Putrid

There was something very wrong.

Pins and needles. She felt this tightness in her abdomen before bed last night—just wicked pain. Invasive, nasty, pain that persistently pressed against her intestines. Celestia was an early bird, often up before the sun due to habit now rather than duty, but midnight was too early to stir.

She didn’t stir.

She was violently ripped from her sleep and she’s been uncomfortable since. Up and down, inconsistent highs and lows. Pain strikes that never went below a 6, and her spine—her hips were made to take the brunt of it. Cruel. So very cruel, and still she wore a smile as she sat at the table with her sister. Celestia had mastered the poker face after centuries of adapting to stress, of being the chewed bubblegum that kept the card tower together. It was easy to appear so calm even in a state of panic, but she’d never hurt like this before. Not even before her ascension.

It’s been getting worse. So very worse, and if something wasn’t done soon she swore she’d go into shock. “Please, if you would excuse me.” With all her years, and there were far too many, this pain she could not pinpoint. Was this it? Was morality catching up with her after forfeiting the crown? No, something was coming. She felt it moving in her barrel.

This body was not her own.

“Are you in distress, dearest sister?” Luna placed her bagel down. She held such a worried expression that Celestia couldn’t help but wear the mask. Another shot of pins caused her own magic to vanish, the tea cup it held fell on her serving of hash browns, and she was on her feet to prevent any questions.

“Of..” She swallowed. Her legs were shaking so much. “Of course. I simply have some business to attend to.” Luna understood and nodded. “I should not be long.” And Celestia assured her with a smile as radiant as the rising sun.

Another cramp. Another twist. Another pull.

Celestia took her time leaving the kitchen table, but it wasn’t until she was certain she was out of sight did she gallop full speed for the bathroom. If she still served as princess this would not be a problem. The castle had frequent powder rooms, and staff to attend to her, or distract her guests, not that she needed either. The stomach pains were just so abnormal that she was certain she would be a while.

The door shut behind her, a short sigh of relief, until she felt the drizzle. A puddle had formed beneath her hind hooves, drenching her fur in a peculiar odor.

Nothing could warrant incontinence, nothing short of poor health, but Celestia knew her body well enough to know the signs beforehand. Her alicornhood made her less susceptible to most diseases. There was no bodily injuries in the past few months, no change in her usual schedule, and she only had tea for breakfast—

It happened again.

No longer did she drizzle, but a whole flood gushed out of her in such violent succession that it knocked the air out of her lungs and brought her to her knees. Her wings spread in reaction, ready to take flight, ready to flee. She could not, not in a bathroom, but she would attempt to drag herself to the toilet.

Something was coming out.

Had she been poisoned? The tea this morning was prepared by herself, she cooked all the food with her own hooves, she set the table without any help. Luna had not awakened yet. They had no housekeepers, no cooks, no staff, for in retirement the two sisters only wished to live as commoners. The leaves were mint, the tea was mint, and they came straight from their garden. But could it be that somepony somehow managed to tamper with it? No, the pain happened last night. Last night they had seafood on the boardwalk while overlooking the ocean. Did dinner not agree with her stomach? Was the seafood poisoned?

Luna had two platefuls.

“N-noo..” Celestia struggled to get the words out, struggled to get her magic to behave so she could warn her sister before it was too late. This agony she would not wish on her worst enemy, let alone her beloved. Another strike to her nervous system came and Celestia had given up on making it to the toilet. “Luna..” she tried, she tried so hard, but her body was not her own. It would not behave.

Something was coming.

Her abdomen constricted, her pelvic muscles worked on their own free will. She made no command to push, yet she did. So much pressure was on her stomach that she was certain her guts would come out. And she made the grave mistake of looking back, and though she was on her side and the cusp of her flank obscured her view, she saw the blood at the dock of her tail. Perhaps her guts were coming out. Perhaps this was the effect of the poison, but she knew she couldn’t be that naive. From where the pain originated, the blood wasn’t from her anus. So she raised her leg and craned her neck to peek between her thighs.

