Hitch’s trot through Bridlewood was a lot more interesting than the first time he had visited. The clouded dull crystals in the ground had a vibrant glow, casting greens and blues onto the nearby trees. Several fillies and colts ran around, flinging pine cones at one another and playing with their magic.
It didn’t take him long to reach Izzy’s home. The unicorn had requested he come visit as soon as possible to help with a special unicycling project. Hitch wasn’t sure how he could be of help, but it did give him a chance to take a short vacation from his job as a sheriff.
He knocked on the door to Izzy’s home and heard some clattering sounds from inside. “Coming!”
A purple glow surrounded the door, and it opened itself to reveal Izzy, horn glowing.
“Wow, you’re getting a lot better with your magic. It still seems so odd to me,” Hitch said.
“Yeah! I’ve been able to figure out all sorts of cool tricks, and it’s really improved my artwork. Come in, come in!” She smiled and reached out, pulling Hitch inside and closing the door quickly behind him.
“Whoa, hold your horses there.” Hitch chuckled as he walked inside and looked around.
Izzy had certainly been busy. There was some new furniture, some fancy wool curtains over the windows, and a crafting bench he hadn’t noticed before full of tools. Even with the drapes drawn shut, plenty of natural light filtered in from a skylight in the ceiling that had been crafted of recycled glass.
“Oh, do you like it?” Izzy beamed as she started to rush around. “I found this table behind the Crystal Tea Room.” She hurried over to the work bench, “and all these tools on a construction site!”
“Wow, you must be keeping really busy.”
“Yeah, and it’s really hungry work.” Izzy frowned and shook her head. “I’ve run out of snacks…”
“You should have said something, I could have brought you some of Maretime’s famous salt water taffy.”
Izzy chuckled, and began trotting in a circle around Hitch. “Oh, I had another snack in mind. Something with a bit more… crunch.”
Hitch rubbed his chin for a moment. “Uh, peanut brittle?”
“Warmer…” Izzy smiled.
“Rock candy?”
“Colder…”
Hitch shrugged, “uh I’ve got nothing. What is it?”
Izzy darted into the kitchen and came back out with a box. She turned it over and shook, a few small crumbs came out and nothing else.
He recognized the box right away, “oh that’s the snack you used when you sang that song about us fitting right in? Ground pony hooves?”
“Grinded Pony Hooves,” Izzy corrected.
“So, what are they? Are they like those little sugar wafers that taste like chalk they sell in the convenience stores?” Hitch asked.
“Nope! They’re one-hundred percent organic pony hooves!” Izzy was bouncing slightly from hoof to hoof in excitement. “They’re super high in fiber and keratin!”
Hitch laughed nervously. “Nopony would really make a snack like that, would they? I mean, all those stories about tongues like tasers and teeth like tacks were just… well, stories.”
“Oh, not every story is as nice as the tales you’ve heard of sugar and spice…” Izzy’s horn glowed, and there was a loud clunk.
Hitch’s ears swiveled, that had sounded like a deadbolt. It was followed by a chain, and a thunk of a wood beam. He turned to look at the door, which appeared a lot more like a bank vault than it had when he walked in.
“Uh… Izzy? I’m getting a pretty uncomfortable vibe here. Is this another one of your weird unicorn customs?”
Izzy was grinning ear to ear, horn still glowing. “Oh, I suppose it is just one of my lovely little quirks. And look at your luminescence, flickering in and out like a little firefly!”
Hitch saw that she was advancing on him, and not breaking eye contact. He took a step backwards. “Izzy, I’m a sheriff and if you don’t stop this silly game I’ll have you arrested!”
“Ooh, I’d like to see you try.”
As she laughed, Hitch’s vision was filled with purple. The glow of magic had surrounded him, tickling at his fur and making him squirm in an attempt to break free. He was floating in the air, and no matter how much he flailed about, there didn’t seem to be a thing he could do about it.
“Damn it, Izzy! Stop this!”
She set him down on the table, and he pushed himself up to get up. As he did, several thick straps were buckled closed across his legs, leaving him strapped down on his back and in a rather exposed position.
“Izzy! I said stop! Now!” Hitch shouted.
“Deploy… The Shield!” Izzy cackled as she pulled out a tennis ball that had been run through with a piece of rope. She levitated it through the air above Hitch’s head.
