it.

“Nothing,” Tiara snapped, glancing at the door of the restaurant again, “Just meeting somepony for dinner.” She needed to get her friend away as fast as possible.

“Oh, I see,” The half-smile twitched, threatening to become a grin, “Who would that be?”

Tiara’s eyes darted from the door to focus on her friend. “I’m not sure. What do you want, Silvy? I’ve got things to do.”

The gray mare narrowed her eyes, taking an exaggerated step backwards. “No need for the attitude, Di, I just wanted to know if you would join me for tea at the Dandelion Café.”

“The Dandelion Café?”

“You know, the one over there?” Silver Spoon gestured with her head, “The one you keep looking at? You got my letter, didn’t you?”

“Your letter.” Tiara let out a sigh as she felt herself deflating. “No, look, Silvy, I really don’t have time.”

“Come on, Di, I only get to see you a few times a week, this will be fun.” The gray mare pouted, a gesture Diamond, under different circumstances, would have found endearing. “And besides, I have something we need to talk about.”

Diamond Tiara glanced at the clock tower, and back at her friend. “Fine. Forty-five minutes, and then I need to go.” She unstuck herself from the bench and followed the other mare to a table outside the restaurant.

As they chatted about the inanities of their respective mornings, she watched her friend with caution. Silvy was cute. She’d always thought so, and she was reminded again as she watched her friend across the table. The way she leaned in to study the menu, despite her glasses. The way she looked without those glasses, braids undone, biting her lip on the verge of climax on Saturday night. But her friend’s tone made her uneasy, and that taunting half-smile had slipped back onto her face soon after they were seated.

After their orders were brought out, Diamond decided she had had her fill of small talk. “Look, what’s this all about?”

“What’s what all about?”

“The letter. This. You said you had something to talk about.”

“Oh. Well, Di, I wanted to ask you...” Silver Spoon hesitated. The half-smile had retreated, leaving her face somber.

“Yes?” Diamond found herself struggling not to raise her voice. Why was Silvy being so stupid?

“...how long have you been sleeping with Rarity?”

“What?” Diamond slammed her hooves down on the table. The ponies eating a few tables away were looking at her now.

“I’d be careful, Diamond, you wouldn’t want anypony else to hear you,” Silver Spoon cautioned, “Or me.”

She surveyed the patio. The curious diners from before had gone back to their meals, and the ambient chatter around them had resumed.

“What are you talking about, Silvy?” she asked, voice level, swallowing an unpleasant mixture of surprise and anger.

“I just want you to be honest with me.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Diamond said, stepping off of her chair. “I don’t know what kind of joke you think you’re telling, but it isn’t funny.”

Her heart was pounding as she walked away from the table. She had to leave before she really lost her temper.

“I’ll tell your father!” said a voice behind her.

Diamond Tiara stopped walking. With reluctant steps, she returned to her seat.

When she took her seat, she found her friend frowning at her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before she started to speak. Celestia get me through this.

“This is a ridiculous accusation, even from you.” She rolled her eyes. “Rarity? Really? Of all the ponies in Ponyville, you think I’d be cheating on you with her? She’s totally not my type. Way too,” she paused, sipping her water, “Proper. Like, a total authority figure. She’d probably just spank me and put me in time out if I even suggested it.”

The taunting smile returned to her friend’s lips. “This is serious, Diamond. I know you’re involved with her, and you’re gonna be in trouble if you keep it up.”

Diamond leaned back in her seat with a sigh. Grabbing a knife from the silverware in front of them, she began tapping on the table. “Okay Silvy, how? How did you deduce that I was cheating on you with my etiquette teacher? Did you find a soup spoon in my pussy Saturday night?” Silver Spoon was blushing now.

“It was the way that you talked about her. We spent half of dinner arguing about your dumb teacher. You know, before you hit me over a joke?” Silver Spoon shook her head. “And...before that. You’ve never kissed me like that. Did Rarity teach you that, too?”

Her mind raced, the tapping on the knife moving in time with her thoughts.

Careless. Careless and stupid.

“Okay, so let’s get this straight. You’re going to tell my father that, because I like taking lessons with Rarity, and think you should respect her, I must be sleeping with her?” Diamond chuckled. “How are you going to start, ‘It all came to me when I was kissing your daughter’?”

“He believed all that stuff about Humbolt, didn’t he?”

The knife she was holding clattered to the table.

Diamond moved a shaky hoof to retrieve the glass of water in front of her. Though her friend’s voice wasn’t loud, to her Silvy may as well have screamed the name at the top of her lungs. Her eyes flickered across the patio once again for prying eyes.

Somewhere, a bell was tolling.

“If you bring this little fantasy you’ve cooked up to my father, I’ll make sure he understands the kind of crazy, jealous bitch I made the mistake of getting involved with.” Diamond stepped off of her chair, pushing it into the table with a metallic shriek. As the table rocked from the impact, a mixture of tea and water to spill towards the now wide-eyed gray mare.

“Don’t talk to me again until you’re ready to apologize.” Diamond scolded.

She didn’t start galloping until she was out of view of the café.

The Trouble with Diamond

Diamond’s hooves beat the cobblestones as she galloped through downtown, fleeing from Silver Spoon’s accusations.

She ran without thinking, guided by her heart towards that questionable refuge on the edge of town. By the time she neared the Carousel Boutique she was coated in sweat. The blue doors beckoned, but the tears in her eyes burned like a fuse. Her heart was a bomb, ready to detonate any second. Her lungs aching with exertion, she stumbled towards a nearby grove and threw herself to the ground as the cool shade of the trees enveloped her.

Burying her face in her hooves, she focused on the buzzing of cicadas in the late summer afternoon heat, trying to fuzz out the fear gripping her. No luck. The fuse seared a rapid, stinging trail through her mind.

Humbolt. The name exploded in her mind, disintegrating the fragile dam she’d spent so many years building up. Deep, black jets of fear and pain rushed through her body. Holding back tears, she began to sink into the murky depths of her memory.

Once upon a time, there was a prince living in Ponyville. He was a pegasus by the name of Humbolt. Young, handsome, and daring, this prince had arrived in the town to serve the ponies there by teaching their fillies the refined sport of tennis.

Diamond was only a blank-flank, still a year away from getting her cutiemark. But this prince was wise, and saw beyond her immaturity. He gave her special attention, practicing with her one-on-one and advising her on her technique. His princess, he would call her. She liked the feeling of his eyes upon her during warm-ups, and the way his hoof would linger after correcting her stroke. He had promised that someday he would take her flying as well, to spend the night under a blanket of cirrus.

After weeks of waiting, she received the invitation she had been anticipating - a chance to soar above the clouds with her prince. She had lied to her father then, telling him she was going to be spending the night with Silver Spoon. It had only taken a little convincing to get her to go along with the plan.

That night. Diamond watched her younger self laying next to Silvy, the hands on the clock teasing the nervous filly with their mechanical indifference as they moved toward the hour when dreams ended and destiny began. She’d considered napping before she left, but she was too excited by what lay ahead, and too nervous about oversleeping. Silly, foalish Diamond Tiara, on the edge of the worst mistake of her life, and all she was worried about was being late for her date.

Her stomach twisted as she watched herself getting out of bed.

There was nothing you could do. How could you know? The paper-thin assurances sounded hollow and distant, as if from another time. How had she believed Humbolt in the first place? Why had she gone along with it? If she’d just thought it through, if she’d been smart about it, she would never have left that night, safe and secure in her innocence.

Don’t go. Please don’t go. She was powerless to stop herself. The naive little girl making her way across the room had a date with a nightmare.

Deeper and deeper still she sank, swallowed by old grief.

A thin cry pierced the silence of the dark bedroom.

Diamond Tiara held her breath, eyes darting around the room as she lifted her hoof from the doll she had stepped on. It hadn’t been loud, but to her twitching ears an alarm had just sounded, alerting the whole house to her escape.

“Di? Are you back?” Silvy’s voice was thick with sleep as the pile of sheets next to her stirred.

“I haven’t left yet. Sorry I woke you up.” Sighing in relief, she kicked the doll and sent it sprawling under the bed with another muffled cry.

“Are you sure about this?” Her friend rolled over to face her, peering from under the covers, her words just above a whisper.

“Of course, why shouldn’t I be?”

“But what if something happens?”

“Don’t be a wet blanket, Silvy, nothing’s gonna ‘happen’. It’s not like he’s a monster or something.” Her friend’s last-minute nerves were starting to infect Diamond, giving an edge to her words. “Why are you freaking out? We already went over this.”

“I know, I don’t know. It just... doesn't feel safe. Can you please just tell me where you’re going?”

"I already told you I can't." Don’t tell anypony, don’t let anypony see you. She had followed Humbolt’s instructions to the letter. Silver Spoon was the exception, but she needed an alibi and somewhere to go after her date.

“What if something happens?” The whispering made her friend sound younger, a frightened child scared of being left alone in the dark.

“Can you please be more jealous?”

No response. She knew Silvy liked Coach too - after practice, they would chat about his tight flank and the way he’d watch them as they went to the locker room to wash up. But Humbolt had chosen Diamond, and it was because of things like this - her friend had no self-control. If it had been her going to him in the middle of the night, she wouldn’t have been able to get a hoof out the door.

“Humbolt and I are going out. I’ll be back later, I promise. I need you to leave the door unlocked like we talked about.”

Still no answer. Shaking her head, she pushed the door open again, intent on getting to the meeting place early.

“Diamond?”

“Yes?” Another ‘what if something happens’ would see her bolting outside before she screamed.

“Be safe.”

She paused, on the verge of hurling the warning back at her friend. It wasn’t fair for Silvy to be so scared, to try and ruin the night with Diamond's prince that she’d been longing for with silly fears about something she knew nothing about. But the chiming of the clock downstairs called her - it was time to leave childish things behind.

"Yeah, okay." Securing the door behind her, she padded downstairs and out the door.

Her heart was racing as soon as she stepped outside. She’d never been outside alone so late at night, and it seemed as if Humbolt’s invitation had opened the door to strange and exotic places. Equestria After Dark was haunting in its emptiness, a foreign land populated only by adults when little fillies and foals were asleep. Silvy wasn’t invited there, even if she had wanted to go. Even Diamond, as confident as she felt, was a stranger to the night. She half-expected to round a corner and meet Nightmare Moon, or worse still, glimpse her father peering at her through the darkness of the town’s side-streets.

Doubt seized her at the edge of the path leading to the schoolhouse. Its black mass imposed itself upon the blue-violet sky like some towering beacon from another world. It loomed before her like the Signal Stone from The Eight Trials of Clover the Clever, a riddle taunting her with its forbidding opacity. She could imagine Clover standing before it, running her hoof over the inscription, reading it aloud: If you go right you'll lose your heart, if you go left you'll lose your head. Clover had gone right, of course, and even with her legendary wisdom and Starswirl’s magic staff it had taken three years before she found love again.

Shaking her head, she dismissed the foalish fantasy from her head. She'd had enough of stories. The hero never got what she set out for without a million problems getting in the way first, and sometimes not even then. Real life didn't have to be that hard. Her journey that night proved it.

Eyes intent upon the schoolhouse, she steeled herself for what lay ahead. She was leaving everything that she knew behind and venturing into an infinity of velvet darkness. This was her chance to prove herself. A filly had left Silver Spoon’s house, but when she stepped onto that path, she would be a mare.

Not just any mare, but his mare. His princess. That’s what Humbolt had said. This is your chance to soar with me. The force of his words pushed her forward.

A few steps onto the path, she felt... nothing. It seemed the cobblestones beneath her were as plain at night as they were during the day. No magic surrounding her, no grand transformation.

Something brushed her cheek, a gentle breeze stirring from its slumber. Above her, the clouds covering the sky pulled back, disrobing the waxing moon. A new world unveiled itself before her eyes. Fireflies surrounded her, sparkling like stars, drifting to and fro on the unseen currents of night. The pale moonlight lit up the stones before her, guiding her towards the solemn monument at the end of the path.

Something unspeakably beautiful filled her heart as she took in the view before her. Before she knew it, she was flying. Tears of joy streamed down her face as she galloped up the path, fleeting pearls of joy spirited away by the wind. Leaping to the base of the flagpole, she took the midnight air into her lungs, wanting to scream the sweetness of her triumph. Only her promise to Humbolt held her back.

Panting, sweating, and still utterly bursting with pleasure from her run, she trotted twice around the school. The green was deserted - she was early, as planned. After peering inside the darkened windows just to make sure, she planted herself beneath the pole, scanning the night for her prince.

She wondered where they would go. Cloudsdale, maybe? Almost all the pegasi lived there, although he said he hadn’t been back in years. How high would they go? Was it safe? Her mind brimmed with questions.

As for what would happen after that... all the pegasus had talked about was flying, but maybe he would kiss her? Silvy was worried he might try to sleep with her, but that didn’t seem like a very princely thing to do on your first date.

Resting and thinking, the nervous energy that had propelled her through town and across the path began to dissipate. Her young body reminded her that, in spite of the fact that it was the season of sleepovers and staying up late, she was up far past her bedtime. Resting her head against the flagpole, she imagined herself in her prince’s embrace, soaring above the clouds.

In the twilight of her half-consciousness, she was hovering above Ponyville, held tight in Humbolt's strong forelegs. The whole world stretched out before her eyes, Canterlot shining like the world’s largest jewel in the distance.

And then they were soaring. Humbolt shot forward so fast she felt the wind whipping her face as they pushed through the clouds. But there was something wrong. The clouds were dusty, like they were made of dirt. She rubbed her eyes, coughing, trying to clear her lungs...

Her eyes shot open. The sound of beating wings in her ears, she saw the silhouette of a pegasus landing on the ground before her.

“Humbolt?” she coughed, her heart leaping in anticipation. Wincing, she was blinded by a flashlight shining in her eyes.

"There you are! Stay put, kid." She began to squirm as she felt a hoof rest on her back. The pegasus spoke with a mare’s voice, gravelly and harsh, not Humbolt’s smooth baritone.

“Hey guys, I found her! Over here!”

With the light out of her eyes, she could make out the pony’s multicolored mane - Rainbow Dash? What was the head of the weather team doing there? Other points of light were moving through the darkness towards them. She shrank beneath the hoof of the pegasus.

“Where’s my daughter?”

If it had been possible for Diamond to sink any lower into the ground, she would have. Instead, Dash was pushed aside and she found herself being hoisted off the ground by Filthy Rich.

“What did he do to you? What happened?” He was holding her tight, stroking her mane. “Oh Celestia, Diamond, where is he?”

The filly hung limp in her father’s embrace, staring over his shoulder at the other ponies coming into view behind him. Dash glared at Filthy’s back, picking herself up and brushing her wings off as she moved to join two other pegasi just arriving. The Mayor stood next to them, the grim look on her face complemented by the dark circles under her eyes, and Miss Cheerilee hovered around the edges of the crowd. Her date had transformed into half of Ponyville gawking at her humiliation.

“Let go of me.”

“What? Are you hurt? Where did he hurt you?” Her father set her down, taking a step back.

“No, I’m fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Don’t tell anyone. Humbolt’s words returned to her, as they had on her walk to the schoolhouse.

Filthy looked to the others, bewildered.

The blue mare stepped forward again, shoving her father out of the way as she did. The smile she wore beamed smug confidence. “Hey, you’re Diamond Ring, right? I’m Rainbow Dash, if you didn’t know that already, and I just rescued you. No need to thank me, though, I can see you’ve been through a lot tonight. We just need to know where this Humbolt guy is.”

“My name’s Diamond Tiara.” Dash’s celebrity charm had worn off the moment she opened her mouth - she was just as obnoxious as her smile had suggested. The pegasus was talking to her like she was some lost filly they’d found wandering alone at the mall.

“O... kay then, Diamond Tiara, same question. Where is this guy?”

“How should I know? I was just taking a walk.” Summoning the courage that had filled her on the path earlier, she sighed and rolled her eyes in her best impression of being bored.

“This is an awful funny place for a kid to hang out alone after midnight. You sure about that?”

“Yeah, pretty sure.” Diamond yawned and examined her hoof, trying to ignore how much it was shaking. She was Clover the Clever, outwitting her enemies in the face of certain danger, not small, scared Diamond Tiara. However if Dash was going to treat her like a filly, she may as well act the part.

“You’re not lying to me, are you, Diamond?” The tone of the pegasus suggested she’d been downgraded from filly to foal.

“Maybe.” She locked eyes with Dash, smirking.

Diamond felt a small surge of triumph at the shocked look on the weather mare’s face. Maybe that would be the end of the stupid questions.

“Listen, punk, I didn’t get woken up just to deal with some spoiled--”.

“Don’t you talk to her like that!” her father yelled, stamping on the ground. “She’s not normally like this. He did something, I know it.” There was an edge to his voice, something sharp and dangerous slicing through the air.

“He didn’t do anything, Dad! I told you, I’m fine!” She pleaded with him, trying to intervene before--

"Hey! Back off, pal! She knows something, and I'm not going anywhere 'til she answers the question!" Dash’s friends were twin shadows behind her, staring down Filthy but keeping their distance.

“Don’t take that tone with me.” Her father advanced on the mare, staring her down. “Mayor, I want to file a complaint with this young lady’s superior. This kind of behavior is unacceptable.”

She needed to calm him down. Her father had talked about complaints, but his eyes were on Dash, muscles tensed as he stamped the ground again. “Dad!” she yelled, trying to get past the haze of anger in his eyes.

“Excuse me?” Dash held her ground, spreading her wings. Her thin body was a coiled spring, just waiting for Filthy to take another step. “My hooves are about ready to file a complaint with your face!”

“Stop it!”

Diamond cringed on instinct as Cheerilee stepped forward, placing herself between her father and Dash as if she were breaking up a schoolyard fight instead of two adults at each others' throats.

“Both of you, stop it right now. This isn’t helping anyone, least of all Ms. Tiara.”

“But--”. They both started at once.

“No, no ‘buts’. I’m going to take her inside, and we’re going to have a chat while you work out your differences.”

