“You know, Sister,” Celestia murmured, “you are free to request your own serving, you don’t need to eye mine so longingly.”
Luna grumbled back from across the table and rolled her eyes. “You are more deluded than I thought if you mistake my disdain for longing.”
“Are you certain?” The white alicorn’s lips curled ever so slightly upward into a smirk. “Do you not have the slightest hint of a hankering for this most delightful meal prepared by our chefs?” She turned her plate and made a show with the next series of movements, slow and deliberate. Her fork cut into the piece of cake, slicing through the crumbly dough and glistening icing. The resulting chunk was what one might describe as excessive, large enough that she had to open her mouth to its fullest capacity to permit it entry as she lifted it upward, expertly balanced upon the tines of her utensil. Her tongue stuck out to welcome the newest morsel, like a red carpet, and when her teeth closed around it she gave out an exaggeratedly loud hum of delight. It was but one bite of many, and yet it felt like she was invigorated all over again, a surge of vitality from her tongue that ran through her.
“Really, Tia, do you not think it a tad boorish to display such base gluttony?” Luna asked with her arms crossed over her front and an eyebrow raised.
“I would have thought you to be far more approving, Sister,” Celestia replied after dabbing at her cheeks with a napkin. “You have always been the one more in tune with what is ‘proper’ for us as royalty. Is it not ‘proper’ for the rulers of Equestria to indulge themselves?”
“Tia, there is indulging”—the other alicorn pointed to her own plate, scattered with a few greens that had not yet been eaten—“and there is eating an entire cake every meal.”
Celestia scoffed flippantly. “Please, Luna, I have not being doing that for every meal.”
But that eyebrow remained accusingly perked upward. “Really?” Luna’s horn sparked, and energy manifested in the air between them, over the table, forming into starry blue nebulae reminiscent of the alicorn’s mane. As the ruler of the domain of dreams, Luna was intimately familiar with the minds of ponies, and as such she was capable of reaching into them if she so desired. Of course, there were ethical boundaries that stood in the way of doing this willy-nilly, but it was a simple matter to do it for herself, as became evident when the clouds of magic resolved into images like photographs, but with a blue muzzle protruding into the picture at the bottom and a fringe of ethereal blue at the top—Luna’s perspective, her own memories. And each of those memories showed Celestia sitting where she was now, each time with a whole cake in front of herself, steadily eating through it piece by piece. The lighting changed as the time of day progressed, and the cakes were different, but some scenes were almost startlingly similar.
Now it was the sun princess’s turn to cross her arms and huff. “Very well, so it is a lot of cake. Am I not permitted to have a sweet tooth?”
“Celestia, to be most frank with you, I am not entirely certain that you eat anything other than cake.” The magical thought bubbles dissipated and Luna leaned forward across the table. “I am aware that you are milking your alicorn metabolism for all its worth, but we still cannot believe that this will be without any consequences.”
Celestia scoffed. “What could possibly happen? Will I blow up?”
Luna pursed her lips, staring back with narrowed eyes. “There is a certain saying that I recall. It goes something like…you are what you eat, from your head to your feet.”
Another scoff, and a smirk. “So, what you’re saying, dearest Sister, is that I will turn into cake?”
“Perhaps not so literally,” Luna replied flatly, settling back into her seat and turning her attention to her meal once more, “but I would say that it still reflects you, in a sense.”
Celestia rolled her eyes before looking down at her plate. There was half of the slice left, and still half of a cake on top of that. She looked at the creamy yellow dough and the glistening chocolate frosting, with molded flowers on the top surrounding (what had once been) an emblem of the sun. She looked at it, and she thought she heard a nagging voice (that sounded an awful lot like Luna) in her head, telling her that she had had enough, the rest could be saved for later.
But, all the same, she scooped up the next piece of cake and lifted it to her mouth. “Good thing I don’t have feet,” she muttered glibly before stuffing the morsel in.
= = = = =
Less than an hour later, Celestia wasn’t feeling so good.
She didn’t know how long she had been sitting at her desk, but it felt like an eternity, an eternity in which she had been plagued with the greatest of discomforts. Her temples throbbed with heat, she felt that she was burning up. A fever seemed the most logical conclusion, but she lacked the coherence to come to that assumption. The papers she was looking at consisted of a mess of nonsense symbols that blurred and swam into each other. All she was sure of was that it was bothering her and she couldn’t bring herself to deal with it any longer.
And this pain definitely, most certainly wasn’t anything to do with her stomach, because that would just be ridiculous.
The alicorn hunched forward, burying her face in her hands and brushing away the ethereal locks of her mane. She parted her fingers and looked to the clock that was hung on the wall across from her desk. It felt like an eon since she last looked at it, but those traitorous ticking hands told her that it hadn’t even been a minute. Tick, tock, tick, tock. She had tried so long to distract herself, to form new thoughts, but she had been unable to shake off the one that had settled within her skull. That one phrase spoken in Luna’s voice.
“You are what you eat.”
“Maybe…that’s enough for one day,” she said to herself.
Celestia stood, and she definitely wasn’t clutching at her midsection as she stumbled around her desk and out the door. She definitely wasn’t struggling to pay attention to where she was walking. She definitely didn’t feel like she was about to blow up. She definitely wasn’t hearing things.
“Your majesty?”
