"Hey, uh, miss?" asked the human.
Fluttershy turned toward him, made momentary eye contact, and then lowered her head, letting her hair fall over one eye. She pawed at the concrete of the sidewalk and used a wingtip to adjust the paper-like surgical mask she wore over her nose and mouth. "Y-yes?"
"Could you do me a favor?"
"Yes?" Fluttershy squeaked. She dipped her head lower, afraid of what the human might ask.
He pointed at the Tractor Supply store. "Any chance you could go inside and buy me some ivermectin?"
"D-dewormer?" Fluttershy asked. "Why can't you buy it?"
"They won't sell it to me."
Fluttershy leaped up, planting her forehooves on his chest. She stretched her neck, almost booping his mask-covered nose with hers. "They won't help you deworm your livestock?"
"Oh, well, you see, the thing is—"
"We have to get back to your farm right now! I know plenty of better ways to deworm livestock." She hovered at his head level, clasping his hand between her forehooves. "Come on, come on, show me your car and we'll get your adorable animals all sorted out!"
"But—"
"I know a wonderful organic tea we can brew. Horses and cattle love it! The ingredients are black tea leaves, organic turmeric, and powdered breezie dung."
"But—"
Edmund pushed the dark sunglasses farther up his nose and checked his mask. He pushed through the doors of the farm store, as if he had done that every day of his life, and strode to the medication section in the back.
A large handwritten sign said:
Ivermectin will only be sold to horse owners. ⭐MUST SHOW PIC OF YOU AND YOUR HORSE⭐
Edmund coughed twice. Shit, the cough was getting worse. He needed the ivy. Stupid FDA not letting people get the medicine they needed.
The cashier at the checkout rolled her eyes and said, "Do you have a picture of you and your horse?"
Edmund unlocked his phone and found the picture from the party last year. The party with all the rum and the beer kegs and he only remembered it because of the pictures. Like this picture. The picture of him balls-deep in the light-blue pegasus with the rainbow mane and tail, both of them smiling at the camera, Edmund making a thumbs up. He wished he knew who had been holding the phone to snap that picture, he really did.
He slapped the camera to the plexiglass barrier and the cashier's eyes widened. She rang up the order without another word.
"Prove you have worms."
"I'm sorry, what?" Janet replied.
The unicorn lowered her head, looking haughtily over the top of her sunglasses. "If you wish dewormer, daaarling, you must have worms. Surely an email or message from your physician?" She gestured at Janet's phone.
"Well, but, you see—"
"Your problem is your mask."
Janet touched her face. "My mask?"
"It's so—blech. Plain. A new style will give you a new attitude, and we all feel better when we are our best selves! Immunity is but an aspect of personality, and the mask carries no personality at all! Silk! Yes, lavender silk to compliment your yellow hair! And merlot stars on the silk to compliment your green eyes!"
"Hey, now, that's not—"
The unicorn's saddlebags levitated open and she extracted bolts of fabric, right there in the parking lot of the shopping center. "Quiet, darling, I'm creating."
"Hey! Hey, unicorn!"
"Our name is Trixie. The Great and Powerful Trixie."
"So, uh, Trixie," said Philip. "I need a fav—"
"Ivermectin?"
"How'd you—"
"Give Trixie one hundred dollars. And Trixie keeps the change."
Philip boggled at her, his jaw dropping open.
"One hundred and fifty dollars, because you aren't wearing a mask and are breathing on Trixie." Her magic gently adjusted her mask, which matched perfectly her cape and wizard's cap.
"Two tubes for one fifty."
"Trixie keeps the change, still."
"Fine." Philip gave her seven twenties and two fives.
Trixie levitated them into her purse and, head held high and humming off key, she trotted into the feed store. She trotted past the medicine to the treats aisle and grabbed a fifteen pound bag of Purina Apple and Oat horse nugget treats, paid $15.99 plus tax from one of the twenties the fellow had given her, and then boldly strode out the back employee's entrance, across the rear parking lot, and to the next street, neatly avoiding the human who would, after all, simply have hurt himself by taking horse antiworm paste for a virus.
"Hey! Hey, unicorn!"
"Starlight."
Philip looked up. "It's noon."
"My name," she said through gritted teeth, "is Starlight."
"Oh. Uh. Yeah. Um."
Starlight rolled her eyes and teleported away with a snap.
Philip boggled at where she had been. "Well, at least that one didn't cost me one-fifty."
Snap! She returned with a teleport and levitated a tube of ivermectin to him.
"Hey!" Philip said. "Thanks!"
Snap! She disappeared again.
Three Tractor Supply employees and a uniformed cop came running out of the store, getting hung up in the slow automatic sliding door.
"There! There! He's got the dewormer! Shoplifter!"