“Don’t you dare! I’m not—mmph!”
Hitch thrashed and struggled as the shield was tightened snuggly around his head and rendered him unable to make any intelligible sounds.
“Much, much better!” Izzy went over to the table full of tools and started levitating through the various instruments. “Where should we start? Legs? Left, right, maybe the fetlocks? Hmm…”
“Mmph’ll mmmmllll mmooo!” Hitch bucked with all his panicked strength, causing the table to jump off the ground by half an inch. The straps held firm, pinning him on his back to the table.
Izzy picked up a long metal curved hook and trotted back over to Hitch. She twirled it through the air where he could see as she circled the table, tapping on his hooves. “Any, many, miny, moe, pick a pony hoof by the toe…”
The stallion couldn’t believe this was happening to him. This mare had gone insane, or perhaps she always had been. Perhaps Izzy hadn’t been a friend at all, but a psychopath who wanted to get their magic back to prove unicorn supremacy once and for all.
Hitch nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the scraping of the sharp metal tool. He closed his eyes tight and waited for the flash of pain, the trickle of blood, the inevitability of death…
Izzy scraped again, deeper this time.
“Oh, my, this dirt is really packed in there.”
Scrape.
Hitch sniffled as he fought back tears, but still, it didn’t hurt.
Scrape.
“Sunny was right! Stallions really don’t know how to take care of their hooves! Another few weeks and this hoof would have overgrown and given you a limp, shame on you.” Izzy chuckled. She continued scraping away until all the caked on dirt and mud were gone from the frogs of his hoof, and ran the tool along the nail to get most of the dirt off.
Hitch began laughing, partly from realizing he wasn’t being tortured, and partly because he had always had incredibly sensitive hooves. It was true, he didn’t like getting them worked on, but as a sheriff he normally did enough exercise to keep them from getting overgrown.
“Oh, there we go!” Izzy whistled a familiar tune to herself as she finished removing the dirt from the final hoof. Now she began to cut away some of the thicker overgrown corners of the nail with a different tool. It had a short and very sharp blade. “Better not laugh too much when I’ve got the blade out, though it does make your sparkle turn the most adorable shade of pink.”
Izzy set to work with a jar and the scraper, clearing off some of the thicker and more impacted sections of each hoof. She was careful not to be wasteful or hit any of the delicate bits of flesh around the hoof.
Hitch tried to stop laughing, but couldn’t. There was just something about the vibrations and the way it felt to have his feet touched that turned him back into a playful colt again. For a moment, he was glad to have a tennis ball in his mouth or everypony in Bridlewood would probably hear him laughing like some overrated comic book villain.
Next she brought out a large pair of clippers with handles a foot long. Izzy wiped her brow, she was still new to using magic and it was taxing to hold tools and a jar in her magic constantly. She began to clip around the outer edges of the hooves, getting a nice thick chunk of nail trimmed off and landing in the jar. She licked her lips, and resumed the clipping.
The table creaked a bit as Hitch fidgeted. He’d definitely be having a talk with Sunny and Izzy about tricking him into coming here to get his hooves worked on. Preferably that talk would happen in his integration room, the one with the very bright desk lamp and very uncomfortable chair. He might even let Sprout out of jail for a little “good sheriff bad deputy” like they’d used to interrogate the Maretime litterer two months ago.
Izzy continued clipping away, and Hitch realized she’d finished shaping the hooves. She levitated out a very large and rough looking nail file and brought it over. “Now this is probably going to tickle a lot, so we better make sure those straps are tight. Don’t want you hurting yourself.” Izzy double checked the straps.
Hitch bit into the tennis ball as she began filing the hooves. Even when he’d tried to file himself, the vibrations had always been too much to control his laughter. Now they were shivering and had the addition of the tingly, almost sticky, magic right on his sensitive freshly-trimmed hooves. He began bucking like a rodeo pony and laughing loud enough to wake the dead.
“Oh my! You’re a lot stronger than you look, but mostly you look silly!” Izzy filed away and tried to ignore the pony squirming on the table. He was kind of cute like this, and she tried to ignore that fact so she could focus on doing a good job at the hooficure.
Both of his lungs were burning as he struggled to catch his breath. He’d never been tickled this long before, or perhaps he should say he’d never made it this far into having his hooves trimmed.