It took a great deal of coordination to stop her course and to turn back, to even recognize that there was something amiss. She looked to the two guards who had been flanking the entrance to her office. Their typical trained stoicism was marred by an emotion that she dimly recognized as concern. “Is something wrong?” one of them, Gilded Cuirass (or maybe that was the other one), asked.
“N…n-no, nothing,” Celestia replied unconvincingly, unable even to maintain a steady posture, wings hanging loose, mane and tail appearing to wilt.
“If I may be blunt, Princess, you don’t look well,” said the other guard, Steady Bracer, or maybe he was Gilded Cuirass, or Gilded Bracer, or Steady Cuirass. “Would you like to be escorted to the infirmary?”
“No, no, I’m f-f-F-fine.” She felt an expletive trying to force itself out as she nearly tripped over the folds of her own dress. “I just need to…take a nap.”
The guards looked at each other, still worried, but they raised no objections. Good, that wasn’t what they were supposed to be doing on duty.
Celestia went back to hobbling away through the corridors of the palace. She yearned to be able to teleport away and be done with this, but her head was so foggy that she didn’t think she’d even be able to muster a spark of magic. The most she could manage was to avoid contact with other ponies whenever possible and to hope desperately that Luna wouldn’t come upon her. Once she found her head swimming and she looked up, uncertain of where she had gone, only to realize that her hooves had started to take her to the kitchen, that most hallowed of rooms in the palace, where the most precious commodities were made and stored in preparation for her meals.
“You are what you eat.”
She tore herself away, and in a blur, she finally found herself in her quarters. Somewhere, Philomena chirped at her, perhaps also voicing concern in her own way. She didn’t pay that any mind. She barely made it to her bed before she collapsed, without even having removed her clothes. She didn’t know when sleep fell over her, but she welcomed it all the same, anything to rid her of that numbing fever.
= = = = =
Celestia dreamt of cake.
So very much cake.
A feast of cake, all for her.
She made her way along the table, eating from every single stacked dessert that was offered to her.
She ate and she ate and she ate, everything that was brought before her, until there was nothing left in all the pantries and the fridges of the palace.
And the princess was so very distraught that she simply couldn’t help herself.
She took a bite out of one of the ivory columns holding up the ceiling.
And, in doing so, she came to a marvelous discovery.
The ivory was spongy dough covered in vanilla icing.
The whole castle had actually been cake all along.
Oh, there was so much cake.
= = = = =
Celestia woke up and wasn’t sure she felt much better. The throbbing heat had been replaced with the stupor of exhaustion. Dampness enveloped her, drenched in a cold sweat. She grumbled as she pulled herself out of bed and set about peeling off her dress from the day before.
She was then met with the discovery that the cloth was awfully keen on clinging in place. She tugged, and there were pops as it came free only to then catch all over again. It was like she was covered in something more like glue than sweat. “What is…” She looked down at herself. Her frustration was promptly swallowed up by bewilderment.
The inside of the garment was covered in some creamy white substance. Her mind briefly drifted to far more indecent places before she looked closer. It had nearly the same color as her coat and its texture was thick and fluffy. Her fur itself, though, seemed the same over the swell of her bosom, slick, glistening.
Familiar.
Terribly familiar.
The smell was familiar as well. So delectably sweet. So inviting.
With two fingers she dabbed at both the goop on the inside of the dress and on herself, coming up with thick white globs on each digit. This almost certainly would have been an inadvisable thing to do, but she was so sure that it was right.
She tasted the sample from the dress first and was promptly met with the flavor of vanilla icing. Heavenly rich, at that, silky and smooth. Perhaps the best she had ever tasted. A shame that it was being used in such a wasteful manner.
The sample covering her front turned up the same result. She lapped at her finger with her tongue, eager to get every drop.
But of course they would be the same, if there had been icing in her dress than it would get all over her too.
The question, then, should be why was it there? And how, while she had been asleep, had someone smeared icing all over her?
But she wasn’t really thinking any of those questions. All she was thinking about was that delicious icing, the rich vanilla taste on her tongue. Her gaze was fixed upon her hand, cleaned of all the icing that had been taken from her dress. And yet, she still saw that telltale glistening in the light. The sugary aroma was filling her nostrils and pumping into her lungs.
She stuck her pinky into her mouth and bit down.
The digit severed neatly.
The stupor of awakening dissipated immediately and horror rushed in to fill the void. She jerked her hand away and was met with a sight that was familiar and also alien, a bare stump left where the farthest knuckle was. Revulsion came bubbling up next, a deeply unsettled churning in her stomach. She wanted to vomit, as if that would purge herself of the violent revelation.
It was still in her mouth.
Get it out.
Spit it out.
Scream.
But the only thing that came from Celestia was a dull moan rumbling in her throat. There had been just enough of an opening in the swirling storm of emotions for her sense of taste to butt in with the results it had collected from her severed finger. There was no terrible taste of fur and flesh and spilling ichor, only that smooth icing. Without thinking, she had already started chewing, working with her teeth and tongue, mashing up the chunk that had once been part of her until it was mush, wringing it of all its flavor, and there was no resistance, no meat or bone. It was just like a little cylindrical piece of…
Cake.