The pegasus snorted and shook her head, grumbling about overprotective parents and runaway daughters.

Filthy started after her. “She’s my daughter--”.

The teacher fixed him with a familiar, no-nonsense stare that made even Diamond wince. “I’ll let you know as soon as we’re finished, Mr. Rich.”

Puzzled, she followed her teacher, just happy to be away from the conflict outside.

The schoolhouse was eerie in its emptiness. Only a few months ago, she had sat waiting for school to end, anticipating another summer vacation. She hadn't even known Humbolt yet. How had she felt then? Excited? Secure? It seemed like forever ago.

“Would you like some juice?” Cheerilee pulled a chair from the wall, motioning for Diamond to sit behind her desk with the same comforting smile she would wear during class. Taking a pair of small orange boxes from the drawer, she nudged one towards the filly.

Diamond eyed the juice, wondering what the mare expected her to say.

“I already told them everything. Nothing happened tonight.” Sitting in the empty classroom, she couldn't help but feel like she was being held after class.

“I don’t expect you to tell me anything, Diamond. I want you to ask the questions.”

“Questions?”

“For me. You’re very smart, and you did just get captured by a pack of screaming adults. You must have at least a few.”

She smiled at the thought of Filthy and Dash beating their chests and howling like animals. That’s what it had felt like. She loved her father - she had always taken comfort in his strength and defensiveness at the first sign his daughter’s distress. But that night she had felt an intense discomfort in his embrace, like he was smothering her.

Taking the juice, she leaned back in her seat. It felt like an exercise from class, but too simple. Still, Cheerilee was the reason she was sitting inside instead of being pulled apart in a mad midnight game of tug-of-war. If there was a catch, it wasn’t clear to her.

“Why are the pegasi looking for Humbolt?”

“Big question.” Cheerilee tapped her hoof on the desk in thought. “I guess the simplest answer is the one you might have figured out already. They thought you were with him, and that he might be doing something bad to you.”

“Why?”

“Your father and I went to the mayor after we didn’t find you at Silver Spoon’s house. With you missing and Humbolt suspected, she called together the ponies she knew we could trust with such a sensitive issue. We needed to find you, and catch him, as soon as possible. Dash may be headstrong, but her heart’s in the right place, and she’s the fastest flyer in Ponyville.”

“You went to the mayor? Why were you talking to my father? What did you say to him?” Diamond closed her eyes and leaned on the desk, dizzy with confusion.

“Diamond, listen.” Cheerilee's tone suggested she was confiding something in her, speaking from one mare to another. Raising her head from the desk, she saw something in her teacher's eyes that would stay with her for years - an inseparable combination of sadness and understanding. Sitting up, she took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

“I went to Humbolt's house tonight, before I went to your father.”

“You talked with him? What did he say? Do you know where he is?” None of what Cheerilee said was making sense.

“I don’t know where Humbolt is now. No one does. That’s why Dash was so... insistent on asking you. I only talked with him about a rumor I’d heard. It wasn’t very specific, something about you and him. I needed to know if it was true or not.”

“What did he say?” She found herself leaning forwards in fearful anticipation.

“He laughed. He thought you’d said something to me, and told me that it was nothing. ‘Foalish gossip from a silly girl’, is how he put it.”

“He thought... I told you?” Foalish, silly girl. He must have been lying, to protect them, but the words still stung. “If that’s what he said, why didn’t you believe him?” The question scraped over her tongue, leaving it dry and bitter. The light, airy feeling that had carried her across the path to the schoolhouse and through her confrontation with Dash was disappearing, blown away by the sour wind of Humbolt’s words to Cheerilee, leaving only the weight of his warning upon her back. She’d have felt better if he’d been angry, denied everything, or just said nothing like he had told her to.

"I've seen plenty of schoolfilly crushes in my time as a teacher, but they're usually not... returned. I didn’t like the feeling I got from Humbolt, or the way he talked about you.”

“So you told my father?” She spat the question like an accusation.

“I did. I wanted to talk with you first, to get more information. I was your age once too, you know. If it really had just been gossip, the last pony I’d have wanted to hear it was my father.” Cheerilee’s smile was gentle and sad. “But when you weren’t there, I got worried. If something had happened to you, Diamond... I couldn’t bear it.”

“But I told you, I’m fine, I was taking a walk!” Her answer was too fast, too loud, too defensive.

“Diamond, this is serious. You’re not protecting him by pretending not to know anything. He’s being accused of some very serious things, and if nothing really happened tonight, you need to tell them everything you do know. If you don’t, he could be in even more trouble.”

“But I don’t want to.” Silly girl. Her eyes welled with tears. Why did he have to say that? Why did it have to sound so true in her ears? She could feel the weight of her responsibility to Humbolt slipping from her back, pushed by her growing sense of doubt.

“I can’t.” She couldn’t tell them. She couldn’t keep watching her teacher’s eyes shine with concern for her.

“You can. I don’t know what occurred between you two, but he left you here, with a horde of angry ponies outside waiting to hear what you have to say.” Cheerilee didn’t look sad anymore - she radiated anger and indignation at the absent pegasus. “Staying silent is only going to cause more trouble for you. And you don’t deserve that.”

That was it. Diamond broke, tears wetting her hooves as she leaned on the desk, sobbing harder at the gentle touch of Cheerilee’s hoof on her back. Playing adult with Humbolt had been as much of a game as playing house with Silvy.

Through her tears, she told Miss Cheerilee everything. The weeks of flirting and lingering touches, the promises he had made to her, all the events leading up to that night. The teacher gently herded her back outside and repeated her story to her father and the mayor, but Diamond Tiara couldn't do more than weep. As she cried, she felt herself shrinking in their eyes. Her father was furious, imprinting forever upon his daughter’s memory the towering figure of a frothing stallion ready to gallop across Equestria to find the pony who had dared to seduce his daughter.

Humbolt had disappeared, never to be seen again. The official story said he had been recalled to Cloudsdale due to unlicensed flying with students, but rumors about her persisted. The first few days of school after Humbolt’s disappearance, the taunting from other children had been merciless. Only Silvy had stuck by her - Silvy, who kept her secret when questioned by Cheerilee and Filthy, who said she hadn’t been told anything about Diamond meeting her coach, and had last seen her friend sound asleep, the picture of innocence.

After she came home from school crying two days in a row, her father had debated sending her to boarding school in Fillydelphia for the rest of the year. She had to beg him not to - she was stronger than that. She had gone where none of her peers had dared. Though the pegasus was gone, crossing that threshold to the schoolhouse had changed her forever. No matter what they said, she would always be above them.

Torching the hopes she’d committed to paper during those dream-soaked summer weeks, she vowed never to let anyone make her feel as vulnerable as she had that night. The next day in class, the first filly to call her ‘Do-Me Tomorrow’ had gotten a black eye. Cheerilee had let it go, the first few times, telling her to stay late and letting her out once the other kids had left. After the third incident and the threat of enrolling her in counseling for ‘anger issues’, she found different ways to assert herself.

And now?

Diamond rubbed away the wetness and memories that clouded her vision. If she’d pulled herself up from rock bottom once, she could do it again, and sitting on the ground crying wasn’t getting her anywhere. She needed to figure this out.

Judging by the tone of their argument, Silvy wasn’t planning on doing anything immediately. She was angry - enough to threaten something she’d refused to do the night of the catastrophe - but her words gave her away. You’re gonna be in trouble if you keep it up, she had said. If. There was a lot of wiggle room between those two letters.

“If,” she spoke the word slowly, savoring it. It was jealousy. There was no proof of anything, despite what her friend thought she knew. She had to know that telling her father would be the end of their their relationship, and their friendship.

And IF she’s done with your relationship, and your friendship? Pushing her nerves to the back of her mind, she stood up and shook herself off. She had time, and that was what mattered. Silver Spoon was playing a dangerous game, trying to push her around with threats. But it was Diamond’s move now, and whatever she did, she had to make it count.

First and foremost, she had to tell Rarity. She hated the idea as soon as it came to her, but she needed to know, in case... she thought of the night Humbolt disappeared, the look on her father’s face as Cheerilee told him what she was doing in that schoolyard... even if the unicorn put and end to their classes tonight, even if she fled Ponyville forever because if it, it would be better than the violence his eyes had promised. What was left of Diamond after she told the unicorn would go home tonight to plan the rest.

The oppressive summer heat blanketed her as soon as she emerged from the shade of the grove, but she pushed forward, eyes intent upon the dressmaker’s shop.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in the moist air. The last thing she wanted was for Rarity to see a panicked little filly, in trouble over her head. She had to be confident, strong, like the unicorn herself.

Diamond paused before the door. Was she really doing this?

Before she could stop herself, she was knocking.

“Come in!” Rarity’s voice beckoned from inside the shop. Swallowing her doubts, she pushed the door open, intent on meeting her fate head-on.

“Rarity, I need to talk with your about--”. Diamond paused at the entrance, mouth agape. Standing inside the front room were Rarity and her model friend. Rarity’s eyes widened as they looked at each other, her face turning a paler shade of white.

“Um, are you okay, Rarity? Is something wrong?” The yellow pegasus broke the silence, looking between the two with concern.

“Everything’s fine, thank you,” Rarity blinked and turned to her friend, a smile on her face. “I believe I’ve told you about my latest project? The young lady I’ve been instructing?” The unicorn motioned Diamond in.

“I think so. Is this her?” Frozen in her tracks, the filly was a magenta conversation piece.

“It is indeed. But where are my manners? Fluttershy, meet Diamond Tiara, my pupil. Diamond, this is one of my dearest friends, Fluttershy.”

“Nice to meet you. Rarity says you’re a very good student.”

“Um...,” Diamond stuttered in response.

“Well dear, do come in, I believe you said you had something to talk to me about? In private, perhaps?” Rarity tilted her head towards the kitchen again. Paired with a gentle eye-roll, these motions, in rough translation from the language of the hyper-polite, meant ‘get in here now, I just saved both our flanks’.

“Oh, yeah. Yes.” Thawing, the filly crossed the threshold.

“Ah, the door, if you could, Diamond?”

Of course she could. Some student of etiquette she was turning out to be. Rarity must have been mortified. Diamond nudged the door closed, pushing until she heard the latch click.

Boom! An explosion of pink flung the door open again. Diamond was thrown to the wall, crashing into a shelf stacked high with cloth. Her body cushioned the floor for the falling bolts of silk.

“So sorry I’m late, girls! I was gonna leave on time, but the Cakes made me stay late for a super-duper huge absolutely-last-minute order. I don’t even think I can look at another doughnut tonight, never mind eat one!” Pinkie Pie stood panting in doorway, half a cruller in hoof. Looking down at the baked good as if she had just remembered it, she offered it to the room. “Does anypony want the other half? It’s still fresh.”

The pink pony turned to Diamond as she stood up, pulling lengths of gauzy fabric off of her coat. “Oh, hey there Diamond Tiara, what are you doing here? Are you coming to dinner with us? Want a cruller? Well, it’s half a cruller now, but a whole half is better than no halves, that’s what I always say.”

Pinkie’s eyes narrowed as she looked Diamond over. “What’s that dirt on your face for? And all those twigs in your mane?” Eyes widening, she gasped, “Are we playing hide-and-seek? Are you hiding? That’s not very good camouflage for a dress shop--”

“As I was just saying to Fluttershy,” Rarity intervened, cutting off the barrage of words from Pinkie, “Diamond has something she’d like to discuss with me, in private. We shan’t be but a moment!”

Diamond paused, frozen again, looking the room over. Her picture of the dressmaker had been, up to this point, incomplete. She’d come to imagine Rarity as somehow divorced from the rest of Ponyville - the boutique had always been empty during her previous visits, minus the odd customer. No friends, not even her whiny sister. Who were all these ponies, the fullness of Rarity’s life spilling into the shop, throwing her aside?

Brushing the last of the silks from herself, she escaped from the room, following the dressmaker to the kitchen. As she did, she caught sight of herself in a stand mirror. A dark smear ran over one cheek, and bits of grass and sticks stuck out from something which resembled a rat’s nest rather than a mane. The remains of her retreat to the grove, complemented by the impact of Rarity’s annoying pink friend. So much for first impressions.

As soon as she entered the kitchen, a wet washcloth covered her cheek. “What on earth happened to you, darling?” The cloth scrubbed her skin as Rarity fretted over her mane with a brush. “You look like you’ve had a fight with a lawnmower!”

Diamond found her voice again. “No, I’m fine, Rarity. I need to talk with you,” She glanced at the doorway to the front room, “without your friends here.”

The brush running through her mane stopped mid-stroke. Levitating, it hovered over her, ready to resume its task. Rarity looked her in the eye. “Unfortunately, you’ve caught me at a rather bad time. We were just on our way out to dinner.” The unicorn looked to the doorway, biting her lip. “Perhaps this could wait until later?”

Diamond held her breath. She was struck by the innocence of the scene before her. The brush, still in a holding pattern above her head, awaiting further orders. Rarity’s eyes slipping from her to the doorway again, mindful of the hungry friends awaiting her return. Pinkie’s muffled voice streaming into the kitchen from the other room. Fluttershy must have been really interested in the specifics of hide-and-seek, because she was still going on about it.

Diamond wanted to live in that moment, as if all the silly concerns and irrelevancies that had piled up within it could hide her from the trouble that waited to find her upon its conclusion.

Like a spell, she could will her fears away with a sentence: That’s okay, Rarity, go to dinner, we can talk later.

And later, she would go to the unicorn with some petty concern of her own - her dress for the festival, a trivial argument with a friend - and they would talk, and Rarity would help her, and after that, her worries would be forgotten, swept into the deep ocean of her past through the force of their lovemaking.

Exhaling, she came crashing back down to earth. “Rarity, my friend knows about us, and she’s threatening to tell my father.”

“WHAT?!” Rarity’s shriek silenced the chatter from the other room.

The unicorn stood still, a look of shock frozen on her face. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the look was gone, her face trying to decide upon a more fitting emotion for five o’clock in the Carousel Boutique with her friends waiting in the other room. After a moment, Rarity turned from her and gave a slight, pained sigh.

“I’ll be just a moment,” said Rarity, turning around again. Whatever internal upheaval had produced that sigh was masked by the serenity gracing her face as she left the kitchen.

Through the wall, Diamond could hear Rarity’s sincerest apologies that she would most likely not be eating dinner with her friends that night, as her student was in desperate need of an understanding adult and some good life advice, but she would be certain to catch up with them later.

She jumped at the sound of the front door closing. Tension gripped her, as it had Friday night, fear and curiosity threading through her as she awaited the first strike of the crop on her flank. The blow had been light, almost gentle, a reminder of who was in charge. Would it be the same now?

“Diamond, could you come here, please?” Rarity’s voice summoned her to the front room. The unicorn stood before one of the many mirrors which lined the walls, eyes intent on its contents. Turning to Diamond, she was cool. “Could you tell me what happened between you and your friend?”

“I didn’t tell her anything!” She bit her tongue. This wasn’t going well at all. But beneath Rarity’s calm veneer she felt judgement and disapproval, as if she was a filly caught breaking the rules. The same filly that had found herself crying before Cheerilee a few years ago.

And aren’t you? Ignoring her doubts, she started again. “I-- Silver Spoon, she accused me of sleeping with you, right before I came here. We fought about it. I don’t think she’s gonna do anything, though. She doesn’t have proof.”

“Well she certainly must have some proof. What made her assume we were involved?”

Diamond studied the impassive features of the dressmaker’s face, waiting for a glimpse of some emotion, some signal as to what she should say. Silvy was an open book - her pain and annoyances were easy to read. But Rarity’s pages were a riddle, shrouded beneath the cipher of professionalism and politeness.

“We were just talking about class on Saturday. I really didn’t tell her anything, but we got into an argument. I just said she needed to be more respectful. About you.” She felt heat rising in her cheeks.

“That’s all? Perhaps a better question is, why is your friend so concerned about your activities in the bedroom?”

She reached within herself, dragging the truth kicking and screaming. If she was going to protect Rarity, she needed to know. “We’ve been sleeping together. For a little while. We-- us, we weren’t-- it was after the first time, I didn’t think you’d--”.

She stopped herself, having said too much, and too little. Her cheeks had blossomed into a full-blown blush. “She’s jealous. It’s nothing serious.”

“Nothing serious? Obviously this friend of yours would disagree, if she’s threatening you.” The growing heat in Rarity’s voice scalded her with disbelief.

“I’m sorry, Rarity. I just wanted to warn you, in case... in case something happened. If she says anything to my father, there could be trouble.”

Hanging her head, she braced herself, awaiting the dressmaker’s verdict.

“No, I’m sorry. This is all just a bit much for me.” When Diamond looked up, the mask of artificial calm had dropped from Rarity's face, leaving concern in its place. “Not that it isn’t for you, of course. Perhaps dinner would make it somewhat easier to swallow?”

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence as dinner was prepared. Diamond studied the mare as she cooked. The blow she was expecting hadn’t come - just like with the crop, the unicorn had pulled back, leaving her confused.

“So, did you have any ideas for how to deal with our problem?”

Though spoken gently, the question still stung. She didn’t have any ideas, at least nothing substantial. She had always prided herself on being one step ahead of her classmates, if not more. It was part of what distinguished her from their foalish immaturity. But ever since she had stepped into the boutique that afternoon, she had found herself overwhelmed, struggling just to keep up with the whirlwind of events in the past few weeks.

“Of course.” she lied, pausing to come up with something. “Well, I told Silvy-- Silver Spoon that she needed to apologize to me, because I told her she was making everything up. She’ll talk to me again soon, I’m sure of it. I’m just going to wait her out.”

The more she talked, the more she believed herself, becoming animated with some of her former confidence. “I can’t wait to see the look on her face. You should have seen her today, Rarity, when I called her out for accusing me. There’s no way she’s doing anything.”

“And what will you say to her if she’s not coming to apologize?”

“Nothing! I’ll tell her she was wrong again. I’ll threaten her with something. I don’t know! I would never tell anyone anything, you have to believe me.”