“All done! I better leave you here a moment to catch your breath.”
Izzy trotted off into the kitchen, and Hitch could hear a lot of clinking pans. He mumbled into the tennis-ball-turned-gag and tried to get her attention once he’d been able to calm down from all the laughter.
It sounded like she was in there cooking something, and he couldn’t believe she’d want to eat at a time like this. Had she forgotten that she had abducted and strapped him down to this table? Or that he was a sheriff and could arrest her? Hitch tried to count off all the bylaws that Izzy had broken, and was able to think of seven by the time Izzy came back into the room.
She was munching loudly on whatever she had prepared in the kitchen. It sounded like somepony eating chips in a movie theater with their mouths open.
“Oh, thank you Hitch! You did a wonderful job.” Izzy chomped down on her snack again.
“Mmmpherful mmph?” Hitch asked.
“Oh, well I guess I did most of the work, but you were a good sport! I’ve never gotten to use my strappy-table with another pony before.” Izzy smiled and used her magic to untie the rope and remove the shield from Hitch’s mouth.
He spit out some yellow fibers from the tennis ball. “Izzy! You can’t just kidnap a pony to give them a hooficure!”
“Oh, well like I said, you needed a hooficure and I was out of snacks!” She munched down again.
Hitch looked over to see her holding the box of Grinded Pony Hooves. Izzy shook it, and it sounded full.
“Oh no…” He felt his stomach turn over and swallowed a lump in his throat. “You… that… it…”
“You wanna try some?” Izzy smiled and levitated one of the snacks out of the box. It was shaped like a little horseshoe, but the color and texture perfectly matched his hooves… the hooves that had just been assaulted with a hooficure kit and trimmed.
“N—” Hitch gasped and nearly inhaled the tiny horseshoe treats that Izzy had levitated over to let him try. Luckily, he was able to get his lips closed in time to stop all but one from entering.
Izzy floated the treats back and held them up in the air, dropping them one at a time onto her out-stretched tongue.
In his haste to close his mouth, he’d bitten into the one pony hoof that landed in his mouth. Luckily, she must have added some sweetener to it in the kitchen. Hitch found that it wasn’t half bad, apart from the fact he was eating tiny caramelized bits of his own foot. He tried not to think about it so that he could keep his lunch down.
“Uh, so can you unstrap me now? Please?” Hitch asked.
Izzy nodded and her horn lit up. As abruptly as he had been caught, he was free again. Hitch rolled off the table and landed on his hooves, ready to use all three weeks of the judo training he’d received as a sheriff just in case…
She continued munching on her snacks.
“Oh…” He spit out the last bits of the snack. Hitch then rocked from side to side, testing out the new shape of his hooves. He looked down in surprise. “Hey… they’re level, perfectly level! I actually haven’t felt them this clean in years.” He took turns tapping each of his hooves on the ground, then sat down to get a closer look at them. “You did an amazing job.”
“Thanks! You know, you can come over anytime to get a hooficure, I know how to handle a pony who is as ticklish as a colt.” She took another mouthful of the treats and began to chew.
He stood back up and gave her an unamused stare. “Can you stop crunching on those so loudly?”
“Ish like,” she swallowed. “The one weird thing I do, okay? I like eating hoof snacks!”
Hitch chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, okay, this is the only weird thing you do. Now if you wouldn’t mind unlatching the door, I think I need to go get some tea and a sandwich.”
Izzy nodded and used her magic to quickly unlock, unbolt, and un-wooden-bar the door. “Sure thing, Sheriff! Oh, before you go… did you still want to use my guest room tonight since you traveled all this way?”
He raised an eyebrow and looked from her to the room she’d pointed to. “Guest room? Oh, right…”
“Yeah! I’ve got some other great inventions in there to show you.” Izzy walked over to him and shot him a seductive smile, batting her eyelashes. She whispered into his ear, and as she did so, Hitch’s face went from yellow to orange to beet red.
“I…” Hitch gulped. “Magic! Feather! Wing! MAYONNAISE!”
He sprinted to the door, threw it open, and ran off into the sunset.
Izzy laughed and took another bite of her Grinded Pony Hooves. “He’ll be back, no stallion can resist my hoof-play!”