She looked at her hand again. There was no blood pouring from the wound. It hardly even looked like a wound to begin with, upon closer scrutinization. There was no grisly red and white in the opening, only a familiar spongy yellow dough. It only now occurred to her that there wasn’t even any pain either. There was almost an urge to think that it felt good, knowing how delicious she was.
The horror of how easily self-cannibalization had come to her was replaced with a fresh new horror while she looked over herself, at the glossy sheen of icing that covered the whole length of her arms, at the messy state of her dress as it clung to her.
She could experiment more if she was willing to take a bite, and her stomach was all of a sudden past its bout of disgust, all too keen with the idea of ingesting more.
“You are what you eat.”
“Luna!” Now Celestia screamed while she turned about and ran out of the room. She held her arms out to her sides, to keep them away from herself, to keep her succulent fingers out of reach of her mouth. She couldn’t easily ignore the way the dress clung to her, as if she had just been out in the rain, a delicious vanilla rain. She felt her hooves stick momentarily after each step, leaving prints of white goo in her wake. She nearly stumbled while running down the stairs, feeling her balance disrupted, and she quickly realized it was because of her mane and tail. The ethereal curtains of hair had solidified into undulating masses of frosting, pinks and blues and greens swirling together into sherbet stripes, bleeding into each other as they dripped. She didn’t have time to ruminate on this, she had to keep running, she knew that the instant she stopped running she would want to eat again. She would seize big handfuls (minus one finger) of rainbow icing and stuff them into her mouth, even if it meant leaving her bald.
Guardsponies and other attendants called after her in a blur of noise while she ran through the halls of the castle, but she wasn’t listening to any of them. There was only one pony she was looking for, one pony who might have some answer for her perplexing dilemma. She actually didn’t know, though, where she was going, no idea where in the sprawling estate she might be, she didn’t even know what time it was. She was moving entirely based on some gut instinct. And, as it turned out, her gut always led her to one place: the royal dining chamber. A fortuitous coincidence, then, that that was exactly where the other alicorn turned out to be.
“Luna!” she cried again as she ran to the table, panting for breath, however it was that cake was capable of breathing.
Luna looked up from the plate of breakfast in front of her, stone-faced and stoic, and dully remarked, “Oh, there you are, Sister, I was beginning to wonder if I would have to try raising the sun myself today.”
“Luna, something’s wrong!” Celestia came right up to her, and the mane which would have glided around anything in its way instead squelched against one of the chairs and the side of the table. “I…I’ve…changed!”
Luna leaned away from her. There was wariness in her eyes, the look of one dealing with a pony they believe to be mad. “…You don’t look like you’ve changed out of your clothes from yesterday,” she said dryly as she glanced down at the white mare’s body. “You do look…sticky.”
“It’s icing, Luna! Cake icing!” She dragged some fingers across her arm, scooping up some of the white gunk, and presented it to Luna emphatically, who in turn responded by pushing further into the corner of her seat, compressing herself to get away. “I turned into cake, Luna!”
“What?” she blurted out flatly, demonstrating the appropriate skepticism that this statement necessitated.
“Here!” Celestia stuck her hand out, nearly right up to her sister’s muzzle. “Taste me!”
There was a moment in which it seemed like the world froze. The surreality of everything was too much to bear and Celestia’s cake-mush brain stopped being able to keep up with it. Realization only came over her on a slow drip feed, the implications of what she had just said, the impetus that had come unbidden from her innermost id. She recoiled, or at least that was the command that came trickling through her syrup-filled nerves, but her movements were slow and languid. She wanted nothing more than to take back what had been said, but it was already out there, there was nothing to be done about it.
And there was some part of her that didn’t want to take it back. The thought of being eaten carried far less of the primal terror than it ought to, subsumed by a burning curiosity.
“Celestia,” Luna said, staring at the hand still in front of her, “you seem to be missing a finger.”
“What?” She looked at the mangled hand again. “O-oh, I…yes, that was…”
“Celestia.” Those azure eyes bored into her. “Did you eat your own finger?”
The alicorn felt a trickling over her cheeks and wondered if she was sweating or just melting. “…N…n-no…” she said without the slightest hint of conviction.
Luna’s stoic composure finally broke, but to Celestia’s dismay it was not to show sympathy but instead to burst into laughter. Not merely the soft refined laughter of royalty either, or even the boisterous haughty laughter of a noblemare, it was a great, heaving laugh that had her nearly doubling over in her chair. “Oh, now this…THIS…!” The plates and cutlery jangled as she slapped her palm on the edge of the table.
“L-Luna! This is serious!” Celestia asserted. She started to reach for her sister, only to stop upon considering that she would be smearing icing all over her. She didn’t think that anypony would appreciate something of that sort under the best of circumstances.
“Do you know what’s serious, Sister?” Luna’s laughter died down, but she still bore a devilish smirk as she jabbed her finger toward her. “Me, telling you yesterday that exactly this sort of thing would happen. You are what you eat, remember?”
“B-but I thought you said you didn’t mean it literally!”
“I did not, but I suppose it was even more apt than I thought, was it not?” She shrugged her shoulders. “And now here you are, reaping the consequences sown by your own actions, and it turns out that you are not only such a glutton that you have turned yourself into the very thing you crave most, but now you cannot resist devouring yourself! I am sure you can appreciate the irony of the situation.”
“I don’t appreciate anything about this!” Celestia shouted back.