Diamond stared at the table, unable to meet Rarity’s eyes, watching her smudged reflection disrupt the spotless teal surface. She was riveted before the unicorn as sure as she had been bound upon her bed, waiting for the strike of the lash.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you.” Diamond look up at the gentle touch to her shoulder. “I trust you, and I appreciate your honesty.”

Rarity’s smile was wearier than the one that she had worn for her friends. A real smile. “Now, I do have an idea as to how we solve this dilemma, but it’s going to depend on whether you’re willing to do it.

“I want you to apologize to Silver Spoon.”

“Apologize?” She sputtered in disbelief. “For what? I told her she needed to apologize to me, because she’s making it all up. If I go to her, she’ll suspect something.”

“She already suspects something, dear, and not without reason. Yes, her definition of proof is a little loose, but your spat this afternoon didn’t help that.”

“What am I supposed to apologize for?” Diamond felt a mountain of objections rising up within her.

“For overreacting about your lover’s concerns. And for lying about your feelings for your teacher.”

“You want me to tell her about my feelings for you?”

“Which do you think is worse, for her to think we’re involved, or to know that your desires, of which she already has some idea, have not yet been realized?”

“But Rarity--”, The filly began to object again before she caught herself She was doing exactly what she hadn’t come there to do - pleading with the unicorn like a child.

“Fine. Okay. I’ll... apologize to Silver Spoon.” Despite her best effort, her admission was tinged with reluctance.

Rarity’s sigh magnified her disappointment. “I’m not Cheerilee, dear, this isn’t homework. You needn’t apologize at my behest. Further, I won’t order you to do this. The choice, as always, is up to you.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s a good idea. I’d thought about it before.” Though it tugged at Diamond’s pride, the suggestion made sense. Silvy wanted the truth, so she would get it. Not the whole truth, but enough. “I’ll take care of it.”

“I trust that you will.” Diamond felt like a piece of cloth under the dressmaker’s appraising eye. “Perhaps, before you leave, we should run through some practice arguments, just in case.” With that, the unicorn stepped down from her chair and levitated their plates to the counter.

Diamond waited for more, but Rarity was engrossed in washing the dishes. Just like that, the argument was over.

She should have been happy. The lash had been withheld, the conflict ended. She had her assignment now - go apologize to Silver Spoon. So why the nagging sense that she had gotten away with something? And why did it feel so bad?

Anger welled up inside of her. Rarity had gotten her to tell her everything, even told her what to do, with barely a word. It wasn’t fair.

“So that’s it? You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“I wasn’t mad at you.” Rarity half-turned, still focused upon the sink. “I was simply concerned.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“Pardon?”

“When I told you what happened, you were pissed.”

“I was not,” Rarity sniffed, “‘pissed’. Nor am I now. But, I will remind you to watch your language.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re not gonna be honest with me, if you’re gonna talk to me like I’m a fucking blank-flank, I guess I don’t have to worry about my language.”

“Excuse me, Diamond Tiara,” The unicorn turned to face her, fixing her with a glare that turned her insides to jelly, “But I don’t appreciate your tone. If you don’t think I was angry enough, I’m sure you’ll understand I was only trying to be compassionate towards the filly that came crashing into my Boutique, practically in tears because the marefriend she’s been cheating on might have her figured out. Something which, I might add, has both endangered my well-being and disrupted an engagement with my friends.”

Diamond was taken aback. She wanted to say something, to retort with some sarcastic comment, but nothing came to mind. Rarity’s words hurt, like a crop laying into her conscience, and she could already see the unicorn’s gaze softening in anticipation of an apology.

She didn’t want the unicorn to apologize. The realization shocked her. She wanted to feel the unicorn’s anger, to taste the consequences of her actions, as she had Friday night.

“Would you punish me?” she blurted out.

“You want to be punished?” Rarity’s eyebrows raised in disbelief, “Why, whatever for? I’m sorry I yelled at you, you didn’t deserve that.”

“No, I did, I messed up. All of this is my fault. Would you, please?”

“Punish you. Hm.” The unicorn brought a hoof to her chin as she considered, her lips forming a small, knowing smile. “Very well. I have just the thing, if you’ll wait here a moment.”

She took a breath as the unicorn stepped out, feeling some of the tension in the air dissipate into the rays of sunset streaming through the window across the room. She realized she hadn’t been in the shop without the curtains being drawn, not since that first day. It cast the boutique in a new light. The lavender walls and pink awnings that surrounded her had seemed so precarious only an hour ago. She wanted to stay there, to put off the weight of responsibility a little longer.

“You may come upstairs now,” Rarity called from the stairwell.

The shades were drawn in Rarity’s room, the scent of orchid wafting from the fat purple candles within. A small black pouch lay upon the perfectly folded maroon sheets of the bed. Opening it, Diamond found a pile of leather straps attached to each other by small metal studs. A bridle. She had only ever seen one in the Hearths Warming Eve pageant, when Princess Platinum forced Clover the Clever to carry her to Unicornia. In the play it was meant as a joke, a humorous symbol of Clover’s lower status. In Rarity’s darkened bedroom, it spoke to her of authority and submission.

Attached to one end of the bridle was a black plastic cylinder, held on by two steel rings. Puzzled, she slid her hoof along its smooth surface.

“It’s called a bit - it goes in your mouth. The perfect accoutrement for a young lady who must learn to watch her tongue in the future, both with her friends and with me.” The unicorn emerged from the bathroom, the scent of White Diamonds blending with the floral perfume of the candles.

“Are you gonna ride me?” She felt a growing warmth in her rear as she thought of Clover, panting and sweaty, bound beneath her princess, forced to yield to her wishes.

“No, not today at least.” Rarity chuckled. “I have something else in mind. I’ll admit, I’m somewhat nervous about your impending mea culpa.”

“My what?” The bit shimmered with magic as Rarity lifted it from her hooves.

“Your confession, dear, to your friend.” The unicorn levitated a small packet from the nightstand beside the bed, unfolding something that looked like a moist towelette from within. She began to polish the bit.

“Rarity, I’ll do it! You have to trust me!”

“I know you will. What I’m nervous about is how you’ll do it.” Before Diamond could object again, Rarity placed a hoof on her shoulder. “How do I put this? You’re very... passionate. It’s quite charming, actually. But, your ardeur, your eagerness, has a habit of getting you in trouble.”

Seeing no objections from the filly, Rarity removed her hoof. Diamond’s thought process was still stuck somewhere around the word ‘charming’. The simple compliment, from the unicorn, had taken on the same mysterious romance as mea culpa and ardeur. Did Rarity really find her charming? She realized she was blushing again.

“And so, we should use this opportunity to teach you a lesson about self-control.” Rarity’s explanation had taken on the tone of a lecture, complete with the plastic cylinder gesturing in mid-air to emphasize her points. “I’m going to pleasure you. I want you to tap me on the shoulder when you’re approaching climax. We’ll stop there.”

“What happens after that?”

“Why, we’ll be done, of course.” The unicorn grinned, touching her on the nose with her prop. “You asked to be punished, so this is your punishment: no orgasm - from me, yourself, or any other pony - until you’ve resolved this dispute with your friend in an amicable manner.”

"Okay," she agreed without hesitation. Rarity had called it a punishment, but the bit hanging in the air before her was a shimmering challenge, like the crop on Friday night. Rarity thought of her as a filly, like some blank-flank unable to control herself. Like she couldn’t last a day or two without coming.

“Open wide.”

Smooth plastic pushed into her mouth, pulling her lips back into a gentle smile. She ran her tongue over its length, and tasted mint.

“Now bite down, softly.” said Rarity. The leather straps on the bridle wrapped around her muzzle and threaded through her mane.

“We won’t be doing much talking-- well, you won’t be, at least, but we should agree on a few signals just in case,” Rarity explained as she fasted the leather straps at the back of her head. “Basic head movements - nodding and shaking - should do for ‘yes’ and ‘no’.”

Stepping back, the dressmaker admired her work. “You look gorgeous, darling.”

The warmth between Diamond’s legs grew, stoked by the unicorn’s compliment. She liked the desire that flickered in Rarity’s eyes as they wandered over her body, devouring her. Once again, she was prone before her teacher, awaiting her command.

Rarity took her time crossing the room, advancing on her until she was just in front of her. The scent of White Diamonds and another - conditioner, she didn’t know the name yet - teased her nose. Was she dreaming again?

“I want you on the bed. It’s time for your punishment.” The unicorn's words brushed her cheek.

Diamond did as she was told. Rarity mounted the bed beside her.

“On your back.”

Silk pillows greeted her as she lay before her teacher. She watched as Rarity licked her lips, shivering as she imagined that tongue between her legs again.

The white mare stood above her, eyes half-lidded in a come-hither look that made the filly’s heart skip. Bedroom eyes. The unicorn was seducing her all over again.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Diamond.”

If it had been any pony but Rarity, Diamond would have laughed. Out of any other pony’s lips, that line would have seemed cheesy, some cliched attempt at setting the mood, like a bad romance novel. But in that moment, on that bed, the filly was putty in the dressmaker’s hooves. She had been a bad girl. She was the worst. She had misbehaved, and she deserved whatever the unicorn gave to her.

Rarity leaned over her, and Diamond moaned as she felt soft lips against her neck. The scent of White Diamonds again, awakening thoughts of Friday night’s dream - Rarity propping her up on the dirty breakroom table, a throbbing in her rear.

Kisses trailed up her neck, moving higher, until Rarity’s tongue was massaging her ear. Diamond bit down hard on the plastic in her mouth, squirming under the unicorn’s ministrations. She pushed backwards, trying to bury herself in the pillows behind her, trying to escape the sensation of the muscle gliding over her sensitive flesh.

She gasped as teeth grazed her ear. The feeling was electric - a spark running over her whole body. And then the unicorn bit down.

A lightning bolt of pleasure shot through her - almost unbearable in its white heat. Diamond yelped and jerked away from Rarity’s attentive mouth.

“Sensitive ears?”

Speechless for more reasons than one, she nodded. Not usually so sensitive, but when she was turned on... she had never let Silvy do more than touch them, and even then not for very long.

“Shall I stop?”

Diamond shook her head. Anything but that. Whatever had just happened, she wanted more of it.

“Remember,” Rarity’s voice was heat caressing her. “If you’re getting close, let me know.”

Close? To coming. Right. Her punishment. The instructions were a hazy memory, receding into the mists of ecstasy as the unicorn traced the outside of the same ear with the tip of her tongue. Teeth came down again, but softly, a ghost of a nibble.

It was enough. Diamond moaned again, struggling to stay still as more sparks danced over her abdomen, prickling against her teats and mound. After a few more nibbles she pulled away again.

“How about now?”

‘Now’? The word sounded foreign to her, Rarity speaking in the incomprehensible poetry of her dialect again. Ardeur. Mea culpa. Charming. Coming. Oh. Right. Diamond shook her head. Not coming, not yet, just... it was too much. The filly lay back, breath hissing around the bit, saliva flecking her cheeks and running down her chin.

“Good.” With that, the unicorn leaned over and gave her other ear the same treatment, running her tongue along the edge before sucking the whole thing into her mouth.

Diamond squealed, her hips bucking at the unexpected sensation. Her whole body was on fire. Pleasure - bolts of it shooting through her, concentrating on the dripping flower between her legs and the button buzzing on top. The pressure building in her was threatening to push her to the brink. Again she pulled away, overwhelmed.

“Hm, ears, I’ll have to remember that.” When the filly looked over, Rarity’s grin was all satisfaction. “How are you feeling?”

Soaked - that was the best way to describe it. Diamond’s chest was soaked with saliva. She brought a hoof to her face in an attempt to wipe away some of the mess, only to notice her haunches, mound and tailbase glistening between her legs.

But she hadn’t come. As wet as she was, the pressure that had build up during their foreplay hadn’t gone away. The unicorn’s assault on her ears had left her saturated, dazed, and incredibly, frustratingly turned on.

Rarity, please. She urged the older mare to keep going. Or tried to, anyway. Her speech failing her, she channeled her desperation through her eyes. Sexual telekinesis. Could unicorns even read minds? She’d read a story once where they could.

“Is something the matter?” Whether it was unicorn magic or her very visible discomfort, Diamond had made contact.

She rolled her eyes, gesturing to her groin in a crude clarifying statement.

“Oh, I see,” said Rarity, addressing her plea with exaggerated seriousness. “Well, I suppose a little more wouldn’t hurt.”

The unicorn moved between her legs, kissing the base of her neck. Diamond’s ears twitched in anticipation, but Rarity had another target.

Diamond rolled her hips as Rarity moved lower - those incredibly soft lips, moaning from the friction between their bodies. She was so sensitive. The kisses, the feeling of that white coat running over her mound, it all all felt amazing.

The unicorn’s tongue was lapping at her teats, avoiding her nipples. She was drooling again. She didn’t care. The pressure building in her loins was pushing her, clouding her mind as her body took over.

Her hoof ran through the indigo mane draped across her stomach, trying to push Rarity lower, to the source of the pressure. Still, that lapping tongue, those perfect white teeth in that perfect white muzzle wouldn’t move, content with torturing her aching teats.

She pushed again, instant on having Rarity finish the job. Why was she taking so long? Her whole body was humming with need, all she needed was one touch. The muzzle moved lower, until it hovered above the throbbing nub at the top of her slit.

A little lower. She willed Rarity with her thoughts. Only a little lower. She was so close.

Close. A single word cutting through the haze of arousal with painful clarity.

She was too close.

Diamond shot up from the pillows, tapping the unicorn frantically on the shoulder. Her whole body ached with desire as the tantalizing warmth of Rarity’s body deserted her.

Closing her eyes, she waited for the almost-painful sensitivity that had overtaken her to recede.

She felt the bridle loosen and give, magic releasing her muzzle from the apparatus. Working her jaw, Diamond began to get up, feeling her fur sticking to her in a number of places.

“Wonderful.” Rarity lay beside her, blue eyes watching from the almost-darkness of the bedroom. “You did wonderfully, darling.”

“I don’t feel wonderful.” She felt like she had after the debacle with the Foal Free Press - cut off just as she was enjoying herself most, and covered in sticky fluids besides. But In spite of her frustration, Diamond felt a smile forming at Rarity’s compliment. She did do wonderfully. It was her choice, and she had succeeded.

“Well, yes, that’s understandable. But just think, a day or two and one apology later, and it will be all worth it.”

Apology. All of the events of the day came crashing to the front of her mind. How long had she been at the Boutique?

“Rarity, I gotta go, my father’s gonna expect me home soon.” Pushing herself off the pile of sheets and pillows, her eyes were intent on the timepiece near the bed. 8 o’clock. She should have been home an hour ago.

Her thoughts were racing as she moved towards the door, trying not to gallop. Dad knew she was going out for dinner. She’d just tell him she’d been at Silvy’s since. Assuming Silvy wasn’t at her house right now, telling him about everything. If so, she’d have to come up with a different story. Maybe she was at the library and fell asleep reading? But then he’d ask the librarian, and--.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?” Forgetting? Her eyes darted around the room - what was she talking about? The look on the unicorn’s face was familiar - expectant, like... I have another lesson for you, young lady. Like, you think I’m gonna give you all the pleasure without getting mine, your father be damned.

“I can’t. I wanna, but-- please, if I don’t go home now, I could be in trouble.” How could Rarity be thinking about that at a time like this?

“I realize you’re in a rush, dear, but I really must insist we get you cleaned up first.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

She followed Rarity into the bathroom for what was both the fastest and most thorough shower she’d ever had. If the unicorn had found anything strange about her practically begging not to wash up, she didn’t say. Instead, an array of brushes and soaps set upon her, leaving cleaner than when she had left the house that morning.

It also got her skin tingling again. Over the course of being dried off, she’d felt the towel brush over her mound and teats more than a few times, sending little shivers of pleasure through her body. She’d almost said something - it wasn’t fair for Rarity to be teasing her again, given her punishment - but if she could take Rarity practically going down on her, she could deal with a little extra attention. And besides, it didn’t feel half-bad.

“Perfect.” Her mane and coat were assigned the unicorn’s seal of approval. “Almost no evidence of your, hm, previous activities.”

Diamond nodded. She could feel the "almost" when her tail brushed over her still-sensitive rear. Thankfully nobody else would be looking under there.

The ground floor was dark as the older mare led her to the door. “I appreciate you coming here and telling me all this. It couldn’t have been easy.” In the dim light coming through the shop’s windows, she could see Rarity biting her lip. Apprehension?

“I want you to tell me what happens as soon as possible, but... ” A pause, more lip-biting. “Once you’ve resolved things with Silver Spoon, you shouldn’t feel required to come to me first to end your punishment.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Diamond pushed the door open, letting a chorus of cicadas into the shop.

“Also, if the topic of our classes should come up again, as I’m sure it will, I won’t think less of you if you choose to pull out for whatever reason. We’re scheduled to end in seven weeks, and a decision like this could have effects for you beyond that.” The unicorn’s smile was a fragile crescent in the moonlight.

“Thanks. I need to go, though.” Diamond stepped over the cusp of the doorway.

“Good luck!” Rarity’s words were at her back as she trotted through downtown. Even at 8 o’clock, the heart of town was quiet, with most shops and restaurants closed and few ponies to be seen. A little bit of luck - the less eyes on her coming from the Boutique, the better.

She had no idea why Rarity was acting so weird. Was it nerves? That irked her. Diamond was nervous too, probably more nervous than her, but still, she’d told the unicorn she’d take care of it, and Rarity said she trusted her.

Her steps slowed as she made her way up the walk to her house. There was light coming from the living room windows, but no ponies in sight. The fact that her father hadn’t come charging into Rarity’s place, combined with the apparent absence of concerned authority figures awaiting her arrival, told her her hunch was right - Silvy wasn’t planning doing anything yet. She could rest easy tonight, then go to her tomorrow and resolve this mess.

She could almost feel the unicorn’s lips on her again. Maybe she would visit Silvy in the morning, so she’d be free in time for Rarity’s afternoon break.