In April the two sisters vacationed in Yakistan. They lived like the locals, they shopped like the locals, they ate like the locals and Yaks weighed twice as much as a pony so there was a lot of eating. On the flight home she noticed the extra pounds, the plumpness, the protruding belly. Luna laughed and said her metabolism needed time to catch up, and Celestia only agreed. She never lost the weight regardless of how much she tried, and eventually she stopped trying. Eventually she gave into her odd cravings believing it to be a phase—as princess she couldn’t have deep fried pickles and the greasiest fast food Equestria had to offer.

Something moved beneath her skin, she felt this foreign thing kick against her insides, push her entrails in whatever direction made it comfortable. This thing was alive—a completely different vessel from her own. It made no sense. Surely she was poisoned. Surely that was the only explanation. Another contraction hit her.

Contraction?

No. Impossible. It’s impossible for this much mucus and blood to ooze out of her lower orifice with no signs of damage. It was impossible to witness her marehood dilate, wink, and spit out more sour fluids, before her very eyes. It was impossible for there to be movement in her uterus, for there to be a snout poking out like a bird’s beak beneath an egg.

“What sorcery!?” Quickly, she tried to get back on her feet to prevent the inevitable, to attempt to comprehend the implausible. Her wings were flapping like mad, causing white feathers to rain down in the small bathroom. She was panicking, of course she was panicking. A potential invasion at the borders of the kingdom was something to mentally prepare for. Being in active labor was not—not when she was unaware of this, whatever this was.

There was just a wet mess all around her, coming from her, but due to shock she was grateful for her muffled silence. With magic the cabinet doors swung open and towels were flung about. Perhaps, in her anxious state, she wanted to clean her mess, or find something to fix her fever because surely she was hallucinating from the poison, but instead she made the situation far worse. The towels knocked beauty products from the counter, shattered a lightbulb, caused a toilet brush to tumble and sprayed waste water on the walls. It was happening too quickly.

It was coming.

Celestia hadn’t realized her legs gave out from underneath her until she was in the bathtub with the shower curtain over her arched back and the rod caught between her horn and the porcelain wall—her horn impaled through said wall. There had to be a moment of unconsciousness since the shower head rained down on her coat, the tub was a fourth full. She was gurling on water, and if it weren’t for her equine anatomy, nostrils quite a way from the lips, she was sure she could’ve drowned. This alone was a shameful nightmare, but nothing would prepare her for the horrors of seeing the top half of a foal dangling from between her legs like a Hearth's Warming Eve ornament. This strange twitching alien was very much alive and very much real.

So Celestia tried to make sense of this. The impact likely made it all come rushing out; she involuntarily pushed, she soiled her white fur pink, and half the thing came out. The pain came from the pressure, the stretching. She felt that thing, that alien, flair its nose, twitch as it took its first breath, kick out as if it had the desire to gallop away. She felt its long legs flex inside, excited to come out, excited to meet her.

It was disgusting.

“This…isn’t…” It wasn’t possible. Celestia had never mated in all her years of life. Not once had she found the one and not once had she considered it. Serving as Princess overshadowed any carnal desires, and with enough time they ceased to exist altogether. Luna and her little ponies were a sufficient enough family, and this ideology had carried over even in retirement.

But Celestia was no fool. She was far too ancient to be. She knew how these things happened—she was no ridiculous filly, but virgins cannot have children.

Now she was angry because the only explanation that she would accept was a magical one, and in those circumstances that thing she was birthing would therefore have to be magical too, which meant this could all very well be an illusion. A complete illusion and in no way natural, so was it a real foal? She was jumping through mental hoops, and it was all to distract from what she needed to do next; push with all her might.

And she did.