Except, she silently realized, being tasty. She was glad that she was tasty.
She also realized that there was starting to be a crowd. The chefs and servers who had been preparing the breakfast were peering out from the kitchen doorway, and the guards and other ponies whom Celestia had passed had now caught up and were coming in from the hall. Some of them looked like they wanted to ask what was wrong, but they didn’t dare interrupt when the two princesses were so heated. She felt eyes upon her, and she was certain that they were growing aware of what she was. Aware that she was cake. Aware that she was delicious.
“Well, a terrible shame, then,” Luna said with another halfhearted shrug, “that there is nothing that can be done about it.”
“Wh-what do you mean, nothing?!” Celestia sputtered in disbelief. “You were the one who knew the saying, weren’t you?! Surely you must know what we can do to reverse this!”
Luna sighed, breath heavy with aggravation, and shook her head. “I have already told you multiple times that I did not think it would really happen like this. It is just something mothers would say to scare their foals into behaving. If it happened to you so quickly, though, evidently nothing I said would have made a difference. A terrible shame for your subjects, but I suppose you will simply have to live with it.”
Celestia gasped and gaped, unable to form syllables or even the necessary thoughts for what syllables she meant. How could she possibly show herself in public like this? She could scarcely even be decent; she’d ruin any clothes she tried to wear.
But if she just served herself to them, they’d all be fine with it, no one could be angry at such a delicious princess.
“Hmm, such a shame,” Luna mused, seemingly more to herself, “all this talk about cake is working up our appetite. I wouldn’t mind a sampling.” She looked to the cake that was sitting across from her, where Celestia would have been sitting, having been prepared for her in advance. Celestia’s eyes fixed upon it as well, and it took all her strength to look away. Despite everything up to this point, she couldn’t resist the craving in her stomach, the beast yearning for sustenance. There could never be enough cake.
“But it would be improper of me to take from the meal intended for you,” Luna said, as if conscious of the direction her sister’s thoughts had been going, and she turned back toward her. “How fortuitous that there is yet more for us to sample.”
“Luna, I don’t—”
Luna took one of her wrists, the one of the hand that was still whole, and leaned forward and bit off its pinky too.
“LUNA!”
There was still no pain. There was no sugary sweetness on her tongue to distract her. Instead there was an electrifying tingle, up along her spine. It was far more stimulating than she liked. It was everything she wanted.
“Goodness, what an immaculate flavor!” Luna remarked while she chewed, not heeding the other mare’s distress. “I must admit I can see why you eat so much cake. Daresay, I might even have a hard time eating anything else now.”
“Y-you can’t! You…you have to—”
(eat me)
“I hope you don’t mind us taking another piece.” Luna licked at her lips while she picked up the serving knife from the platter across from her.
Celestia had already turned and ran.
There wasn’t very far to go. She quickly found herself amidst the waiting arms of the ponies who had been crowding around the door.
“Princess, what’s wrong?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Do you need anything?”
“Does she look…weird?”
Celestia waded through, pushing at them, trying everything in her power to ignore them.
She wasn’t conscious of herself almost going out of her way to reach at ponies’ muzzles, to smear frosting over them.
“Princess, what’re you—” somepony sputtered before they happened to open their mouth and stick their tongue out just enough to welcome the taste of vanilla, slurping at her flesh. That turned their mood around right away. “Whoa, hey, what is that?”
“Princess, when did you become delicious?” another pony asked, and this was accompanied by her wrist being seized. The spongy cake-flesh squeezed more than she was used to, feeling as if meager pressure would be enough to crush the limb.
“D-don’t—” Celestia whirled about, but in the process her mane slathered over several ponies, painting them with rainbow hues. They licked at their faces and at each other. Then they reached for her, scooped up handfuls of the sugary cascade.
Somepony bit a chunk out of her hand. Only a single finger and thumb left to wriggle about. Celestia was unable to do much more than gasp, with far less shock than she thought herself capable of.
And then they descended on her. Pushing in, crowding all around. Some were content to reach out and dab at her coat of icing with their fingers. Others wanted a bite of something more substantial. She was feeling less and less of her arms and wings with each passing second. Her dress was pulled up so they could get at her legs. They tugged on her mane and tail like wads of cotton candy, lapping them up inch by inch. The alicorn’s senses were a haze of noise and color; she could scarcely identify the faces of the guards and servants, slathered with white icing and yellow crumbs and—a new feature to take note of—golden-orange jelly, chunks of fruity viscera stored within her now spilling forth. Gilded Cuirass blended into Steady Bracer and Gilded Bracer and Steady Cuirass. A pack of ravenous predators devouring her in a feeding frenzy.
Why wasn’t she panicking?
Why wasn’t she trying to stop it?
Why did she want to rip off her dress and see what they would think of her exposed bosom and nether regions?
Nothing was rational about this.
Mana discharged from her horn in bursts of firecrackers, sparkling cake candles. Space pinched in on her. Noise rushed past. Then everything was quiet. She was standing in her bedroom again. She recognized the hoofprints of white frosting that had been left when she ran out, and the imprint that had been left on the bed and blankets. A teleportation spell, spurred by pure survival instinct. She could scarcely feel the adrenaline anymore; that had most likely been its last gasp before being irrevocably swallowed up. No more get out of jail free cards.