“Dad? I’m home.” Pushing open the door, she did her best to sound nonchalant.

“Diamond? Could you come here a minute?” He called from the kitchen. He didn’t sound happy.

Making her way inside, she saw her father leaning against the oven, his back turned to her.

“I’m very disappointed in you, young lady.”

“What?” Her heart was racing. She had waited too long, blown everything because she had gone to Rarity’s instead of going home.

“You missed dinner tonight!” Filthy turned around, revealing the meal in question sitting on the stove behind him. “It came out great, and there’s still plenty left.”

“Oh... thanks.” Mushroom Monday. It was his new kick - a new recipe every week. Just like that, she was plunged back into normalcy - the real world on a plate. She realized how hungry she was - despite the faint smell of smoke still in the kitchen, whatever he’d made would go well on top of the few bites of sandwich she’d eaten earlier.

“Now, can I ask why you were out so late? You had me worried.” He pushed a bowl of yellow grains towards her, little bits of mushroom sticking out from within. “Risotto,” he clarified as she inspected it.

“I was at Silver Spoon’s house. I guess I just wasn’t looking at the time. Sorry.” Despite some crunchy bits, the risotto was good, and Diamond found herself already anticipating seconds.

“Oh? Huh, you guys must have met up after she left here.”

“She was here?”

“Yup, about an hour ago, maybe a little more. Left a letter for you.” Filthy retrieved an envelope from the counter. “Said you’d understand what it was about.” It was the same as last time, nondescript except for her name on the outside.

“Did she say anything else?”

“Nope, that’s it.”

She shivered. The fact that Silvy had been in her house after their argument, talking to her father... it made her skin crawl and her appetite vanish.

“Seconds?” Filthy offered around the serving spoon in his mouth.

“No... no thanks, I’m full.” Diamond stepped away from the table, itching to escape to her room and tear open the letter. She’d played her part, her father had accepted the lie, but she hesitated. Silvy’s intrusion was an unspoken threat.

“Actually, Dad...” She paused, frowning, “Silver Spoon and I had a fight this afternoon. That’s why I was late, and I think that’s what the letter’s about.”

"Oh, I’m sorry honey. You wanna to talk about it?” Filthy set the utensil down, attention focused on his daughter.

“Not right now. But... she threatened to spread some rumors about me, so if you hear anything bad...” She scuffed her hoof, eyes to the ground, projecting her best Troubled Daughter.

“I understand. Whatever it is, I’m sure she’ll come around. She can’t stay mad at you forever. And you know you can always come to me, right?”

“Yeah, Dad, I know. Thanks.” Problem solved. Rarity would have been proud. “I’m pretty tired, I think I’m just gonna go to bed now.”

She retreated to her room. Leaning on the door, she tore open the envelope, revealing a single piece of notebook paper. Written upon it was a single sentence:

It’s over.

The Price of Silver

It’s over.

Diamond Tiara hurled the letter away, recoiling in shock. The message, a paper accomplice unaware of its own life-shattering power, drifted lazily to the carpet below. Rushing to the window, she threw it open to let in the warm evening air. Ponyville twinkled below her, tempting her with all the mysteries of a world made new.

It was over. She was free. No messy argument with Silvy, no lying or cheating, just her, Rarity, and the future.

Rarity. Would she mind if her charming pupil showed up at her doorstep, so soon after she’d left, to announce the arrival of something so new and wonderful? Diamond doubted it.

Her scattered thoughts began to collect themselves, those joyous speeding neurons set in motion by the letter gelling to form a makeshift plan. If she told her father she was going to a sleepover... where? Certainly not Silvy’s. And where else would she be going?

Leaning out the window, a giddy thrill ran up her back as she pictured herself trotting downstairs, not even pausing as she passed her father in the den.

“And where do you think you’re going at this time of night, young lady?”

“I’m going out. Oh, and don’t bother setting the alarm, I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Diamond shook her head, chuckling even as she dismissed the forbidden fantasy. There was no way short of sneaking out that she was leaving the house that night. Her thoughts went back to Rarity - pale, beautiful Rarity, bathed in moonlight as she left the Boutique only a little while before.

Hopping up on the bed, she lay back, closing her eyes, her mind wandering where she could not. She could see the unicorn again, imagine the look of surprise at finding Diamond at her doorstep so late at night.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon. Does that mean-”. The question was cut off by Diamond’s eager lips.

She spread her rear legs, her most sensitive flesh already tingling. Biting her lip, she let her hoof drift to just above her teats, savoring the discomfort of temptation. It would feel better with Rarity. It always did.

“It’s all taken care of. It’s over.” She kissed Rarity again, pushing her tongue into her mouth. It was a strong kiss, unbound by any of the emotional chains that had bound her the past weeks. In Rarity’s mouth, she tasted all the joy and sweetness of freedom.

Her imagination spilled over onto the bed, giving Diamond’s hoof a will of its own and setting it on a journey over the warm plain of her abdomen. As it crested the gentle hills of her teats, she moaned in excitement. Rarity had said that she didn’t have to wait, after all.

“But how?”

The question lent Rarity’s eyes a playful curiosity, waiting for her to say the right words before letting her sink into the endless embrace of those shimmering blue pools. Diamond pushed the unicorn back into the midnight doorway of the shop.

Clenching her rear legs, she pushed her slit against her hoof. The filly whined as her body caught fire again, all of the pressure that had built up over the last hour rushing back.

“Later. I want my reward.”

She hit the statement like a wet patch of mud, skidding and slipping out of her fantasy. Opening her eyes, the heat in her body poured out, leaving the pressure of unmet needs as a bad aftertaste. Sitting up, she looked to the floor, where Silvy’s note lay discarded.

“Fuck,” she spat.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Pouncing upon the hateful piece of paper, she stamped all her frustration into it. Her reward? For what? For lucking out and getting a breakup letter instead of another threat? If Silvy still thought she was sleeping with Rarity, who knew what she’d do? Diamond hadn’t taken care of anything.

“Diamond?” Her father’s voice came from down the hall.

“What?” she yelled in response.

“Everything okay in there?”

“Yeah, Dad, it’s fine.”

She began to pace, trying to clear her head and formulate another escape route, something to take the venom from the poisoned page.

It was no use. The apology, that precise tool for her liberation, was useless - Rarity had given her a sewing needle when she needed a hammer. Two clumsy words had thrown out any hope of resolving anything in - how had the unicorn put it? - an ‘amicable manner’. Never mind salvaging their friendship. Silvy had fucked it up for both of them.

Not Silvy. Me. I fucked up.

She stopped pacing, letting herself digest the revelation. It was my fault! With the admission of guilt came a sense of relief - if she had fucked up, she could do something about it. She was in control again.

Hopping up on the bed again, she raked over the events of the afternoon. She had tried to stonewall Silvy, losing control of her temper in the process and embarrassing herself in public. She’d stormed out of their surprise meeting with an angry ultimatum that left little room for bargaining. But in the end, Silvy hadn’t told her father anything.

Closing her eyes, Diamond latched onto that thought, holding it tight as she lay down. Her body was tingling again, alive with the busy anticipation of a plan forming in her mind. Underneath the threats, Silvy was still her friend. It would just take some convincing to make her see that. She was still planning when sleep took her.

She awoke to the expectant singing of birds outside the window she’d left open. Eyes held closed, Diamond lay like a live wire, waiting, breathing, tense with the thought that the little sleep she'd managed had been time wasted, a distraction from planning and acting. At the slamming of the front door, she shot into the bathroom. Despite the uncanny cleanliness she still felt from the unicorn’s scrubbing down, she wasn’t about to repeat the mistake she’d made entering the boutique the day before. Every hair needed to be in place, every particle of dust and dirt removed, her body projecting confidence.

Mane and coat immaculate, she shrugged on her saddlebag and affixed her tiara. She trotted downstairs, the lingering scents of coffee and toast reminded her stomach that she was overdue for a proper meal. Hunger was beginning to win out over the excitement and fear that had shriveled her stomach since she'd read Silvy's letter. Shooting a glance to the fridge, she forced herself out the door. Breakfast would be her reward for pushing herself into town.

She breathed in the day as she stepped outside. The sun was up, but the street still slept, filled with the early-morning silence that followed her father to his store, anticipating the arrival of customers still in their beds. Cobblestones perspired in stoic silence, the dew-spirits floating above them warning of yet another scorching summer day ahead. The world was holding its breath, waiting on Diamond to make her move.

Cantering through the misty streets, she cast a sidelong glance towards the yellow house brooding on the corner before she continued downtown. She’d considered going to Silvy directly, but an apology on her friend’s home turf seemed a bit too generous, given the context of their last chat. No, she needed to catch Silvy in public, and she knew just the place.

The line outside of Sugarcube Corner snaked its way out the door and halfway around the block. Stomach rumbling, Diamond joined in. Ponies marched into the bakery with an erratic excitement, surging forward only to grind to a halt for minutes at a time a few feet later.

As she waited, Diamond immersed herself in the torrent of sights and scents of the plaza during rush hour, letting her thoughts get lost among the bustle that surrounded her. Ponies jostled with each other as they pushed into the few cafes and restaurants open at that hour, the earthy scents of coffee and fried dough enticing them like the calls of the late-summer carnival barkers that would echo from the outskirts of town in a few weeks as they celebrated the end of the season. The press excited her - it reminded her of the times she'd traveled to Manehattan and Fillydelphia with her father, trotting through crowds so big she felt she could get lost among them, ponies moving with purposeful strides on their way to meetings, work, concert halls.

She was convinced that her destiny lay in a place where the buildings rose as high as her dreams. Ponyville was more of a playground - any town that could get so hot and bothered over stories of inept parenting and tail extensions was too small for her. She could only imagine what would happen if word of her affair got out. Lies, blackmail, kinky sex, a secret lover - it all lent an undue maturity to the whole mess, turning it from a petty fight between friends to tabloid headlines. Maybe the self-destruction of Gabby Gums had been a blessing in disguise. Featherweight had an uncanny ability to find dirt on other ponies, and she could just picture the overwrought headline, almost dripping from the front page: Tiara tied up in a torrid triangle of love -- literally! Silver Spoon speaks!

She was trying to decide how dirty the front-page photo of her might be when she found herself at the head of the line. Pinkie emerged panting from the back of the bakery toting a towering tray of assorted breads, her coat covered in a batter of flour and sweat.

“Hey there, Diamond! What can I get for you? The usual? Or do you wanna hear about today’s extra-specials?”

“Extra-specials?”

“Yes indeedy! We ran out of specials a couple minutes ago, so all we have left is extra-specials, and extra-extra specials.” The grin Pinkie wore assured her at least one of them understood what she’d just said.

“What are the extra-specials?” Diamond’s curiosity got the best of her, putting her in violation of Rule Number One of Sugarcube Corner: do not, under any circumstances, ask Pinkie about the specials.

“So glad you asked!” The baker’s eyes practically sparkled with excitement. “We’ve got Appaloosan Apple-cado Avalanche - that one’s limited-time only. Blueberry Butterscotch Banana Buns - those just came out of the oven, so they’re really, really fresh. Chilled Crystal City Cappuccino, Double-Drizzled Date Doughnuts...”

The list rambled on with no end in sight. Diamond could hear the ponies behind her muttering and scuffing their hooves in frustration.

“Pinkie...” She tried to cut in, to no avail. She was being bowled over again, just like the day before in the dress shop.

“...Half-Baked Hazelnut Homefries...”

“Pinkie!” Diamond’s voice snapped like a crop against tender flesh. Sharp and firm, but just loud enough to get the other pony's attention and halt the onslaught of edibles. She could hear Rarity in her tone.

“Yes, Diamond?”

“Just- could you just give me the usual? And one of those buns. Please.”

“Okey-dokey-lokey, coming right up!” Before the customer behind her could say a word, Pinkie had darted into the back room again.

Diamond scanned the room, cautious eyes completing their circuit without running into any ponies who thought they knew her well enough to bother her while she waited. It was the perfect location - Silvy, ever a creature of habit, would be along eventually for her hot chocolate and doughnut. And there would be Diamond, waiting to have a most un-habitual chat about the letter she’d received.

“Diamond Tiara, you just got served!”

Her meal sat steaming expectantly to the side of the counter - a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal drizzled with honey, a cup of persimmon tea, and one very blue bun dripping in butterscotch. The breakfast of champions - breakfast of the champion.

“How much?”

“What?” Pinkie cocked her head, looking at her as if she were speaking another language.

“For the food?”

“Oh, don't worry about it.”

“What?”

“The price, silly. Don’t worry about it. You’re all taken care of. Student discount!” The baker winked at her before rushing back to a frazzled-looking customer. “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah! Half-Baked Hazelnut Homefries...”

Student discount. That was new. A little politeness, a firm hoof, and she got a free meal - Rarity’s lessons were paying off already.

Weaving through the crowded shop, Diamond found an empty table and dug in, the warmth of the gifted meal spreading through her body and relaxing the lingering butterflies from the previous night’s panic. For the first time in weeks, she felt something like her old confidence creeping back.

The plan was simple - just get Silvy’s attention. The rest would follow from there.

And if she won’t talk to you? Diamond sat back, sipping her tea. The question was academic, putting her tired mind through the paces. If Silvy wouldn’t talk with her? That was where the apology would come in - the bait for the hook with which she would reel her friend into the conversation.

Silvy would be angry, of course. She might even try to provoke Diamond again, like she had in the café. But Diamond Tiara was prepared for that, too. Raising her chin, she looked down her nose at the garish blue bun occupying her plate. I don’t appreciate your tone. Let’s try to be civil about this. I understand that you’re upset, but you must understand...

With a smile, she bit into the bun, coating her tongue in the sticky sweetness of her impending victory. Rarity was a genius. The apology, staying cool under pressure - through the dressmaker’s keen eye, everything was so focused, so precise, cutting through life’s problems like so much ribbon.

Meal finished, Diamond set her plate aside and threw open her saddlebag for the final prop: a book entitled ‘See, I Wasn’t Just Sitting Here Waiting For You All Morning: The Diamond Tiara Story’.

Damn it.

The Young Mare’s Guide to Etiquette stared out from her bag, glowering in admonishment for her unspoken curse. The filly glowered right back. As careful as Diamond thought she was being in her preparations, her life was a perpetual series of loose ends.

Dropping the tome to the table with an unceremonious thud, she flipped through its ponderous yellow pages, settling on the diagram of some archaic dinner table. Her eyes skated over the reams of notes dissecting its self-important anatomy, justifying her frustration in the process.

Oh well. At least Silvy might take it as a sign that she wasn’t just going over to Rarity’s to hook up with the unicorn. Sometimes she had to do homework as well.

After minutes of turning pages at random and glancing at the entrance to the shop, something caught her eye. Marring the corner of one of the pages, in small, cribbed writing, were the words this sucks. A succinct rejoinder to what must have been over a thousand meticulously-written pages. The filly wondered at the scrawl. Written by some kindred spirit, no doubt, some unlucky filly forced to suffer through the tedium of Primrose Pennyweather’s withered prose, and almost certainly without the unique incentives offered to Diamond. A lone protest in a sea of rules and regulations, its terse conviction fell flat against her new sense of wary uncertainty.

Look where that attitude got me. She found herself sneering at the words. If she’d just had Rarity’s poise during her argument with Silvy, the whole mess she was in then could have been avoided. No, it was time to put aside foalish ways once and for all.

“One hot chocolate and one Double-Drizzled Date Doughnut for one Silver Spoon!”

Pinkie’s announcement shocked her out of her reverie. Looking up, she saw her friend at the counter, retrieving the aforementioned order and returning to a table near the wall where two other ponies sat.

Snips and Twist? Oh, Silvy. Had she sunk that low? As if feeling the weight of Diamond's judgement, Silvy looked back, staring straight at her. Diamond’s eyes shot back down to the table, fumbling with the book in an attempt to look busy.

What was that? The look on Silver Spoon’s face wasn’t anger, and certainly wasn’t sadness. It was... nothing. As if she hadn’t been staring at her, but through her.

It’s over. No longer a joyous release but an elegy, the tolling of a funeral bell. Isolated in the middle of Sugarcube Corner, the filly shivered. That look was about the meanest thing Silvy could have done, short of announcing Diamond’s relationship with Rarity to the bakery.

The words rang in her ears as she propped the book up between herself and the offending spectacle. All those messy feelings of friendship and relationship, sorted with anesthetic neatness in the sterile environment of her bedroom, came crashing together again. She wanted to run over to the other table, to scream, to do anything to make Silvy look at her and see her.

Diamond took a breath, trying to kick the rational part of her brain into gear. Where had all her confidence gone? What would Rarity do? Probably not charge over to that table and yell at the pony she was supposed to be apologizing to, much less harangue her... companions.

All she needed was one opportunity to get her friend’s attention. She peered over the edge of the book again, watching as Silvy and her new friends chatted and laughed together and letting her anticipation dull the sharp pain of distance and loneliness.

After an eon of page-turning and tea-sipping, she saw her window of opportunity. The losers left to go to the bathroom, leaving Silvy alone as she finished the last of her breakfast. Dropping the book into her saddlebag, she approached her target. Silver Spoon leaned over her place-mat doodling idle pink flowers.

Slipping into a chair next to the gray mare with an ease that belied the rough pounding in her chest, she launched her opening salvo.

“Silvy! Hey! What’s up?”

Silvy raised her head, spitting the crayon in her mouth onto the table in front of Diamond with a scowl.

“Nothing.”

Contact. It wasn’t the end of the world, at least not yet. Repressing a smile from her small victory, Diamond pushed forward.

“So, Snips and Twist, huh? Decided to slum it today?”

“They’re my friends, Di. You know, some of us have those? Where are yours? Oh, right, nowhere.”

Friends? Diamond bit her tongue as a number of choice insults about Silvy’s personal life burned in her throat. Cool and collected. Think of Rarity. Shrugging off the jab, she tried a more direct approach.

“I got your letter. Could we talk about that?”