"Hey, hey, are you three sure—" Little Jimmy asked.
"Of course it's safe," Scootaloo said. "I invented it, didn't I?"
Sweetie Belle looked at the clipboard and adjusted her labcoat. "All the sums are numbers. Except the ones that are emojis. Stupid spreadsheet."
"And after we've tested it," Apple Bloom said, "we buy the ivermectin for yer grampy."
"Why can't I wear a life jacket?" Jimmy asked, looking suspiciously at the lake.
Apple Bloom heaved, using her earth pony strength to point the trebuchet toward the deeper section of the lake. "Why can't yer grampy go to the hospital?"
"He says they're too full." Jimmy fidgeted in the trebuchet's sling.
"Well, good thing this is guaranteed to work," Scootaloo said, yanking out the firing pin.
The woman approached Stellar Flare and Sunburst nervously. "Hello, I was wondering..."
Stellar Flare looked her up and down. She was tall, with slim legs that were shown off by shorty-shorts and high-heeled boots. Her teats—although oddly on her chest like all human teats—poked against a tight black shirt. The paper surgical mask was pulled down below her nose and a silver nose ring was rubbing a threadbare spot on the top edge of the mask. "Well, hello."
"There's a tractor feed store there—"
"Tractors eat diesel," Sunburst said.
The woman closed her eyes and took a deep breath, visibly counting to ten. She opened her eyes and said, "The feed store. I could really use some, well, horse dewormer, but they won't sell it to me."
"Sunburst, get in there and buy the nice young lady two tubes."
"But, mom, no! She's going to use it to—"
Stellar Flare clamped her aura around his snout.
"—mmmMMPPPPPPF!"
Stellar picked him up, levitated him through the automatic doors, and dropped him, leaving him sprawled on his chest, knocking his glasses off. As soon as the doors shut behind him, Stellar looked up and down the woman's body again and said, "You know, my son's single."
"Hey," the human said, stepping in front of Gilda and holding up a hand in a stop gesture.
She bowled him right over, her muscular bulk knocking him face-first into the wall. "Dweeb."
"Y'all want me to what?" Applejack said, pushing her hat back on her head and adjusting her mask.
"Get me as many tubes of ivermectin as they'll sell you."
"Why didn't you just get the vaccine? There ain't been a pony hospitalized in ten months, on accountin' we all lined up and got our shots."
"What do I look like?" asked the man. "A sheep?"
And when the shopping center's security guards arrived, AJ had him in a headlock, punching him in the head with a forehoof, like an equine Nolan Ryan. "Call me!" punch "A sheep!" punch "One!" punch "More!" punch "Time!" punch!
Lightning Dust reclined on the stack of ivermectin crates, smiled saucily, and flipped her tail just so to ever-so-barely cover her vulva.
The camera's self-timer beeped and then the flash fired. She blinked and stood, carried the camera to her computer, and checked that picture.
"Nineteenth time's the charm!" It was perfect. The soft-box flashes gave her freshly shampooed-and-conditioned coat a wonderfully diffuse glow, and the fast f/1.2 lens had been focused precisely on her eyes with the rest of her body—and the ten thousand dollars worth of horse dewormer—fading off into a soft bokeh. She edited it in LightRoom to enhance the color in her eyes and softly darken the edges of the frame.
She uploaded the picture to Facebook and made the same post in a half-dozen of the secret groups about the drug-that-shall-not-be-named lest Facebook notice the group and shut it down:
Got two hundred cases of 'i'. Send a PM. Five hundred dollars per case plus one dollar per mile, round trip (I'm in Boone, NC).
For an extra $500, you can find out what my tail was covering. 😊
Bitcoin or fuck off.
Within fifty seconds, the first transfer of bitcoin came in.
"Welcome welcome!" Pinkie shouted at her webcam. "Welcome to another YouTube edition of 'Equestrian Baking for Humans!'"
She adjusted her chef's toque and moved gummy out of the shot. "Do you know what's really yucky? Dewormer medication! When my Little Cheese got worms, he just wouldn't take his medicine! So I found out how to make it yummy yummy on a little tummy!"
She leaned into the camera and whispered conspiratorially: "(Just kidding)." Back to her normal shouting: "It tastes awful no matter what! Today, we're making ghost pepper chocolate coconut chunk cupcakes to cover up the taste! Given what the medicine does to human digestive tracts anyway, the ghost pepper won't make a difference."
"As it turns out," said the lavender alicorn, "I happen to be the principal scientist on a double-blind placebo-controlled study of the effectiveness of ivermectin as a SARS-CoV-2 prophylactic."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I'm testing it."
"Oh! Oh! Can you test it on me?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm sorry, you're clearly not smart enough to give informed consent."
Author's Note
Credit: Badumsquish.