She took a step forward—not even in any particular direction, just out of habit, the feeling that she had somewhere to go. Her leg collapsed beneath her. One of her arms did the same when she tried to brace herself against the impact. Her horn bent and her muzzle jammed, pushed inward with a squelch. She couldn’t bear to try to look at herself. It was enough to feel the holes that had been hollowed out of her, the pieces that were missing, anatomy that had been erased, with what should have been innards left exposed to the open air.
It should have been alarming, but she didn’t feel any pain from it.
No, she should have been alarmed that there was no pain.
No, there was no need to be alarmed.
A gurgling groan rose from Celestia as the numbness carried her away.
= = = = =
Celestia dreamt of cake.
So very much cake.
A feast of cake, all for her.
And she reached to cut out a slice from a cake with dark blue frosting, and it sighed contentedly at her.
She gasped, jerking away, and the serving knife clattered as she dropped it.
“No, please!” the cake insisted desperately, “Eat me!”
“But how can you want me to eat you?” Celestia asked, confused and perturbed.
“Actually, Princess Celestia,” interjected another cake, one that was lavender, “it is well-documented that all cakes wish for nothing more than to be consumed and enjoyed!”
“That’s right, Princess!” said an orange cake eagerly, “And I’m sure you’ll pick the best cake here to feast on first!”
“Really, now, dear, you think you are the best cake here? Only the finest of cakes is suitable for somepony like Princess Celestia.”
“I think you all know that I’m the awesomest cake here!”
“Um…I’d like to be eaten too…if that’s okay…”
“Hooray, eating party! I hope there’ll be dessert afterward!”
“Oh, goodness, I couldn’t simply choose one out of so many eager and wonderful cakes,” Celestia remarked with a chuckle, “so I shall simply have to eat all of you!”
And there was much rejoicing from everycake as one by one they were devoured.
= = = = =
Celestia discerned the oncoming wave of consciousness washing over her, drowning the numbness. She was certain that she was still cake. She remained hesitant to look at herself.
That is, until she grew aware that there were no more empty patches. She unconsciously sent impulses of electricity along whatever nerves she still had, commands to flex, and she found hands and fingers that were once more intact. She dragged her arm across the floor to inspect it: all five fingers, no bites taken out of it, perfectly structurally sound. The layer of vanilla frosting was thin where it had been worn down by the motion of movement, exposing some of the yellow dough underneath. As she watched, entranced and mystified, she was met with the sight of the sugary coat replenishing itself, returning to a uniform consistency.
Perhaps she ought to have been relieved. There had been no need to get so worked up in the first place after all. She could scarcely remember, though, having been so upset in the first place. All she could think about now was the ache in her stomach, yearning to be filled; she couldn’t remember the last time she ate, which meant it had been far too long.
She could eat, and she could be eaten.
Celestia stood, and again she walked from her bedroom. There was no panicked hurry in her movement this time, but in her languid stupor she was slow and deliberate. There were still questions that needed to be answered about what could be done to address her circumstances. None of those questions were occurring to her. Certainly not the question of what could be done to return to normal.
Celestia couldn’t remember what “normal” even was.
It was simple enough to trace the path that she had left before, the smears of frosting on the floor, hoofprints going down the steps. As she emerged into the palace proper, however, she was met with an unusual discovery: far more patches of sugary paste, paths that had been scattered across the floor of the halls, like some ponies had had a food fight with chunks of cake. As she walked, she found a greater patch of icing and crumbs left on the floor, intermingling with each other, like something had been rolling about in the mess. Smells of different flavors came wafting up to her. It was almost tempting to get down on all fours and lap it up, but she wasn’t that desperate. Not yet.
It didn’t take long before she found the source—or a source—of the mess. Two ponies who were entwined with each other, leaning against a wall, underneath a gilded tapestry that also had. Much of their clothes had been stripped away, leaving their coats and colors clear to see. Whites, greys, browns, golds. Celestia recognized the toned physique of a soldier, one who might have been Steady Bracer, and the slenderer form of Raven Inkwell. The image of the two embracing, chuckling and giggling between labored, passionate breaths, was reminiscent of high school sweethearts making out in the hallways—or progressing even further than that.
Except when Raven Inkwell leaned toward Steady Bracer, it wasn’t to give him a kiss, it was to take a bite out of his chest, as if trying to rip out a collarbone. The hole left was full of dark dough. He crooned dazedly while she licked at his icing coat. Celestia only now took in the finer details, the texture of their bodies, the fluffy frosting surface, the molded shape of their manes and tails. The sugary smell, far more intense now that she was so close, like the musk of ponies in heat.
They hardly seemed to react to her presence, nor did the alicorn say anything as she leaned over and pulled on Raven Inkwell’s ear. It seemed like it would hold fast at first, as an ear should, but a mere show of force was enough to tug it off, a thin flap of fondant. She moaned softly before leaning into Steady Bracer’s embrace, who obliged her by licking at her mane, lapping it up in great swathes with his tongue. Celestia ate the ear while she continued to watch. Before long, both the mare’s ear and the hole in the stallion’s chest were repaired, cake mixture rematerializing and returning to their proper shape.
Celestia could’ve stayed and joined in, eaten both of them (the thought of what would happen if somepony were eaten entirely didn’t occur to her). But though she hungered for it, she didn’t feel it was her place to barge in here. She stood again and continued on down the hall.