For a moment, Silvy’s stare faltered, eyes slipping from Diamond towards the bathroom door.

“What’s there even to talk about? I thought it was pretty clear. I’m done. We’re done. You go on--” Silver Spoon winced at the bitterness of her words, “fucking Rarity. I don’t care.”

Diamond winced in return, stopping herself from looking around the room to see who’d heard that. Instead, she went in for the kill. Leaning in, she rested her hoof upon her friend’s. “Silvy, I need to tell you--”.

“No, Di, I don’t wanna hear it.” Silvy yanked herself away with enough force to upset the glass next to her, tears of water ruining the place-mat. “You already ‘told me’ enough. You think you know everything, but you don’t. I just-- you’re gonna pay for it someday.”

The losers were on their way back. Emboldened by her imminent rescue, Silvy sniffed and began to get up.

“Silvy, I’m sorry! I’ll tell you everything!” She shouted loud enough for half the bakery to hear.

Silver Spoon froze, looking at her with a kind of curious pity, as if she had just announced the death of her pet and offered to explain what happened in graphic detail. Turning, she addressed the losers.

“I’ll catch up with you two later, I need to talk with Diamond.”

“Can we go somewhere else? If you don’t mind.”

“I guess.” Silvy paused, debating how much she minded. “But I get to choose.”

“Fine.”

Diamond followed Silvy out of the bakery, shrugging past the customers littering the floor of the shop and attempting to pull together what remained of her previous confidence.

Ponyville had transformed while she was indoors - gone were the crowds outside Sugarcube Corner, replaced by shoppers inspecting the offerings of ever-patient vendors in an attempt to beat the morning heat. Diamond kept pace with her friend, walking beside her in an attempt to avoid the feeling of being led.

Her stomach lurched as they approached the schoolhouse, bringing back memories of her relapse the day before. He believed all that stuff about Humbolt. Sighing, she let it go - if the petty choice of locations helped put Silvy at ease, she would suck it up.

The benches in the schoolyard were deserted - lonely monuments to the season abandoned by fickle rears of the town’s fillies and foals.

“Well,” Silvy started, then halted as she sat down. Diamond said nothing, letting the word hang between them, waiting for it to take on substance.

“Well?” Silvy found her voice again, stabbing at Diamond with the word. “Well? How long have you been sleeping with her, Di? Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“I’m not sleeping with her.”

“Diamond--”.

“Look, Silvy, you need to listen to me, please,” she pleaded. The confrontation in the bakery had thrown her off-balance, and she struggled to take control of the conversation. “I’m not sleeping with her. I’m not. I wouldn’t do that to you. But you’re not wrong, either. I... I like her.”

“You like her? That’s it?” Silvy stared at her, bewildered, trying to absorb what she’d just heard. Folding her forelegs over her chest, she shook her head as if to dismiss the force of Diamond’s confession. “No, I know what I felt, I know what I heard. Where were you last night?”

“What do you mean?” Diamond racked her tired brain, struggling to think. How could she know?

“When I brought the letter over, your Dad said you weren’t home. Were you with her?”

“Oh, uh...,” she feigned out of habit, a dozen excuses springing up. I was taking a walk. I was eating out. I was none of your business.

Tell her. Just enough of the truth. The gentle voice of reason - Rarity’s voice - spoke above them all. The unicorn was there, at the schoolhouse, still guiding her. Drawing a breath, she crossed the threshold.

“Yes. Yes, I was with her.” Ignoring the shocked look on Silvy’s face, she continued, “Remember, when we talked? You threatened me? All that stuff about going to my father? Well, you threatened her too. I had to tell her.”

“What did she say?” Thrown off by her admission, Silvy’s fury was beginning to temper, and the question was tinged with caution.

“Well, she wasn’t happy, as you might expect. I had to talk her out of going to your parents and getting you in trouble.”

“You like her.” Silvy repeated, as if she just then understood what Diamond had been telling her. “Does she know?”

“She does now. I hadn’t told her anything, and wasn’t gonna, but after what you said, I had to.”

“If you weren’t sleeping with her... you liked her and me at the same time? That’s gross, Di! How could you?”

“I know.” I had to.

“None of this would’ve happened if you’d just been honest with me!”

“I know.” I couldn’t have been.

“You... you lied to me!”

Outburst over, Silvy collapsed onto the table, burying her face in her hooves. Diamond saw her chance. Leaning forward, her hoof came to rest on Silvy's foreleg, soft, not insistent - letting her touch soften the ground for her words.

"I'm sorry, Silvy."

Silver Spoon looked up, not pulling away, leaving Diamond stretched over the table.

“Are you gonna keep having class with her?”

The question caught her off-guard - she may as well have been asking about the weather.

“I- Well, yeah, I guess so. I can’t just quit, I made a commitment.”

“I’m worried about you, Di. She's changing you. Or you’re changing for her. And it sucks. When Humbolt--”.

“This is nothing like Humbolt,” Diamond hissed before she caught herself, recalling too late that she, rather than her lingering anger from the day before, was supposed to be steering the conversation. She pulled her hoof away as if she'd been burned, and Silvy's back straightened, on edge again, waiting - perhaps even hoping for this strange new Diamond Tiara she'd encountered in Sugarcube Corner to lash out and unmask the rude, abrasive filly she'd grown up with.

Humbolt again. How long would that name haunt her? And how small Silvy looked, leaning towards her, bleeding anticipation and anger, trying to goad her again. But should she have expected anything less? Whether Diamond was sleeping with Rarity or not was irrelevant now. The unicorn had touched Diamond Tiara in a way that Silver Spoon never could, and her friend was not gracious in defeat. It was part of her nature, and no amount of apologies would change that.

I was never yours, Silvy, and I'm not Rarity's. I don't belong to anyone. She wanted abrasive? Diamond could give it to her in spades. Of course Silvy had asked whether she'd continue her classes. Having laid down her threats, all she had left was cowardice. She was as flimsy as tissue paper, and Diamond could tear her apart with a few simple words. I never loved you, and never will. Not in the way you want me to. It was acid on her tongue. She clenched her jaw until her teeth ached, sucking in a breath of air as she stared at the table instead of her friend.

You can have your anger, or your friendship, a calmer, more mature voice chided. Haven't you done enough to her? She was surprised to realize it was her own voice as much as Rarity's. She had apologized, whether it was accepted or not, and she could refuse to rise to this bait, too. Rarity would not only have Diamond, but a different Diamond. One without so many of the sharp edges that Silvy had tried so hard to smooth out over the years.

Her jaw relaxed, and she blinked away the sting of tears in her eyes. Taking another breath, she swallowed the last of her anger. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve got it under control. Nothing’s gonna happen between us. If I’m changing, it’s for me, not her.”

“I hope so, for your sake.” Silvy sounded tired, as though it was her and not Diamond who was burdened by all the unsaid things between them. For a moment, they were back on Diamond's bed right after their argument. There was Silvy, weary and wounded because of something her friend was only vaguely aware of, tripping again on the many invisible threads connecting Diamond to that other, secret life at the Carousel Boutique.

The memory pricked Diamond, stirring the slippery, unpleasant feelings of pity and regret she'd felt on Saturday night. Studying Silvy's foreleg, Diamond could see the shadow of the bruise left by her over-reaction to her 'joke'.

My fault. But she could feel her own wounds as well, still raw from Silvy's provocations. Both of them sat bleeding in the schoolyard, hurt by a conversation that had barely taken place. Her apology felt thin in comparison, a shallow and calculated resolution to a safe argument she’d built from half-truths, wearing tact like a straitjacket. She wanted to scream at Silvy for threatening her the day before, for dredging up all those awful, sickening memories she thought she’d escaped. She wanted to cry, to expose everything, to let her know how much she’d actually hurt her, and burn up in the righteous heat of her fury. And most of all, she wanted to throw open the blinds on her secret life and expose it in all its blinding, painful beauty.

But she couldn’t. Rarity trusted her not to - she could feel it in the back of her mind and in her haunches, the distant, fuzzy feeling of arousal. The responsibility she’d carried with her since her session with the unicorn. Her reminder that, as bad as things were, she always had a choice.

“Was there anything else?” Reluctance was painted all over Silver Spoon’s face. The question was obligatory, the reflex of a recent-but-former partner trying to keep things on good terms. She could already see the other filly disappearing beyond the polite distance between them.

“You’re right,” she choked out, “About all of it. I fucked up, and hurt you, and you didn't deserve it. Are we still friends?”

“Yeah, Di, we are.” Silvy grimaced, looking away. When she turned back to Diamond, her eyes shone with tears. “But I’m gonna need some time, okay?”

Diamond's throat tightened with anguish. She blinked again, trying to head off more tears, but her eyes were barren, a desert. Everything was bottled up inside, sealed so tight that her chest ached as if she had been holding her breath too long.

Silver Spoon turned away again, and Diamond heard her choke back a sob as she got up to leave. Something opened up to Diamond at that moment - a picture of her friend so painful in its clarity she winced, though she would not look away for fear of losing it. She no longer looked weak and petty, but free; free and beautiful. Diamond had often dismissed her vulnerability for weakness, but in Silvy’s tears she now saw a kind of reckless courage as well. A willingness to do what Diamond had refused to do: to say what she felt, and in doing so open herself up to all that pain that Diamond had thought she could avoid. All that pain that she now carried with her.

Silvy was gone before Diamond's vision cleared. Off to other friends, other projects, a whole other life that Diamond could only imagine as she sat at the picnic table, alone.

Shrugging on her saddlebag, the filly slouched. She remained like that, in the center of the schoolyard, eyes closed as she tested the load on her back. Her muscles tensed, and for a moment it seemed like she would throw the whole pack off. Below her, two tiny plumes of dust rose into the stolid summer air, kicked up by two lonely tears that were neither acknowledged nor followed. Then, straightening her legs with a grunt, she shoved the last few hours into the corner of her mind, to take their place in the sizable array of secrets she’d amassed in the past few weeks, and dragged herself towards the Carousel Boutique.

As she cut through the outskirts of Ponyville proper, she tried to recover some of the anticipation she’d felt in her bedroom the night before. She’d been out of sorts since her session with Rarity, and now that she’d taken care of things with Silvy, her messy emotions were too close to the surface. Everypony had their own burdens to carry, even if hers was larger than average. She would just have to get used to it.

Still, the weight on her back chafed. And when she saw the Carousel Boutique, it chafed all the more. There, finally, were those promised blue doors, the flag topping its lofty peak waving her in, heralding her arrival. But what lay inside? All that beauty hidden behind those doors, an undiscovered country of passion most ponies could only dream of, locked up and hidden away, and her emotions along with it.

Knocking on the door, she realized she was frowning, and adjusted her lips accordingly, as Rarity had done for her friends the day before. Something to say, see, everything’s fine. She could take care of her worries later.

The door crept open, and her frown returned. Peering from inside the shop were the apprehensive green eyes of Rarity’s blank-flank sister.

“Uh... Diamond Tiara? What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk with Rarity.”

“Oh, um, well, she’s not here right now. But she said she’d be back around one...” Sweetie Belle trailed off, and the wooden barrier moved a hair’s breadth closer.

Diamond hesitated. She wasn’t looking forward to barging in on Rarity’s life again, much less the renewed risk of being bowled over by that spastic pink baker. But the thought of returning home with her thoughts and that pressure between her thighs was worse.

“I think I’ll wait for her here.”

“Well, um, she told me not to let anyone in until she got back...”

The door began creeping forward again. Diamond stepped forward, letting her hoof rest against it. “She’ll be expecting me, for class stuff. It’s important.”

Sweetie hung in the doorway, glancing back inside as if she were debating running away. “Well, um, I guess.”

Moving past the other filly, she entered the front room and tossed her bag onto the couch. As she hopped up to take a seat, however, she noticed Sweetie studying her, a pained expression on her face.

“Yes?”

“I was sitting there.” Sweetie scuffed her hoof on the floor.

“Yeah? Well that’s....” she trailed off, feeling the weight on her back again. “Fine. Sorry.”

Stepping back from the couch, she grabbed her bag and tried to ignore the shocked look on the other filly’s face.
You’re changing for her.

Tossing her belongings down once again, she moved to the only other seat in the room. The hard wood of stool’s seat chafed her already raw pride.

It’s Rarity’s dumb sister, I’m a guest in her home. If we were anywhere else, I’d... her thoughts hit a wall. She’d what? Yell at her? Push her around? She’d always be Rarity’s sister.

She’s changing you.

Retreating from her thoughts, Diamond pulled out Pennyweather’s weighty tome. She flipped through the pages until she found the graffiti again, buried deep within a twenty-page dissertation on posture.

This does suck.

Why couldn’t a pony just walk as they pleased? Why couldn’t they just yell at their friends when they were angry at them? Was this really how Rarity lived her life? Diamond had imagined being an adult as something empowering - no teachers to discipline you, no parents to keep you in at night or force you into ridiculous outfits. And yet, there was Rarity, smiling for her friends when she was upset and lowering the shades every time she came over.

Her anger spiked as her frustration grew. She was tired, uncomfortable, and she wanted her seat on the fucking couch.

“Hey blank-flank--”.

Looking up, she paused. Sweetie was cowering behind the book sitting in front of her, ears flat as she awaited Diamond’s inevitable wrath. It was the cover of the book that caught her attention, the outline of a unicorn robed in stars, and above, the title, Clover: Mare, Myth and Legend.

“Uh, Sweetie Belle, how’s that book?”

“It’s... good?”

Clover the Clever! Memories awoke in her mind, the stories of Diamond’s youth, resurrected at a glance. And with them, something else, something she’d seen in Silvy that morning, a vulnerability she’d done her best to dismiss beneath the sediment of time and bitterness.

“Have you read The Eight Trials? Did you like them?”

“Yeah... a while ago,” Sweetie ventured, still hiding behind the book. “It was okay, but-”.

“Which was your favorite?”

“Um, I don’t know, the Trial of Fire, maybe? I--”.

“That one’s pretty good, but the Trial of Heart was the best. Like when Clover tricked the Changeling Queen into telling her the Secret of Love’s Essence? And when she befriends the Windigoes to rescue Princess Platinum from evil Lord Monochromicorn? That was so cool. Can you imagine?”

She was rambling, but she didn’t care. As she talked, she came alive again. The strained muscles on her back and face relaxed as she projected the torrent of feelings she'd been holding back all morning onto Starswirl and Clover. The words carried her back through time, and for a few minutes, she felt like she was talking with Silvy again, their friendship still fresh and unspoiled by the trials of growing older.

Having given up on trying to get a word in, the younger filly was left to sit back and watch, wide-eyed, still shielded by her book as if worried that Diamond's transformation would turn out to be some sort of elaborate trap. The filibuster rambled on and on until it was finally interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Hey, Sweetie Belle! Ya in here?" The door opened for the only filly that had come close to the rank of ‘arch-nemesis’ in Diamond’s book. The stream of words cut off and Diamond blushed, feeling exposed. True to her role, Apple Bloom gaped in horror.

“Diamond Tiara? What’re you doing here?”

“We were just... talking about books,” Sweetie Belle interjected with uncertainty, unfreezing from the couch to greet her friend. As she crossed the room she glanced at Diamond with suspicion, eyes darting away again when she noticed she was being watched.

“Talking? ‘We’?” Apple Bloom’s glare shifted from Diamond to Sweetie. “Why is she here?”

“She said she’s meeting Rarity for something.”

The bumpkin eyed Diamond up, then motioned her friend towards the back of the room. As the fillies retreated behind one of the heavy magenta curtains hanging from the ceiling, Diamond remained on the stool, trying to process what had just happened. She caught snippets of not-so-subtle whispering - “kept talking,” “really strange,” “being nice”.

She jumped off the stool, hurtling across the room as if by reflex. Diamond Tiara wasn’t nice to blank-flanks, no matter whose sisters they were!

“Excuse me? What are you two losers talking about?”

The fillies emerged from behind the curtain, with Apple Bloom leading the way.

“Nothing, Diamond, we were just wondering why you were being so, uh, nice to Sweetie Belle here.”

“I wasn’t being nice, I was just talking.”

“Fine, so why were you being so, uh, talkative?”

“I was bored. So what? Do you blank-flanks have a problem what that?”

“But, she was being-- she didn’t take my seat! She apologized!” Sweetie spoke up from behind the other filly.

“If I’d wanted your seat, I would’ve taken in. I didn’t wanna get your blank-flank germs on me.”

“See, I told ya.” Apple Bloom turned to her friend, rolling her eyes.

“But we were talking about Clover the Clever! I’m not making this up!”

Diamond let them bicker. It had felt good to yell at the fillies, to let off some of the morning's anger and frustration without fear of judgement. For a minute she had just been Diamond Tiara, unapologetic and unafraid. At least, that's how it had seemed at first. But the more she yelled, the worse she felt. Her insults sounded hollow, as if she were reading lines from a script.

The urge to apologize came on strong enough to make her stumble.

“Uh, I need to go to the bathroom,” she muttered. Without waiting for a response, she rushed to the back of the shop.

Closing the door behind her, Diamond turned to catch herself in the mirror. She still looked the same, though her eyes were tinted by the shadow of sleeplessness. That shade hinted at a deeper conflict, like a piece of peeling skin after a sunburn - pick at it enough and you’d find something raw and painful underneath. Diamond started to peel.

What are you doing to me, Rarity? But it wasn’t Rarity. The apology wasn’t out of politeness or an attempt to save face. It was because she’d lied when she said she was ‘just talking’. She wanted more - more of that feeling she’d felt with Sweetie Belle, something she might have called ‘childishness’ in somepony else. The freedom to say and do as she pleased without fear of judgement.

What am I doing to myself?

Something glittered in the mirror - the jewels in her tiara catching the light. She leaned on the counter, lifting the decoration from her mane with care and setting it down before her. Why do I wear this dumb thing, anyway?