She pushed until she grew red in the face, and the rim of her vision darkened, then she’d take a break. She’d take two. Deep breaths, several deep breaths, then again. She’d push. The thing was stubborn. The second half of it should’ve been easy, but something was stuck, and now she wondered if whatever spell was cast on her had all the intentions of causing the most suffering possible. Well, there was a spell to elevate pain—but with a horn through the wall, magic was as good as useless.

Celestia attempted to fix that. Her hind legs stood up, backed up to pull herself free, and that is when the thing slipped out of her. A loud splash hit the floor before it did, and despite the pain and despite the exhaustion, she turned around to see it for herself. Laying in the puddle of fluids was a tiny foal—long tail dock, plain, with huge floppy ears. It was no pony. No full pony. The shape of this little thing's head was too rigid despite being a filly. Its snout was too large, its fur, despite being slick and wet, was coarse. It had no horn, no wings. Its mane was a matted black, its coat was a coal grey.

And she felt disgusted.

More disgusted than if it were a colorful little thing with a horn and wings. She knew that this visceral feeling in her gut would perhaps be replaced with a mother’s love if this thing, be it magic or not, was a pony. It struggled in the soup of sick. New mucus had covered its snout, preventing it from breathing and therefore letting out a cry. She stood there, umbilical cord dangling from her hind legs, watching the creature fight for air. In those moments she felt nothing but disgust.

“Tia? Do you need assistance?” A soft knock on the bathroom door pulled her cold gaze from the foal. It took a moment for her to register who that was, where she was, and what had happened.

Celestia never felt so old.

“I’m alright, Luna.” She called back only to reassure her sister—to reassure herself. Was she alright? It was hard to tell, but she definitely felt outside of her body, like her two eyes weren’t witnessing a creature squirm in birth juice, and a creature that came out of her. It wasn’t her in this room but somepony she watched through a crystal ball. What an awful mare, she thought. Do something before it dies, she thought too, yet Celestia didn’t move.

She only watched.

“Tia? Are you in the shower?” Was she? The shower was running, wasn’t it? Everything just went on autopilot then.

“I’ll be out in a moment.” With the towels, Celestia scooped up the foal and wrapped her tightly. The goal was not to provide comfort but to hide the anomaly. It was thrown in the laundry basket along with more towels to cover it up. She shut the whicker lid with such little care. “I’ll be out in a moment!” It was repeated yet she didn’t realize. And with magic, the alicorn quickly got to restoring the bathroom in its rightful order. Shower off, the curtain up, the wall rebuilt in seconds. The puddles raised and swirled around her causing a twister of bodily fluids that all traveled towards the toilet bowl. The busted light bulb was unscrewed and thrown away—she didn't have the care to fix that. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

The placenta came shortly afterwards with no pushing on her part. It slid out like a dead fish from a barrel. She didn’t even look at it, it was discarded with a quick teleport. If she was thinking she’d realize it would resurface through dragon fire. But Celestia wasn’t thinking, she was working on autopilot.

The toilet was flushed, her legs were wiped down, and a soundproof spell was placed on the basket for safe measures. It would be handled later. Celestia struggled to stay upright. She needed to rest. She needed to forget about that thing that came out of her.

The door opened and she wore a smile. Luna peeked over her shoulder, but she only found a squeaky clean bathroom. As far as she’ll know, nothing happened. “Was breakfast disagreeable?”

“Tremendously, though I’m afraid whatever I ate last night was the culprit. I had to shower afterwards.” Her eyes smiled, her lips just the same, but it was all a part of the mask. “I might lay down for a bit. Can we reschedule our tennis game for this evening?”

“Of course. You do look awfully drained, yet less bloated.” Luna chuckled as she playfully poked her side.

“Ahh, yes. I hadn’t noticed I’ve been packing on the weight, but I likely lost twenty pounds in there.” The both of them shared a laugh. Celestia wiped a tear from her eye, but if only Luna knew it was one of sorrow. “Perhaps we should add a nice gallop along the beach to today’s schedule?” Celestia shut the lights off and closed the bathroom door without giving the thing a second glance.