She passed more ponies along her way in varying states of mutually feasting upon each other, in pairs or in larger groups. The entire palace staff, it seemed, had all turned into cake as well.
“You are what you eat.”
The words flashed through the alicorn’s mind, but she wasn’t certain of their significance anymore.
There was only cake.
There was only consumption.
Celestia’s automated path found her returning to the royal dining hall, where she had been overcome by a feeding frenzy, an encounter she had run from for reasons she couldn’t remember. She found that the table looked reminiscent of the one she had seen in her dreams. Well, after she’d had opportunity to ransack it of its contents, rather, the platters that had once held cakes now empty. It filled her with a short-lived pang of regret before her attention shifted.
Luna sat in her usual seat. She was bare of any form of dress, casually naked. There were smears of blue frosting around the armrests and back of her chair where she had been reclining, waiting. Her mane billowed as it always did, cool icy blue fluff, though on closer inspection one might discern that the twinkling stars in the nighttime expanse were actually white sprinkles. She turned toward Celestia while she approached, and their eyes met each other immediately, sensing their understanding of each other.
“Sister,” the white mare said quietly.
“Celestia,” Luna replied promptly. Her demeaner was softer than the last time they saw each other, but there was an undeniably different quality to her tone, one that was almost alien to her usual staunch persona. Heavy, husky, hungry. Full of lust. And probably hunger too.
“You ate without me,” Celestia said plainly with another glance over the table.
“You left me no choice, making me wait so long for your return,” she scoffed back. “I was saving myself. Just for you, Sister.”
Celestia found herself smiling.
Luna stood, and she helped Celestia with peeling off the dress that had been clinging to her for who knew how long. They both worked at licking up the vanilla icing which it had become thoroughly caked in. Their muzzles were working closer and closer toward each other before they finally met, and Celestia smelled blueberry and chocolate before Luna’s tongue rasped across the brige of her muzzle. Celestia responded by nibbling at her jawline. Her dough-flesh was smooth and creamy like mousse.
The older sister may have been hungry, may have already had her appetite whetted, but she was willing to be obliging, and she didn’t raise any objections when Luna brandished the knife again. Nerves of sugar severed one by one as the blade ran through her arm, cutting off sensation until she no longer felt it, it was no longer part of her. Nevertheless, she was conscious to some extent of the severed limb as Luna most indecently ate it, stuffing in the whole hand and then chomping down, working her way along its length. Celestia’s brain bubbled with activity that was incomprehensible and had no need to be anything else.
Luna handed over the knife, still stained with the sun princess’s icing and crumbs. Celestia’s dominant arm had just been eaten, so she took it with her levitation instead and in one swift motion cut through the middle of her sister’s thigh. She started with the dainty hoof, tongue lapping at the impression of a frog as she stuck it in her mouth, and worked her way upward, each bite straining her jaw more and more. She didn’t exactly have a skeleton though, so who said she had to be concerned with trifling matters like that? She could stuff in as much as she wanted. Her stomach was filling, but it was far from full, even with most of the leg already inside her, the thigh filling her mouth, like an impatient foal who had tried to inhale all their food at once.
The alicorn trembled with stimulation. The fire stoked within her loins was undeniable, a blazing oven ready to bake whatever was put into it. Higher than that, though, there was the groaning of her gut as she assimilated the mass that she had eaten. It was not exactly digestion; cake simply took in cake, it was only necessary to convert it to match the new environment, the chocolate mousse turned into vanilla and tangerine. The leg had become part of her, and now there was just that little extra bit of thickness around her form, an extra layer to the cake. She could see that it had taken effect for Luna as well, her trim frame just a tad bulkier than it had once been, added plumpness in her stomach and sides.
And then, while Celestia was still eating, chewing the last of the rich chocolate, the stump of her shoulder tingled, and from it there came an arm, good as new, to replace the one that had been lost. Nothing to be concerned with.
But then Luna had already moved to her sister’s wing, pulling on it so she could put her muzzle right up against the icing. She pressed her muzzle into the fondant feathers, as if to preen them, before she bit hard and began to pull them out in clumps, one after another. Celestia giggled, as if being tickled, before she took the knife and dug it into Luna’s chest without hesitation. There was no interruption, even as a chunk was carved out where the heart and lungs should have been, Luna only moaned passionately while the slice of her torso along with one breast was lifted out. The nipple went into Celestia’s mouth first, pressing into her tongue, before she forced all of it in, filling her cheeks. Their eyes were rolling back in their sockets.
A side effect of their mass burgeoning ever greater was that it meant their servings were getting larger. The next time Celestia ate one of Luna’s thighs, like a giant blue sugary drumstick, it was nearly twice as thick as the first time, a deluge of chocolate that smeared over her face as much as it managed to get down her throat. Luna lopped off one of her breasts, and it was not the moderate dollop of flesh that Celestia had once seen in the mirror before getting herself dressed but a heaving globe that needed two hands to be adequately held. They carved out slices of each other’s stomachs one after another, but they never stayed smaller for long, only swelling bigger and bigger. Like rising dough, their frames steadily expanded over the course of their meal, creases forming across their swollen surfaces where the cake-flesh bulged over itself.
They ate. They swelled. They regrew.
They ate. They swelled. They regrew.
They ate. They swelled. They regrew.