It was the wrong question - she’d always worn it, a gift from her father when she’d received her cutie mark. It was the rest of her that was out of place. Sitting on the counter, the tiara looked like a prop, part of a costume that no longer fit her. She looked in the mirror again and rubbed her eyes, half-expecting the sleep circles to come off like stage makeup. She saw a different pony, one that seemed younger and more vulnerable. It was the filly that had left Silvy’s bedroom that night, years ago, the one she’d buried underneath all those defenses. By the time the teasing had stopped, she'd become stronger - hard enough to push back against anyone that tried to make her feel weak or vulnerable. And she'd thought that strength had protected her, allowing her to do as she pleased without fear of being hurt again. Maybe, after Humbolt, she hadn't just put away dreams of romance and adventure - fairy tales which had proven impossible so early in her young life. Maybe she'd lost part of herself as well.

Until Rarity. Her body quivered with an excitement that came to rest at the base of her spine. She felt exposed, like... like when Rarity spanked me. All the fantasies she'd left to gather dust on the bookshelf in her mind had stirred with the unicorn's invitation to return to the Carousel Boutique on that first Friday night. The memory of silk against her legs teased her, but it was the phantom sting of the crop against her rear that set her on fire again. It was the realized potential of leather on flesh, the unicorn's desire crashing into her, shaking her awake from years of sleepwalking.

It was only after the third blow, the one that left her crying, that she’d really started to learn. Clear, honest pain to cut through the bullshit excuses and half-truths she'd filled her life with until then. Her heart, like her body, had woken up, and she wanted to feel everything. She was still getting used to the flood of sensations Rarity had opened her up to, both pain and pleasure. She pushed forward through it all, fumbling and awkward, but determined as well, as if she were running a marathon when she was just getting over a broken leg. She stumbled, sometimes hard, but she would get up again with Rarity's help, nudging her with the gentle guidance that she'd only started to accept once she'd been pushed to the limit by Silvy's almost-discovery.

But the momentum from Rarity's lesson had come at a cost far beyond bits. Already she'd almost lost her best friend. Her own mistake, for certain, and when she'd panicked, the dressmaker had been there to show her the mistakes she'd made, examining the sloppy, jagged cuts where Diamond had attempted to trim her relationship, showing where she'd pulled too hard at the cloth of their friendship, almost to the point of tearing. The unicorn's solution had been smoother - she'd helped Diamond salvage the mess she'd made, teaching her the proper strokes for lying and misleading - but that had a price, too.

When she left the boutique again, she'd be walking into the same world of deceit that she and the unicorn had been forced into. The shadow of disapproval cast by her discovery in the schoolyard on that awful night had never quite lifted, and in that small town, the disapproval she anticipated from her father, Rarity's friends, even the mayor herself loomed large above her life. It was a darkness that had only deepened with the story she'd told Silvy, a lie she'd have to repeat for the rest of her life.

Maybe that was what had excited her about Sweetie's book. The whole affair with Rarity and Silvy had preoccupied her for over a week. Her life had become an incalculable series of panic attacks, leaving her exhausted. The only moments of release had come with the unicorn, and afterwards she had been set upon again by worries.

That's it! Diamond slammed a hoof on the counter. She needed breathing room, a space to stretch out her new muscles in the sun, rather than behind curtains and shades. And while Silvy was undoubtedly a superior pony, she had sensed a similar honesty and emotional vulnerability in Sweetie and her friends, something that had endured despite her own best efforts to trample it. It was a break with the past - her moment to take charge of her own life.

She stared at the tiara, chewing her lip, feeling a sudden discomfort. Outside the door was a life she had only started living. If she went out there without her tiara, Apple Bloom and Sweetie might not notice anything right away. They would still see the same Diamond Tiara she'd constructed over the span of many years. She would have to do something to prove to them that she had changed.

An apology would be simple, but would it stop there? Would they be... friends with her? Would she even want that? Maybe, maybe not. Her attraction to the fillies still mystified her, especially Apple Bloom. She had a litany of grievances against the bumpkin, starting with ruining her cuteceñera and ending with the grating way she'd pronounced Diamond's name when she'd burst into boutique - "DAHmund TiAHRuh". And she could just imagine the look on Silvy's face on seeing them together - shock or smug disapproval, both fit. But all that could wait. Right then, she needed to do something.

Taking the tiara between her teeth, she left the bathroom. Her transformation was not lost on Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, both of whom stood gawking outside of the bathroom door. Passing them by, Diamond went to her bag, tucked the tiara inside, and turned to her audience.

“Apple Bloom, Sweetie, I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you.”

No response followed, save the silent dropping of two jaws.

“Really, I am. I’ve been really bad to you two, and you haven’t deserved any of it. Will you accept my apology?”

“Uh, sure, Diamond, that’s... that's fine. Sweetie and I just need to, uh, talk first, okay? Isn’t that right, Sweetie?” Apple Bloom nudged her still wide-eyed friend.

“Oh, yeah... talk.” The fillies retreated to their previous hideout behind the curtain. This time there was no whispering, and two sets of eyes peered out at her, waiting.

Embarrassed, she moved to the kitchen. As she expected, the fillies could only see the bully who had terrorized them for years, and nothing else. But it was something, a first step, and if she tried to win them over with half the effort she'd spent harassing them, maybe they would come around.

It was only when she reached the counter that she realized how high up everything was. Unicorns. After some fumbling, she managed to maneuver a glass to the table. She heard the front door open as she took the first sip.

“Sweetie Belle? There’s been a change of plans, so I’m just stopping in for a bit before I- oh, there you are. And Apple Bloom as well, I see.”

“Hiya, Rarity!”

“Hey, Rarity. Yeah, I was gonna ask, could we go crusading today? Scootaloo and Apple Bloom finally agreed to try flower sniffing to get our cutie marks!”

“Well, I don’t see why not, but really, I’ve told you about having guests when I’m not home.”

“I know, sorry. Um, Diamond Tiara’s here, too, although she’s not really my guest, since she’s waiting for you.”

“Oh, she is?”

“Here I am, Rarity.” Diamond stepped forward from the kitchen.

“Come to turn in your homework assignment already?” At Diamond’s nod, Rarity turned to the two fillies waiting impatiently before her.

“Run along now, girls. Sweetie, I need you to stop by Fluttershy’s cottage and tell her I’m not going to make it for our get-together today, and give her my apologies. I expect to see you back before--”.

“Thanks Rarity!” Before she could finish, Apple Bloom and Sweetie had charged out the door.

“I must say, this is a pleasant surprise. Or, well, I hope it is. I wasn’t expecting you back quite so soon, so something must have happened.” Rarity’s warm chatter accompanied the mare into the front room as she levitated her bag towards a hook on the wall.

She stood silent in the doorway. All the lightness and confidence she’d felt before had rushed out the door, and for a moment she couldn’t reconcile the mare who’d played her teacher in front of the fillies and the one that stood in front of her now. How could she begin to explain anything that happened that morning?

“How did it go, dear?” The ease with which the unicorn glided through the room put her to shame - hadn't Rarity's entire life been in danger less than twelve hours ago? And now they were making small talk.

Diamond shook her head, dismissing the double-vision. Swallowing her discomfort, she affixed the same tight grin she’d worn when she’d knocked on the door.

“Rarity, it’s all done! And it went okay!”

“That’s wonderful news! You’ll have to tell me all about it, once I’ve situated myself. I feel like I’ve been rushing around all morning.”

“Oh yeah?” Diamond gave thanks for the change in subject. She had no idea how she could tell Rarity ‘all about’ anything she’d done, lest she start by describing that crushing weight she’d carried from her argument with Silvy.

“You wouldn’t believe what I had to deal with. How a shop called Sofas and Quills can be out of stock with such perfect consistency is beyond me.” Diamond’s abandoned bag floated into the air, and join with the unicorn’s own to hang on the wall.

“You needed new quills?”

“And another sofa, actually. If you hadn’t noticed, this room is frightfully lacking in furniture. Which is all well and good when one is working, but when one is entertaining...,” Rarity paused as she closed Sweetie’s book, setting it at the center of the table. The room once again in order, she looked back at Diamond.

“But, what am I saying? You look positively haggard, darling, I can only imagine how your morning must have been. I insist you come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

Lagging behind the unicorn, she followed her through a door she’d never seen before, set behind the room’s small stage. Behind the door was another world.

In the dim lighting, she could just make out lines of mirrors and conical hair dryers. It was only when Rarity turned on the overhead lights that she got a sense of the room’s size - it was huge, as if she were going behind the stage of a theater.

Whisking a blanket from a maroon couch in the corner, the unicorn beamed.

“When was the last time you had a makeover, dear?”

“A while ago, I guess? I really only get one on special occasions.”

“Yes, well, I’d consider this a special occasion, wouldn’t you? You embarked in the face of certain danger, and have returned unscathed. Not that that should keep you from a more regular beauty regimen, of course.”

“Aren’t you worried about customers coming in?”

“Not at all, actually. The boutique is on limited hours until next week, when I start taking orders for the festival. And all but my most... determined customers understand how to read a sign saying I’m closed.

“Now, I’ll be just a moment. In the meantime, could you wash your face? You’ll find soap and towels in the drawers on the wall. And please, remember to pat yourself dry, not rub.”

Diamond sighed at Rarity’s back as she disappeared into the front room. Staring at windows so frosted they reduced the world beyond to a dull blur, she felt confined. The stale, humid air of the back room was a world away from that airy lightness she’d felt before Rarity had appeared.

Taking in her surroundings, she began to explore. The room must only have seen visitors a few times a year, when the dressmaker debuted new clothing lines. Yet everything was in order, with spotless counters and the machinery of beauty standing at attention, ready to receive even the odd, unanticipated guest.

“Why, the conversation went wonderfully, Rarity. No problems at all.” She addressed one of the many vanity mirrors. Grinning again, she cringed. Rarity had been generous when she’d called her haggard. Deep, dark lines crowded under bloodshot eyes, sunk deep in a pale, washed-out face. A face that told the truth, where she did not.

I did better this time. I did. She had done everything Rarity had suggested and more. She’d held back and let Silvy throw it all in her face with a grace that the unicorn would be proud of. It even looked like Silvy and she would be friends after all.

So why do I feel so guilty? Frustrated, she wiped her hoof across the glass, staring in shock at the smudge marks it left along the surface.

Dust? She hadn’t seen dust anywhere in the boutique. Looking over the desk, she realized there was a thin layer of it on everything.

It’s because she shoved you in a closet, away from everyone, like always. But her doubt spoke with uncertainty. Turning away from the desk, she saw another room, one she’d missed at first glance. Here, a drawer ajar; there, a stray brush. The loose ends of so many minor tasks. She had seen disorder in the house before - cuts of cloth, lengths of ribbon and bits of lace scattered in Rarity’s bedroom like the aftermath of some creative explosion. This was different, a room strewn with an artless, unproductive carelessness she had never before seen from the unicorn.

It was a room that didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was: messy, underused, and full of potential. Diamond imagined it was what her own heart looked like, now that the shell of years had fallen away, and the fact that she could see herself in Rarity's house at all filled her with hope once again.

“Now, before we begin, I’ll need a precise list of your allergies.” Rarity stood in the doorway, accompanied by a small canister floating near her horn. “They refuse to use this kind of mud mask at the spa, though Heaven knows I’ve tried to convince them otherw- Oof.”

Diamond’s embrace caught the unicorn off-guard. Mussing that immaculate purple mane, she kissed her. What I wouldn’t give to do this in the sunlight. But here was Rarity, and here was she, and in the meeting of their bodies her concerns were forgotten. She pressed her lips against the unicorn’s, in a kiss that was as passionate, if not as graceful, as she’d imagined.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw all of Rarity. She saw the smile worn for her friends after Diamond burst into the shop, dirty and upset. The calm look of determination when she was advising Diamond about problems that were not hers but had become hers, brought to her doorstep by a careless pupil. The ease with which she’d cancelled, first her evening, then her afternoon with her friends. But it was here, in that dusty room, with Diamond, that she could be honest.

Rarity leaned down, and they were eye to eye, her muzzle a breath’s distance from the startled dressmaker.

“I’d like my reward now, Rarity.”

“Have you, ah, washed your face?”

“Not that reward.” She brushed her lips over Rarity’s, giggling as she felt them come away sheened with makeup.

“I see. If I recall, you had something you wanted to talk about?”

“Later.” Diamond brushed over her lips again, letting her muzzle linger, teasing with her tongue. In the dusty, hidden room she moved her mouth against the unicorn’s, sinking into her. When they parted again, Rarity’s cheeks had blossomed a deep shade of pink. Looking around them, Diamond realized the canister she had been levitating had hit the floor, scattering shards of clay and green spatters of mud around them.

“Shit, I’m sorry about that, I--”.

Rarity cut her off with a very unladylike snort. “Later. I have more pressing need of you in my bedroom.” Turning around, she cast a glance that fell somewhere between admonishing and come-hither. “And watch your language, young lady.”

Climbing the stairs from the living room, Diamond apologized again. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Really, don’t worry about it. I can think of a few ways you can make it up to me.”

When they reached the bedroom, she pressed herself against Rarity again. Their muzzles met again and she sank into the unicorn, exchanging heated breaths in their excitement, until the salty tang of sweat hit Diamond’s tongue. The raw, earthy taste excited her all the more, and she bit down on the unicorn’s lip, causing her to give a soft yelp.

“My, someone is eager. Perhaps I should hold out on you more often.” The dressmaker stood back, panting. She grinned at the look of shock on Diamond’s face. “Joking, dear. Now, up on the bed, you’ve more than earned it.”

Diamond started forwards, then paused. The taste of sweat still lingered on her tongue. Looking at Rarity again, she caught sight of an elusive drop making its way over the unicorn’s brow.

Rarity? Sweating? Diamond blinked, but the drop remained. Confused, she closed her eyes for a moment, trying to get her bearings. She breathed in the heavy air of the room, taking in the light, clean odor of sweat, the sharp notes of White Diamonds, and above it all, the strong, assertive scent of unicorn’s desire. It was enthralling, far overpowering her own. How could she be so excited, when I’m the one who...

She didn’t get off either. The realization startled her. Diamond had asked to be punished, had been given something suspiciously close to pleasure, and then the unicorn had let her run off without a word about her own needs. And now she was getting ready to indulge her, putting herself last again.

How does she bear it?

“Is something the matter, darling?”

The muscles on Diamond’s back twitched just thinking about the burden Rarity carried with her from her bedroom, something she’d only made worse in her ignorance. The weight she’d felt after her confession to Silvy was nothing in comparison.

Diamond shook her head. “Rarity, I want you up on the bed.”

“Okay, was there some position you had in mind-”.

“No, I mean- I wanna do you first.”

“‘Do me’, hm?” The unicorn’s coy giggle played over her spine. “The last I checked, it was I who was supposed to ‘do’ you. You’ve earned-”.

“Please?”

“Well, if you insist. Far be it from me to decline such a generous offer.” Rarity mounted the bed, sweeping her now-disheveled mane to the side and lifting her rear, presenting herself in profile. “How would you like me?”

Now. Under me. Screaming in pleasure. “Uh,” Diamond stumbled over her thoughts. “Lying down. On your back. Please.”

She found herself salivating in anticipation as she climbed up. She had never been on top with Rarity, and the change in perspective was amazing. The unicorn’s body stretched out before her, taut with desire, a playground of alabaster and indigo.

But where to start?

Her ears twitched with the seductive memories of teeth and tongue, and she began to explore the soft expanse of the unicorn’s neck with her mouth, licking up and down and moving up to nip at her ears. Rarity sighed below her, giving a brief but promising moan when she ran her teeth along her right ear, but still, it wasn’t enough.

Sitting back, something else caught her eye. The unicorn’s horn jutted out at her, its rounded tip beckoning with all the mystique of a hundred schoolyard rumors about that particular piece of anatomy.

“Rarity, can I touch your horn?”

“Yes, Diamond, you may.” Rarity shifted beneath her, propping herself up on the pillows to look her in the eye and making Diamond shiver from the friction of skin on skin. “Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t ask sooner.”

Getting down to business, she sized up the horn as she might an exotic animal, marveling at the delicate curve of the spiral groove inscribed in its pale surface. Satisfied with the first part of her examination, she brought her hoof up, just making contact. The unicorn gave an approving sigh.

“Oh, wow, is it really sensitive?”

“Usually not, but it will be, if you keep it up.”

Emboldened by Rarity’s words, she slid her hoof over the shaft, brushing over the length. The surface was smooth, like warm marble, and when the mare beneath her sighed again her mind filled with questions.

“Should I put it in my mouth? I mean, like, a hornjob?”

“If you’d like. In fact, I’d very much enjoy a ‘hornjob’. Just let me know before you start.” Rarity’s eyes were closed, and she was nodding in time with Diamond’s strokes.

“Is something gonna come out? Because I heard that-”. Slamming her hoof over her mouth, she stopped, mortified. “Wow, this is awkward.”

“Pardon?”

“The questions. Sorry, I’m totally ruining the mood.”

“Diamond, could you get up for a moment?”

She rolled onto the bed, desperate to bury herself and her shame in the pillows. But when she looked at Rarity again, the unicorn was smiling.

“Diamond, I appreciate your curiosity. I really do.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I can imagine few things sexier than a lover who wishes to know how to pleasure me properly.” Rarity’s eyes roamed her body, comforting and teasing, “Except, perhaps, that same lover in my bed, applying the lesson she’s learned.” Lips pressed against hers, and she moaned, her heated body reminding her that the unicorn wasn’t the only one overdue for release.

“If you’ll just give me a moment...”

With her magic, Rarity produced a single towelette from the bedside drawer. As it ran over the horn, Diamond imagined her worries being washed away as well. Any shame she had felt before was gone, dispelled by the unicorn’s gentle words, and as she watched she felt desire, hot and pulsing from her core, rising to the surface once again.

“My horn is spotless, of course, but I understand it's rather lacking in taste.”

“I don’t care how your horn tastes, Rarity.” Diamond mounted the unicorn’s chest once again, staring into those blue - azure. Deep, sparkling azure - eyes. “I don’t care at all.”

“You say that now, but--”.

She cut Rarity off with a kiss. The unicorn’s sigh breezed over her muzzle, but when Diamond began to pull back, to issue some half-hearted apology, Rarity pushed forward. They melted into each other. She had never been so aggressive, so hungry for the unicorn’s mouth, and with wet, smacking kisses she devoured her. When they parted, she recognized the hunger in Rarity’s eyes as her own.

“Teach me.”

“You can start with your tongue, if you like.”

Remembering how the unicorn had teased her the day before, she resolved to take her time. She began running her tongue down the horn’s length, letting it follow the natural curve of the spiral, tasting the sweetness of oranges from her preparations. Her hooves had misled her, and with a more sensitive, probing organ she could feel a softness to the horn as well. Caressing it with her tongue, she followed the spiral back up, repeating the motion again as Rarity sighed beneath her.

“Good. Now, how do you feel about using your mouth?”

Not yet. She licked again, harder, dragging a moan of surprise from the unicorn. She massaged the shaft, trying to get at whatever lay beneath - that raw, dusty essence under the perfume and beauty products. By the time she withdrew, the horn lay glistening before her, coated in her saliva.

“Oh, dear.” The unicorn’s chest rose and fell in rapid beats against her hindquarters. Diamond felt desire rising again, bubbling below the surface. She stifled a moan of need. Not yet, her first.

“Oh, dear,” repeated Rarity, with a little more authority now that she had caught her breath. “That was... very good. Now, about your mouth...”

Diamond pounced, capturing the tip of the horn in her mouth and grinning at the resulting gasp from the unicorn. Teach me, Rarity. Teach me your body.

“Good. Very good.” The instructions continued, unsteady and breathless. “And r- remember, no need to rush, dear. Just start slow, up and down, like before, with your tongue.”

No need to rush. A reminder to her body as much as herself. Diamond pushed down, letting the hard-but-soft fullness of the horn rub along her tongue, stopping only when the round tip nudged the back of her palate. She brought her head back, letting her tongue glide over the shaft again, until the tip was between her lips. Up and down.

Rarity arched her back, brushing the soft bristles of her coat along her swollen nether lips, and Diamond almost bit down on the horn as she struggled to keep her balance. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she scolded the unicorn below her. Not fair. The unicorn’s forelegs pressed against her hips, gentle but insistent, and their bodies slid together once again, establishing an unsteady rhythm.

Soon they were moving in concert, her mouth moving up and down the horn in slow, shuddering strokes. No need to rush. But there was that maddening friction growing between her slit and the unicorn’s body. Between her teeth, she felt a tremor, something deep inside Rarity pushing to reach the surface.

“Diamond?” Her name, a question. Her response - not in words, but a cessation of motion, her mouth still holding the object of desire. The air was heavy with sweat and anticipation, hers and Rarity’s.

“Faster, please.”

Please. Please please me. Asking, not commanding. Diamond’s mouth plunged over the horn, enthralled by the feeling of Rarity's body writhing beneath her. In the rough, wild strokes of their bodies there was an equality - the same thing she'd felt when Rarity had called her 'lover'. The distance between them had collapsed, leaving only the need of one body for another.

The horn had begun to hum. She thought she’d imagined it at first, but it was clear now, a slight, warm vibrato pulsing with Rarity’s essence. Faster and faster, her tongue washed over the horn, her mouth slipping over its length in fumbling, awkward ecstasy. Her body danced to the cadence of the unicorn’s pleasure, soft, sharp notes in time with the movement of her tongue. Rarity pressed hard on her hips, arching her back again.

“Fuck!” Diamond cried out as hot release tore through her body. Not fair. Rarity was supposed to come first. Heedless of her protest, her hips pushed forward, teats slipping over a coat slick with sweat and her own juices.

“Fuck,” she shouted again as she pressed down, grinding her button against the unicorn. She could feel another climax building, stronger than the first, all that delayed pleasure threatening to overwhelm her.

Latching back onto the horn, she attacked it, almost choking as the fullness pushed towards her throat. Something drove her, something deeper than that deep, pulling desire that had followed her from that very room the day before. It was the memory of dust upon mirrors. It was something secret, all that easy, unpracticed beauty most ponies would never see. She thought she could taste it before, and she could taste it again now. The horn vibrated against her teeth, driving into her bones.

Rarity screamed, and the world burst into azure.

“You really meant it when you said I did ‘wonderfully’?”

“Of course I did. I’ve never received quite that level of... attention from another pony before.”

Diamond lazed on a pillow, eyes on Rarity as she sipped a cold glass of water, crinkling her nose at the sour taste of lemon. The unicorn was about as messy as she had been the night before, but in spite of that she’d only interrupted their conversation once, to retrieve drinks for both of them.

“Well, you get some credit too, right? For, uh, helping.”

They had been talking for what seemed like hours. After the brief, satisfied silence that followed the light show at the conclusion of their lovemaking, Rarity had given her a short briefing on unicorn anatomy. Most of it was stuff she’d figured out during the act, but hearing it from Rarity was fascinating.

“I suppose, but don’t sell yourself short. You’re a fast learner, dear. I daresay, a natural.”

The conversation about Silvy had been brief. Diamond had recapped the morning she’d spend at Sugarcube Corner and their argument in the schoolyard, with Rarity lending her a sympathetic ear. Despite how worried she’d been the day before, the unicorn hadn’t asked many questions, beyond the occasional “Really?” and “How could she?”. Not that Diamond minded - she was happy to leave it behind, along with all the unpleasant feelings that had come up with it. They each had their own burdens to bear.

Rarity’s horn sparkled, levitating the pitcher of water she’d brought from the kitchen to top off their glasses. Thought it was a simple spell, she found herself gazing at the azure aura, recalling the beautiful burst of energy that had filled the room during Rarity’s orgasm. A lady does not experience ‘horngasms’. Nor does a gentlepony, for that matter.

“At this rate, I’ll have run out of class material before our eight weeks are up. Though I’m sure it would be entertaining to learn some things together.”

Diamond sat up. Eight weeks. She’d forgotten. Or rather, at some point she’d wanted to forget, shuffling it away in the same place as her list of required summer reading. Time had slowed to a crawl since the day she’d stepped into the boutique to threaten the unicorn whose bed she now occupied.

“Yes, dear?”

Rarity smiled at her, in the warm, lingering afterglow of sex, eyes probing with curiosity. Diamond realized she had been staring. Wordless, her gaze remained, remembering another smile, one that had greeted her on that day she’d burst into the shop to confront the dressmaker. It wasn’t so different from the one Rarity had worn for her friends, when she’d had to cover for a different dramatic entrance. Behind that smile, a terrible burden - the weight of wanting to say something but remaining silent, of wanting something without acting.

“Is something the matter?”

“I don’t wanna have class anymore, Rarity.”

“Pardon?”

“I don’t wanna have class.” She spoke with the lightness of her afternoon revelation and the wildness of the midnight breeze at her window. “Like, I do, I know I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I can’t pretend to just be your student anymore. Like, when we’re together, alone. And I don’t want you to call me your student. Uh, unless you’re tying me up or something, I kinda like that.”

“Well, I suppose that’s fine. I’ll be more judicious about using those terms when we’re together.” Rarity gave an easy, amorous grin. “And we can discuss what I’m going to call you before I begin ‘tying you up’.”

Eight weeks. So little time, now. Too little time to spend in that messy bed. She couldn’t believe it was only her who had changed since their first encounter. If she hadn’t come crashing into the shop that second time, their lives would have gone on, their brief encounter a ripple in a stream of unabated, mundane normality.

And after it’s over? Forget it, she couldn’t think about that now.

“Also, I wanna come over more, not just on Fridays.”

“But, dear, your friend’s suspicions-”.

“I’ll take care of it, Rarity. For real this time. Her and my father. I’ll be more careful. It’s not like they’re watching me all the time.”

The unicorn paused, weighing Diamond’s plea. “Once a week, then.” Diamond breathed a sigh of relief as the grin crept back onto her muzzle. “Tuesdays should work. We can say you’re helping with the extra orders I’ll be taking on for the festival.”

“Twice.”

“Once, and we’ll talk about it later.”

“Fine.” She collapsed onto the pillow, resting her eyes with a satisfaction she hadn’t felt in ages, at least since the whole mess with Silvy had started. Her gambit had worked. She could feel it, a new project forming beneath her hooves, and her whole body tingled, like a leg she’d been leaning on too long coming back to life. Eight weeks wasn’t much time, but it would have to be enough.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Rolling over, she opened her eyes again. Rarity was examining her, eyebrows raised in a look that was at once both amused and incredulous.

“Also, you need to get Sweetie and her friends to hang out with me.” She’d only mentioned the encounter she’d had with the two Crusaders that afternoon in passing, still unsure what it meant, but intent on finding out.

“Really? The last I heard, you weren’t exactly their favorite classmate.”

“I know. But it’s important.”

“I’ll see what I can do about Sweetie, but I make no promises.”

She closed her eyes again, and there was silence in the bedroom. She had changed, she had been changed, and both were good. So distracted was she with the possibilities of the coming weeks, she couldn’t even hear the clock ticking away the minutes against the wall. All she could see was azure.

“Rarity?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

The floor was clean. At least, as clean as it had been five minutes before, when Rarity had scrubbed the last of the mud mask from the checkered tile and lavender linoleum of the salon. As clean as it ever would be, she supposed, no matter how much she stared at it. Task completed, she had returned from disposing of the mess in the kitchen to scour the surface with her eyes.

Reckless, she admonished herself. She had lost control when Diamond embraced her, magic blinking out and sending the clay vessel plummeting to the floor. Not that it had cost her anything - both the mud and the container were easily replaced - but it was the principle of the thing. Losing control of one’s magic, especially in front of others, was something of an embarrassment.

Reckless, but you loved it, she corrected. In the moment, she hadn’t felt embarrassed at all. More to the point, what she could remember was the feeling of the girl’s lips pressing into hers, and the heady anticipation of taking her to bed again.

Sighing, Rarity completed her inspection, turning off the lights and shutting the door. The dust that had come up with the mud and clay reminded her once again that she needed to do a thorough housecleaning at some point before the week’s end, when she would be flooded with orders for the festival.

The boutique was silent, minus the ticking of the clock from the kitchen. Ticking that reminded her of the appointment she’d broken earlier. I suppose I can pick Opal up this evening, poor dear. She must be in an absolutely wretched state without her Mommy. In her bedroom, there was the gentle breathing of a filly who had woken up too early that morning to complete the homework Rarity had assigned to her.

Not homework. It was her choice. Diamond had been quite insistent about not using school terms, for reasons Rarity had yet to decipher. Nor is she a filly, dear. Fillies don’t do those kinds of things with their tongues.

Rarity sighed again, disturbing the stillness of the front room. She had been contradicting herself with some frequency in the past few days. When the girl had run into the shop to warn Rarity of her troubles, her first instinct had been to put a stop to everything. Instead, she’d put her through the pain of a breakup and committed them both to the continued deceit of every pony around them.

Her choice, not yours. You put her through nothing she hadn’t chosen.

And then again, a few hours earlier, when Diamond had wanted to mount her. Rarity's better reasoning had objected, that it was hardly proper for a mare and an independent business owner to be writhing beneath a pony so many years her junior. That, besides which, they hadn’t even established the proper relationship between who was in charge and who wasn’t, and how would Rarity’s acceptance be read by a girl who had such a sense of entitlement to begin with?

And yet... Rarity shook her head, itching to get away from her thoughts. Retreating upstairs, she surveyed her inspiration room, seeking out something with which to distract herself. Her eyes lighted on the sketchbook she’d set aside the day before, when she had declared a one-week cessation of work. Looking doesn’t count.

Flipping back the cover, she examined the bare, graphite bones of her craft. The first page was marked with indecision, a design she couldn’t quite put her hoof on. Half the sheet contained a modest ball gown. Demure in cut, the viewer could go so far as to judge it ‘cute’, fitted as it was for a child. On the other, a more daring version of the same, tasteful, yet accenting the fuller body of a mare.

She snorted, tossing the book aside. The outlines were, in fact, for the dress she’d been designing for Diamond in preparation for the town’s upcoming festivities. She’d wrestled with the concept for hours before she’d set it aside, deciding to leave the choice up to the customer herself.

She won’t have to worry about matching colors with her date, at least. Rarity shrugged the thought away, retrieving the sketchbook and placing it back upon the desk. Not your fault.

Glancing back at the bed, her eyes lingered on the girl. Would she even be looking for a date, now that everything had fallen through with that other filly? Hopefully, said part of her. I would hope not, said another.

Opening the sketchbook up once again, she levitated a pencil, letting it hang above the paper. It would be good for her to find a date, she suggested, cutting away some of the fabric on the smaller dress. Another partner would simplify things - there was no way their arrangement would continue, she wouldn’t allow it, and surely Diamond knew better than to try managing yet another secret relationship.

And yet... She glanced at the gown’s provocative twin. The pencil rushed down, intent on crossing it out, erasing the possibility, only to stop right above it. What if she’s not planning on finding a date? In the discussion after their lovemaking, Rarity had said nothing to push her in that direction, and been too quick to concede when the girl had made her demands.

The pencil hung in the air, idle. It was the lovemaking itself that did it. Her climax had left her off-balance. How was it possible for one so young to pleasure her more than any partner her own age? The girl had been beyond attentive. Her desire to learn, her responsiveness to Rarity’s instructions, had given the act a discomforting intimacy.

With a final sigh, she set the pencil down, closing the journal and resigning herself to the bed. Diamond murmured, speaking the nonsense language of sleep. The unicorn contemplated her a moment more before she let her hoof rest on her shoulder. The argument wasn’t going to be resolved that day, and perhaps that was for the best. As long as she made sure to enforce her limits, it might even be fun. In the meantime, she would enjoy the soft breathing of the girl beside her, letting it overtake the ticking of the clock.

Eight more weeks. Perhaps.

Discipline & Pleasure

Every afternoon, between 12 and 1, the curtains were drawn at the Carousel Boutique. A sign would then be placed on the door, written in neat, flowing script, informing the reader that the dress shop is closed at the moment, to reopen at precisely 1 p.m., and apologizing for any inconvenience this might cause. The door was unlocked, but no pony had ever been so crass as to disregard the regretful guardian posted at the door. Everypony knew the Boutique was closed.

This was Rarity’s alone time. Within her temporal oasis, she was uninterrupted by customers, sisters, or friends. Even Opal was confined to a single, albeit large, back room. Sometimes candles would be lit. Occasionally music would be played. On this particular day she had opted for lilac incense.

In the bedroom upstairs, the white mare’s hoof traveled down her belly towards her nether region. Her body shivered on the bed as she teased her nipples, already erect in anticipation. As her hoof dipped lower, running along her outer lips, she realized just how wet she was.

Strange, her heat wasn’t due for another week. Perhaps it was the stallion who had visited her shop earlier that day. Broad shoulders, tight flank...he didn’t seem particularly interesting, she pondered, but he might be good for a roll in the hay.

A translucent purple aura surrounded her horn as she delved into the bottom drawer of her nightstand. She levitated it from beneath the few bolts of fabric thrown over it for cover. The blue dildo made its way to her spread hind legs, its large head running over the glistening lips of her pussy, lingering over her clit. A low buzzing sound emanated from the shaft as the unicorn used her magic to start it vibrating. She teased herself with the toy, and a moan escaped her lips. Normally she would take longer, drawing the act out for the whole hour she has allotted herself, but the delicious burning in her hindquarters wouldn’t be denied.

As she meditated upon the pleasures soon to be visited upon her body, a knocking on the door below disrupted her thoughts. Very occasionally, she was reminded that not all ponies understand manners in the same way she does, and this lead them to disregard even the clearest and most politely-written notes. They failed to understand how a mare that woke up before dawn in order to take their orders, design and create their outfits might take some time for herself during the day. Thankfully, they usually took the hint after their initial attempts to summon her failed.

That day, however, the knocking continued. While she was tempted to dismiss this impatient customer - if it were her friends they would have at least called out to her - there was no way she could get down to business with such a distraction. Rarity was then faced with the undesirable task of putting off her impending ecstasy to answer the door and turn away said customer as politely as possible.

Who knows, she thought, perhaps it would be the stallion from earlier? She could only hope.

With a sigh, she placed her blue friend back in the drawer, replacing the cloth on top of it. Tying on her long bathrobe in order to avoid any awkward questions, she moved downstairs and to the front door to meet her instructionally-impaired visitor.

Only when she cracked the door open to peer out, there was nopony there. It was when she looked down that she noticed the pale magenta earth pony in front of her.

“Well, it’s about time! I can’t wait around here all day” exclaimed Diamond Tiara, one eyebrow raised as she contemplated the older mare at the door.

Realizing who it is, Rarity almost lost her poise. She felt herself assuming her lecturing stance, shoulders raised and brow lowering, but reason quickly took over. If I start arguing with her, I’ll be lucky if I get 10 minutes to myself this afternoon.

Affixing her most gracious customer-disarming smile, she addressed her sister’s nemesis, “Apologies for the inconvenience, Ms. Tiara, I was, hmm, busy with another customer’s order. Now, what--”.

“Look, I’m in a hurry. My father sent me to pick up my dress for tonight, and I have other things to do this afternoon.”

Rarity paused. The dress was ready - well, almost ready. “If I’m not mistaken, you were due to pick it up at close today, so it’s not quite ready. If you’ll just come back later on--”.

“My father told me to tell you that this was extremely important, and that you’d understand how valuable our time is.” The young earth pony’s voice raised higher. “You understand, don’t you?”

Rarity needed to get the filly off her doorstep as quickly as possible before she attracted somepony’s attention - an argument with a customer, especially in public, was hardly good for business. “Yes, okay, well, do come in, we’ll work something out.”

She contemplated her options as she let the earth pony into the shop. At this point, she was torn between delivering one of her class-A dressing downs of Ponyville’s most stuck-up filly or just skewering her on her knitting needles. This was absolutely horrible - not only had her break been ruined, but that burning in her haunches hadn’t left. Not to mention that she was being ordered around by somepony her sister’s age.