The alicorns never felt themselves growing full, always room left for more, but that hardly mattered to them. All that mattered was the taste, so delectably intoxicating, and the separation that came from their bodies as they were cut or bitten into.
They were cake, and cake was meant to be eaten.
= = = = =
“Tia.”
But Celestia couldn’t be bothered to answer, not while she was preoccupied with eating. A glob of chocolate was before her, held just above the divot of her cleavage. Her glossy lips parted to make way for the sweet mass, stuffed into her mouth one bite after another. The food being crammed down her throat made an earnest attempt to stifle the orgasmic crooning that bubbled up within and reverberated all throughout her. Not a single drop was to be wasted, every smear and crumble lapped up once she was done, even if it meant mixing in with the vanilla frosting that coated her own skin. She did still consume pieces of herself every now and then, but it wasn’t quite as pleasing as eating somepony else. She would have to suppose it made sense—cake wasn’t known for eating itself after all.
“Yes, Luna?” she asked once she was finished licking her lips, turning back to the other mare.
But Luna wasn’t looking at her. The bloated blue body that one might charitably describe as a pony was preoccupied in much the same way that she had been, in the middle of devouring a mass of white frosting with stripes of yellow dough and oozing jellied tangerines. Luna had taken to her gluttony with remarkable aplomb, but she still couldn’t quite match her older sister’s voracity. That was why she was still so much smaller, her frame swollen and distended, sloping out in immense curves, the mass of several adult ponies put together, and yet still far lesser compared to Celestia; they would rib each other about this disparity, but Luna was determined to catch up.
Confusion had broken into the cloud that had settled over Celestia’s mind, and that disturbance was enough for her thoughts to step in with observations that had gone unnoticed until now. Namely, that the voice she had heard came not from the front but from behind her.
That was when she felt a cut deep into her left buttock. Pleasurable stimulation welled up immediately, outweighing the bizarrely alien shock that came from being stabbed in the butt. The blade (ethereal, she knew immediately) continued carving through her until a slice had been formed, then excised, floating away from her. Frosting and filling splattered on the floor.
“You could probably feed a village, Tia, if they did not mind the stomach aches and dental work that would come afterward.” Luna’s voice sounded different. Not merely in that it wasn’t dampened by the cake-flesh around the face and neck and chest, it seemed crisper. Realer.
Celestia looked back over her shoulder, and she saw Luna behind her. Luna, as she had once known her, thin and trim, properly decorated, not made of cake products. The real Luna.
Realization was beating upon the gates of her consciousness. The haze of sugar was doing its damnedest to remain in place all the same.
“I suppose that I never thought that phrase could be taken so literally,” Luna mused while she looked at the cake slice, a massive wedge that was bigger than most whole cakes, bigger than her own torso. “Perhaps not in the waking world, but I should hope that this experience is enough to teach you that you ought to display more control over your appetite.”
But Celestia only groaned laboriously. She had seen the giant cake slice, and that had been enough for it to dominate her attention. She reached out languidly with her magic, a golden aura extending from her horn, but Luna’s blue aura pulled it away. “P…please,” she murmured desperately. The hole in her rear was already repairing itself.
“Do you even understand what has become of you?” Luna asked crossly, eyes narrowing. “Here.” The air between them rippled, and there appeared a thin glassy surface: a mirror. There was a pause in which the blue alicorn looked between the mirror and Celestia, seeing that the glass was only wide enough to capture a scant sliver of her reflection. She gave an annoyed grumble, rolling her eyes, and with another flash of magic the mirror stretched, making itself wider than it was tall.
It was absurd, to the resurfacing rational side of Celestia’s mind, that the figure in the mirror was her. “Fat” and even “obese” seemed like gross understatements for describing a pony of such girth as she beheld. Mammoth breasts and buttocks, far outstripping the span of the arms, a gut that was firmly planted upon the floor, legs like tree trunks that were comprised of cascading tiers of folds. And that was without getting into the presence of vanilla frosting having replaced fur, a half-melted layer of white goop covering every inch of her body, crisscrossed by a filigree of golden icing. There were rivulets of orange jelly left behind from the slice that had been removed from her. Her plump lips similarly looked like they were made from gelatin. Her mane and tail billowed in languid curtains of rainbow frosting, smearing against her where they made contact.
It was absolutely absurd.
And yet she didn’t even need the mirror to look down at herself, to feel the creasing of her chin and cheeks and neck and see the expanse which stretched from her chest, the arms girded in flabby sleeves, to be certain that this was what she had indeed become, even if it was within the surreality of a dream.
There was another groan from deep within Celestia, but the intent behind it was murkier this time.
Luna was talking again. Something about this being a learning experience. But Celestia was cake, she didn’t need to learn anything. Cake was the only thing she needed to know. Her mind was drowning in dough and frosting. She had an easier time understanding the gluttonous grunts of cake-Luna, still in the midst of eating behind her.
With a labored cry, Celestia reached out again for the gargantuan piece of cake. Her magic ensnared it and began to pull, but still Luna kept it away from her. “Have you even been listening to me?!” she asked incredulously.
“Just…one…more…!” the cake-pony whined desperately.
“Sister, I will not allow you to degrade yourself by eating your own ass!”
“But it’s so…tasty!”