As the white unicorn turned to Diamond Tiara, she felt a twinge in her loins. Her unwelcome guest was looking at the dresses on display around the room, swishing her tail back and forth, inadvertently giving the horny mare a provocative view of her hindquarters.

Rarity’s taste in the bedroom was rather diverse. While she preferred stallions, Ponyville’s overwhelming majority of mares meant that same-sex pairings were common. She’d had her share of flings and a few serious relationships, but her true desires remained unsatisfied. As many times as her eyes lingered over Sweetie Belle’s young friends, she was reminded that to do anymore than look would be impossible.

“Hello? Where’s my dress?”

Rarity started, blushing briefly, hoping that she hadn’t been caught staring at the young mare’s flank. “Just a moment. Ah, well...I was going to ask this when you came by to pick it up, but when was the last time you were fitted? The measurements your father gave me seemed a bit, ah, outdated.”

The young mare exhaled in frustration. “I don’t remember, probably last year, it wasn’t that long ago.”

The dressmaker’s eyes glimmered, feeling the balance of power shifting back in her direction. “Well young lady, we mustn't have you going out in ill-fitting déguisement. It would be an embarrassment for both of us. Now, up on the stage, the sooner I take your measurements, the sooner you have your dress.”

Diamond Tiara began to protest, stopping short when Rarity furrowed her brow in further disapproval. “Fine. But this better be quick.” She made her way to the table in a corner of the room, mounting it with care.

The dressmaker contemplated her subject. Through the drawn curtains, afternoon sunlight played upon the smooth magenta back of the young mare. Though she already had her cutiemark, she was still in that period of transition between filly and adult. Her body was filling out, though, especially her flank. Rarity felt a renewed wetness in her hindquarters, her scent blending with the lavender wafting through the house. She hoped the candles were strong enough to mask her growing arousal.

Tools rose from their resting places as the unicorn moved through the shop. She advanced on her customer wielding measuring tape between her hooves. Slowly, she ran the tape across her back, carefully measuring her shoulders. As she bent down to read the measurement on her forelegs, she peeked between the younger mare’s haunches, licking her lips at the sight of the girl’s budding pink teats. It wasn’t just her flank that was filling out.

All the while, she talked to her customer. “My, you have been growing, it’s a good thing we took these measurements before your dress was completed, otherwise who knows what would have happened.”

Tiara’s shoulders rose at the comment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rarity moved her hoof slowly, almost sensually over the young one’s back as she stretched out the measuring tape. “Why, it means you’re growing up, dear. Anypony can tell that. I would be surprised if you didn’t already have a colt-friend.” The tape had reached its terminus at the beginning of her striped tail, and the unicorn’s hoof lingered.

The young mare seemed satisfied with this, and beneath her hooves the unicorn can feel her relax. “Actually, I don’t. Not yet, at least. My father would never approve. Not until I’m older.”

This was music to Rarity’s ears. Her body was moving like clockwork now, completing the measurements on the girl’s back. “How about a marefriend? Surely there must be somepony.”

She pressed more firmly as she ran the tape over the debutante’s croup, gliding her hooves over the soft rump. Tiara shifted under the pressure. “I’m sorry, am I hurting you? I have to press hard to make sure you’ll have just the right measurement.”

The teenager glanced towards her. “I’m fine. And no, I don’t have a marefriend right now either.” Rarity’s hooves linger over the crown-shaped cutiemarks on the girl’s smooth rear, pressing down as she pretended to read the tape.

“Is there much more you need to do?”

Rarity didn’t respond, humming to herself softly, entranced by another sensation - the tell-tale scent of the filly’s desire. She felt the hips between her hooves squirming.

“I think I need to go,” whined the filly.

Rarity held her customer in place, raising her head to look her in the eye. The girl’s eyes were wide. “Nonsense. You intruded upon my break time with so much urgency, and I simply must have these measurements if I’m going to finish your dress for you. Is this understood?”

Her hooves still on the filly’s rear, she waited until the girl nodded to remove them. The unicorn could feel sweat beading her brow as she wrote down the information she needed. “We wouldn’t want your father finding out how his daughter lacks the proper respect for her elders.” She knelt down carefully before the younger mare, tape in hooves.

“And besides, we’re almost finished. I just need to measure your inseam and we’ll be all set.”

Rarity licked her lips once again - her mouth was cotton. Up to this point, everything she had done could be dismissed as professional conduct, but she was skirting a very dangerous line. I should just insist she go home, take care of myself, and finish the dress afterwards.

Her new position gave her a clear view of Diamond Tiara’s magenta belly. She bit her lip and suppressed a gasp as she once again took in her customer’s still-developing teats, topped with small pink pearls.

Breathing deeply to focus, she could still smell the distinct musky perfume of a very turned on young mare. She felt overwhelmed. Okay Rarity, here goes. She still wasn’t sure what she was doing as she began to wrap the tape around the filly’s right haunch.

The unicorn felt the filly’s muscles tighten under her hooves as she held still. She almost felt bad for the girl - she was most certainly in over her head on this. Almost. Serves her right for being such a bother. And so spoiled! Rarity’s hoof made its way over the unexplored territory of the girl’s right breast, pressing against it as she moved to take the measurement.

They both gasped as the unicorn’s hoof grazed a pink nipple.

Rarity’s head jerked up in concern, but her hooves remained in place, pressing upon Tiara’s breast. “Are you okay, dear?” She hadn’t intended to do that. That dangerous line was becoming thinner and thinner.

The filly’s scowl had returned. “Y-yes, I’m fine, look, are you done yet? This is taking forever and I--” she yelped as Rarity cinched the tape tighter around her breast, her hard nipple straining against it.

“Young lady, must I remind you once again that I am the proprietor of this establishment? You won’t take that tone with me again.”

Despite how turned on she was, Rarity was in full-on lecture mode. “I work here, so I make the rules. And I am in no mood to suffer an out-of-sorts filly who’s in need of a good toss, no matter how much her father is paying me.”

She yanked the tape away as her young customer wheeled around to face her.. The look on the unicorn’s face stopped her cold, though. She watched the frown disappear, replaced by the look Sweetie Belle would have given her had she just been castigated for leaving a mess in the kitchen - apprehension and embarrassment creeping their way onto the girl’s beautiful visage. The filly began to back away slowly, stopping when she ran out of table.

Rarity was fuming. All she had wanted was an hour to herself, and now she had to put up with this? Her anger was quickly clearing, however, as she processed Diamond Tiara’s expression of shock, and smelled the same musky scent she caught when she was near the filly’s rear, now stronger, mixing with her own.

Looking into the girl’s blue eyes, she glimpsed something unexpected - a guarded longing, an echo of her own, straining towards the surface. The unicorn decided to press the advantage.

She cleared her throat, assuming as dignified a pose as she could muster given that she had just lost her composure with a customer after something resembling sexual assault. She removed her bathrobe, already half undone, shrugging it off and leaving herself bare. In a level voice she addressed the filly.

“Look. When I was your age, my mare friends and I figured out how to...well, how to take care of each other, when we needed to.”

She moved closer to the smaller pony, slowly circling the stage as a predator hedging in its prey, tail sweeping aside to give the girl a look at her engorged teats and glistening marehood between those jeweled flanks. Seeing Diamond Tiara’s eyes following her, she said flatly “I don’t mean to be forward, but we simply can’t have you distracted while I’m going about my business.”

Diamond Tiara’s eyes widened again as she took in the older mare’s body, and her suggestions. Despite the show of bravado, Rarity was incredibly nervous, and with her bathrobe off she was acutely aware of her nakedness.

The girl’s brow furrowed in thought, her mouth moving to form a response that wouldn’t come. Then slowly, deliberately, with all the weight and authority her passing years had bestowed upon her, she nodded her head.

Rarity raised one eyebrow, her lips forming into a gentle smirk as she mounted the table. She approached the magenta pony as Opal stalked balls of yarn, eager yet measured steps, taking her time. When she reached the younger mare, she stopped about a meter away and rested on her haunches, once again treating her to a full view of her belly. Diamond Tiara had assumed a similar position, and each took in the mare before her.

Rarity broke the silence, “Have you ever been...intimate with another pony?” The question felt awkward but merited given the circumstances.

The young mare blushed as she answered, “Only a few times, and we never did much,” head lowering to survey the table below her. Rarity moved closer, until she was a breath away from the magenta filly, and gently placed a hoof on the girl’s cheek, guiding her gaze upwards until their eyes meet again.

“Inexperience is nothing to be ashamed of. Would you like to kiss me?” Seeing Tiara nod, the unicorn smiled, almost sisterly. “We’ll start from there, then.”

Rarity lowered her eyelids as she moved her face to the filly’s. She was careful, artful in spite of her excitement, avoiding overwhelming her partner. Her lips brushed over the girl’s mouth as she ran a hoof through her mane, urging her closer. After a few minutes, she felt the earth pony’s tongue on her lips, and her mouth opened, accepting it.

Their tongues played upon each other, dancing as the younger mare wrapped her forelegs around her neck, leaning into her. Tiara’s fumbling eagerness excited her. It seemed the girl had underestimated herself.

After what seemed like an eternity, the dressmaker gently pulled her head away, breaking their embrace. Rarity’s chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath, surprised at the passion of the kiss. The earth pony leaned into the unicorn, and Rarity kissed her brow.

“That was wonderful, darling. I don’t know where you got the idea that you weren’t good at it. Modesty is becoming of a lady, but you should take pride where it is due.”

Diamond Tiara blushed again and grinned. “You weren’t so bad yourself. Let’s do it again?”

The unicorn raised an eyebrow, “Weren’t so bad, eh?”

They kissed again, deeper, more passionately. Rarity ran a hoof over her partner’s foreleg, then moved it lower, over her side and then let it linger near her thigh. She did this a few times, moving up and down her back, probing, questioning. Finally, Diamond Tiara pushed her hoof towards her stomach.

Rarity moved her hoof lower, caressing the other mare’s smaller teats, gently massaging her nipples. Diamond Tiara moaned into her mouth and drove her tongue deeper with urgency. The room was filled with the scent of their lust, blending together and intoxicating the unicorn. She kneaded the teenager’s teats with her hoof as the earth pony spread her legs wider.

She dipped her hoof lower. Pressing against the magenta mound, she felt the young mare’s wetness. Diamond Tiara thrust into her, arching her back, willing her to push deeper. The unicorn paused for a moment, lingering there. She broke their kiss again, leaning back on her haunches.

“Darling,” she panted, “a lady must always remember to give as good as she receives.”

Diamond Tiara got the hint. The mare brought unsteady hooves up to the dressmaker’s teats, massaging them and caressing her nipples. The unicorn returned her hoof to the jewel beneath the young one’s teats, gliding up and down and enjoying the moans she evoked with her ministrations. As her hoof ran to the top of the girl’s slit, Tiara cried out, burying her head into the unicorn's shoulder.

Rarity sighed and brought her other hoof down to her own marehood, rubbing herself in earnest.

She sensed the girl was getting close. With some effort, she pulled her hoof away from her lover’s steaming nether-region, resisting her attempts to push it back.

The debutant whined, desperate for release. “Why did you stop?”

The unicorn adopted a stern look and stood up. “I think we need to figure out a more...mutual arrangement. So if you’ll be so kind as to follow me upstairs, I think we can work something out.”

With that, she dismounted the table and moves towards the stairwell, giving Diamond Tiara no choice but to follow or be left behind. On the stairwell she walked ahead of the girl, swishing her tail from side to side, enticing her.

They stopped at the door to her bedroom. “Enter,” she instructed. “Onto the bed.”

The younger mare climbed onto the dressmaker’s queen-sized four-post bed, eyes trained on the other pony in anticipation. Rarity moved towards her with a slight frown of disapproval. “So Ponyville’s wealthiest filly doesn’t know how to share. I will forgive you because of your age and upbringing, but these behaviors must be broken early or they can become habitual. Clearly you need to be taught some manners.”

Diamond Tiara balked at the criticism. “Why are you lecturing me? I don’t need to be taught anything! You can’t talk to me like this.”

Rarity took the yelling in stride as she made her way to the edge of the bed - she had accepted high-pitched noises as an inevitable product of this encounter. Before the filly could continue, she pressed her muzzle into the girl’s, willing her to be quiet. The younger mare struggled, intent on continuing her rant, but as soon as her mouth opened the unicorn slipped her tongue in, causing her guest to give a muffled squeak.

Feeling the girl yield to her, she broke the kiss and, lowering her voice, and continued. “We’re going to play a game. I’m going to pleasure you beyond anything you’ve ever experienced before. But you’re going to have to return the favor. I’m not going to let you come until I do. Understand?”

Tiara nodded her head once again.

“Good. Now, onto your back.”

The earth pony followed her orders, falling backwards onto the bed, stomach exposed. Seeing this, the unicorn moved between the girl’s haunches, running her tongue over her steaming slit, claiming her prize as she writhed from the attention.

Rarity moved to the other side of the bed, and looked over her nubile guest once again with approval, licking her lips at the sight of her heaving, swelling breast and glistening slit. “Would you like to taste yourself, little one?”

In response, the girl brought her muzzle up to meet the unicorn’s. She kissed the debutant once again, hard on the mouth. Rarity played her tongue against the girl’s teeth before plunging it deep into her mouth. Their tongues danced with each other, the unicorn leading with the earth pony close behind.

Climbing onto the bed, Rarity positioned herself so that her head was directly over the young one’s mound. Never one to rush, she savored the view of the girl’s secret treasure.

She ran her tongue over the girl’s left breast, then took the sensitive nipple into her mouth. Diamond Tiara sighed in pleasure, squeaking as teeth graze her. Her right breast received the same treatment. Rarity bathed the peaks with her saliva, nuzzling them, worshiping them.

The unicorn ceased her ministrations at once and leaned back to bring her rear closer to the muzzle of the girl beneath her. For a moment, the bed was still. A shiver ran through her body as she felt small hooves press into her heavy teats.

Rarity pushed back gently against the pressure on her abdomen, moaning in pleasure. The filly began to play with her nipples, rubbing her hooves against them. The friction on her teats increased, and finally Rarity felt what she had been waiting for - the tentative lick at her steaming cleft.

Her body flooded with pleasure. She gave a soft note of encouragement, and Diamond Tiara began moving her tongue over the unicorn’s slit, hooves still pressed against her nipples. Rarity rocked back and forth on the teenager’s muzzle, dragging her teats across the girl’s chest.

A strong believer in teaching by example, her tongue extended downwards, dipping into the the filly’s pink flower. The unicorn’s touch was gentle but firm, mindful of her lover’s limited experience. When she reached the girl’s clit she flicked her tongue over the rigid protrusion.

She smirked as Tiara thrust her hips towards her. She gave a long lick, parting the girl’s lips lapping at the button on top. Bringing her muzzle down again, she snaked her tongue down into the mound, enjoying the sensation of the mare writhing under her.

She pumped the muscle in and out, feeling the girl mimic her as a less-experienced tongue entered her pussy. They moved their hips in time with each other and establish a rhythm, thrusting into each other.

Rarity moved her tongue faster through the filly’s dripping pussy, feeling the pressure begin to build in her own. She pulled her tongue out slowly, savoring the feeling, the taste.

The girl under her moaned, and from behind her she heard a complaint, “Why did you stop?” The voice was impatient but no longer angry, the rough edges of the filly’s personality smoothed by the need for release.

Rarity was merciless. “Do you want me to finish, young one? You have some work to do still.”

The mare below her renewed her efforts on her hindquarters, rubbing her tongue over the unicorn’s engorged clit. Rarity cried out at this new wave of pleasure - she was so close. She knelt down further, impaling herself on the girl’s muzzle, and buried herself in the filly’s behind.

Her tongue deep inside the girl, she twisted it, pushing towards the top. She delved into the filly with abandon, pushing her young lover to previously undiscovered plateaus of bliss. The young mare convulsed under her, pushing her muzzle deeper into the white unicorn’s pussy.

Rarity screamed with the arrival of her long overdue orgasm, the dam holding back her her juices flooding over the bed and her lover.

She fell alongside the girl on the bed, contemplating the room now fringed with a fuzzy, post-orgasmic glow. It was quiet except for the steady, deep breaths of her and her young companion and the ticking of the clock on the dresser.

Rarity’s eyes narrowed, focusing on the clock, the ticking hands pulling her back to her regimented workday. She gasped. It was 5 until 1, the end of her break! Customers would be arriving any minute now!

Without any delay, she used her magic to clean both herself and her sated companion, still splayed out on the bed in a pose both lewd and inviting. Leaving the earth pony to recuperate, she rushed downstairs with a rather large bottle of perfume, wafting it around the room to clear the smell of sex which had pervaded the whole house.

At 10 past, a rather mussed but no worse for wear Diamond Tiara made her way to the ground floor of the boutique. She found Rarity putting the finishing touches on her dress, another mare with a light green mane looking on.

The unicorn gave her a frown, “Ah, there you are, have you had enough time to think about what you did?”

Turning to address the customer, the dressmaker shook her head. “To think she had the nerve to interrupt my break, demanding I finish her dress! I swear, children these days.”

She levitated the finished product to the magenta pony. “I had to take her upstairs to give her a good tongue-lashing. I hope she got the idea.”

Diamond Tiara paused for a moment, and then assumed a stance that appeared sufficiently modest. “Oh, of course, uh, I’m sorry Ms. Rarity.”

The unicorn smirked briefly. “Let that be a lesson to you. If you come in here like that again, you’ll have to expect the same treatment.”

“Yes Ms. Rarity, I understand.” As the doors swung closed behind her and she emerged into the afternoon sunlight on Ponyville, Diamond Tiara heard the gentle sing-song of the chatter between the two mares resume. She lingered for a moment, taking in the day. It was as if the shop doors had opened up to a vista of the future, with all of its beautiful and terrible possibilities unfolding before her. Eyes forward, she trotted home.