This ethereal tug of war carried on for some time. Luna bellowed while Celestia could only managed to cry petulantly in a most un-princess-like manner. Cake-Luna smacked and gulped.
Of course, they were playing with a piece of cake, not exactly the most durable material, no matter the size, and thus it wasn’t long before their magical grasps pulled on it and all at once it came apart, splitting in two. Celestia eagerly welcomed the half that came to her. Luna, being more surprised and less anchored in place, was knocked over when a veritable cannonball of dessert collided with her. She sprawled on the floor, covered in dough and fruit and icing. She sputtered and swallowed. “Very well, then,” she spat while wiping the gunk away from her face, “that is quite enough!”
Celestia wasn’t paying attention to any of that. Her thoughts were once more entirely occupied by cake, up until the moment that Luna’s horn flashed and the dream dissolved.
= = = = =
Consciousness washed over Celestia all at once. There was no exhaustion; she was immediately fully awake and aware. Silvery beams of moonlight were shining in through the windows of her quarters. It was quiet.
She was entirely capable of getting up right away, but even without fatigue there was still something holding her back: shock. She knew that she was flesh and blood once more. The smell of sugar and vanilla and citrus wasn’t filling her nostrils. Her surroundings weren’t matted with frosting. But, more than anything, there were ideas in her head—plans for the day that was to come, reminders to check in on ponies of interest, royal policies, that education funding bill that needed to be passed as soon as possible. It may have been a dream, but she had become so complacent with the haze of sugar that had consumed her mind that now being rid of it was like being dunked in an ice-cold bath.
Her hand reached to grasp at her stomach, flat and trim once more. She had gone to bed with a stomachache, there was no trace of discomfort now. More importantly, there was no insatiable craving to eat.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t go for—
The alicorn bolted upright and she winced and grimaced to herself. That instinctual desire welled up independent of her brain screaming at her that it was high time to cut back on the dessert. Ultimately, though, it just wasn’t enough; the disgust could not overpower the hunger. She grumbled under her breath at the thought of managing a diet without cake.
“I should speak to Luna,” she muttered and then sighed. Her sister might be able to offer her advice. And there was probably an apology in order for her indecency.
Not wanting to cause any disturbances for the palace staff, Celestia teleported straight to Luna’s tower, standing outside the door to the inner chambers. After straightening her dress (and double-checking for flecks of frosting), she knocked on the door. “Luna?” she called.
The seconds passed, ticking by one by one, and there was no response. Celestia’s lips pursed. She looked out a window, observing the positions of the moon and stars. She was certain that it was close to morning, Luna would be here by now, getting ready for the start of the day. She knocked and called again, and she leaned close to the door, ear twitching and swiveling as she listened.
Dimly, she heard breathing. Heavy, labored, panting breathing.
She let herself tense as she opened the door and walked inside. The chambers were dark, curtains drawn over the windows. A golden corona lit around her horn, chasing the shadows away. She walked forward through the antechamber.
She was about to call out again when her hoof set down with a squelch in something wet and goopy. Looking down met her with the sight of a patch of some mess on the carpet (that would leave a stain). It was hard to say with the tint of her magic, but it looked blueish. And she saw that there were more of them, a trail of tracks leading off into the bed chamber.
There came a shuddering gasp.
Celestia ran forward, wings nearly spreading into flight, for the last few steps, and she turned and quickly found the source of the problem.
Luna looked sick, hunched over, trembling, clutching at her stomach. Her other hand was planted on the surface of the mirror she was staring into. It left trailing smears of blue that probably tasted of sugar and blueberry. She was naked, and that meant there was nothing left to the imagination as far as the considerable growth of her figure since Celestia last saw her (the real Luna, that is; she was far smaller than dream-Luna had been), flabby and voluptuous. And, of course, that her skin was a rippled layer of icing, mane and tail full of sprinkles, lips of cyan gelatin.
“Tia, it…it spread to me…through the dream,” Luna gasped haggardly.
Celestia only found herself staring back, jaw hanging agape.
“It is a…comp-p-pulsory effect,” the other alicorn continued without waiting for further input. “I can f-feel it…worming through m-my skull…we need to…c-c-contain it before it…” She reeled and staggered. She held her hand in front of herself, an evaluatory look that Celestia dimly recognized. Then she wailed and sobbed as she broke out of the trance.
“Shh, shh, Luna.” Celestia whispered gently while she approached her. She had no qualms about putting her hands on the surface of frosting and dough as she leaned in for an embrace. Luna’s burgeoning breasts and gut mashed against her.
Luna whimpered. “How can you be so—”
“Shh…” Celestia put a finger on the tip of her sister’s muzzle, pushing into her (literally) juicy lips, and she smiled. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
And she dragged the tip of her finger through the blue icing, scooping up a dollop which she then lifted to her own mouth.
Author's Note
A little while ago I saw a picture of some Celestia cake TF and that gave me ideas. Terrible deviant ideas.
My original vision of this was simpler, Celestia would've already been fat when the TF happened and then it would've been about Luna teasing and eating her for a while until she became caked too. I hadn't even started writing though before the idea morphed into something far more complicated because I can never make things easy for myself. Or resist corruption themes.
The fruit filling was Vesper's idea, because I don't know anything about cake
Except fondant, which I knew about thanks to Lindsay Ellis.
If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon or Ko-Fi!
