The New Normal

A soft breeze swept over the sandy trail, waving the tall grass and bringing a rustling hush over the park and its chorus of animal calls.

"Look, dad, I caught a grasshopper!"

Shining Armor stopped in his tracks and looked down to see the strange, long-legged insect sitting patiently on his grinning granddaughter's upturned hoof.

"You did, he laughed, and it's a big one." He tousled her dark fuschia pigtails in approval, admiring the blue candy stripe pattern that reminded him of his mom. "Did you find any of those annoying cicadas yet?"

"No, but I can hear them." Her eyes ping-ponged alertly as they became aware once again to the everpresent droning trill.

"Auntie Twilight says the cicadas aren't supposed to be this far north and that they're actually an invasive species," she expounded confidently. "I have a hypothesis that they only came after the empire reappeared and travel opened up; I haven't done any research on it yet though. I'm gonna do my school science project on the ensuing changes in the local ecosystems after the reintroduction of ponies to the area."

Shining nodded in astonishment. "That sounds like a really great project. I bet your auntie would love to help you with it, too. You remind me so much of her."

Remedy Star smiled at that thought, viewing it as the highest of accolades. She wanted to study under the Princess of Friendship just like her mother did. "I can't wait to see her again."

"She'll be here in a couple of weeks," he replied, playfully hyping up his family's upcoming visit to the Crystal Empire.

Just then, Flurry Heart popped around her father's side to examine the bug still sitting on her daughter's hoof. She stretched out a foreleg, startling the creature into the air. Remedy yelped in surprise as the hopper buzzed away past her ear.

The two laughed at her reaction, then shared a sentimental look that turned to a knowing amorous one that went undetected by the twelve year old. Flurry would have followed up with a flirtatious hoof stroke on his flank but such gestures between them rarely happened outside the castle walls and certainly not right out in public as they were.

Remedy sprang off of the trail again, making a beeline for the wild, overgrown edge of the park.

"Let's stay out of the tall grass," cautioned Cadance, bringing up the rear "You don't want to get ticks."

The three adult ponies trotted leisurely down the dirt walk in the sinking afternoon sun as Remedy went on a self-guided nature adventure, weaving through the treeline, a snow white blur flashing between rocks and bushes. There were singing birds in the trees and clouds of squirming tadpoles in the babbling brook that wriggled away when she set her hoof down in the crystal clear water. She tried to sneak up on another grasshopper without subduing it with her magic but it buzzed away before she could get too close.

Remedy Star was a happy, normal alicorn but she did not know her real father. Her mother was a princess and she lived with her grandma and grandpa in a castle so things weren't too bad. Her real dad was out there somewhere. She always wondered about him but never let his absence weigh too heavily on her heart, despite what the world would think if word got out.

Her mother got pregnant with her at a very young age, twelve, they said. She told her that it was from a one time thing with a colt she didn't even know, who probably left the empire long ago. That was supposed to be a big secret that Remedy was never to tell anyone.

Her grandparents sent her mother far away to study in secret with Auntie Twilight for a year until she was born. Then they told everyone that she was their new daughter and Flurry's little sister because that sounded much better than how things really were.

Calling her grandpa, 'dad' and having a public mom and a private mom might have been a strange life but everyone loved Remedy and that was all that mattered. - - -

Flurry bobbed her head beneath Shining's barrel, her lips gliding all the way down to the base of his solid cock. He shivered as his flare nestled in the soft bottom of her throat where she held him, lapping playfully at the underside of his girth. She sucked hard, pulling off of him slowly so that her lips could feel every vein and raised ring of flesh before finally catching on his fat head and ending with a squeaking pop.

She panted, surveying his glistening shaft, certain it could not get any more ready. Flurry backed out from underneath Shining and hopped up to sit on the cold crystal countertop, spreading her hind legs apart in feverish invitation. Not missing a beat, her father reared up and braced his forehooves on either side of her flanks. She pulled him into a ravenous, open mouthed kiss. His tongue quickly found its way inside where she sucked it as if her life depended on it.

Without breaking their desperate kissing, Flurry grabbed her father's length in her magic aura and began twirling his tip in circles around her engorged clit. The two of them moaned into eachothers mouths until she placed him right over her welcoming entrance. Shining needed no further instruction. With their eyes still closed and their lips locked together, he thrust all the way up inside her with a deep gasp of satisfaction. He urgently cupped her taut flanks with both hooves as he launched into a violent pounding rhythm that made his daughter cry out hoarsely.

"Oh, fuck!"

There came a light knock at the door.

"Can I just get my eczema lotion?" asked Cadence meekly from the other side. "I'm having a bad flare-up."

"Yeah," grunted Shining breathlessly, pulling his lips off of Flurry's to speak. "Hang on." He looked around on the counter that his daughter's incredible ass was parked on but did not stop pumping in and out of her. Flurry's duotone curls bounced on her shoulders with each meaty pound, framing her glazed over, slack jawed expression. Shining finally spotted the little white tube his wife needed and teleported it to the other side of the door where it plopped carelessly on the carpet.

"You know, Flurry, you have your own bedroom… bathroom… whatever," huffed Cadance, picking up the tube in her magical aura.

To this she received only impassioned moans and delirious swears in response.

Cadance sighed and teleported into the hall where she could not hear their carnal revelries. She held marital authority to drop in on them and participate any time she wished but the thought of doing so honestly made her stomach churn. As a result, she just had less sex. It still hurt whenever she happened across an intimate moment that they didn't specifically invite her to, even though they all knew what the answer would be if they did.

Oddly she still felt an alarming urge to bring the issue of birth control to their attention even though Flurry had been a responsible legal adult for years and the matter was none of her business as disturbing as it was. Cadance adored Remedy. She was the mother to her that Flurry couldn't be, back when she was just a foal herself but she still didn't want them having any more foals and was continually worried about it. Although, to their credit, they hadn't slipped up once since that first time thirteen years ago, before all of this became the new normal.

Cadance listlessly smeared eczema cream under her chin with one hoof while gazing into an ornate crystal mirror. He wasn't thinking of her right now. That's what he said he did every time he lay with their daughter, at least in the beginning when she was just a little thing and they were still operating under the guise of necessity. 'It's her heat again,' he'd say or 'I just want some daddy bonding time,' she'd say. Now Flurry was an adult with her own agency and fully developed libido and they just… shared him. Sloppy and overindulgent, the two had dropped all pretense long ago. When you did it on the bathroom counter, it was just called fucking. There was no getting around it. When did he stop thinking of her? She could at least sense within him once he began to view Flurry as a gratifying sexual conquest and it was well before she finished highschool. The same was true of Flurry's reciprocated feelings.

"How did you let it get this bad?" she murmured at her dour reflection. Shining's mistress and bastard were not only related to her by blood but they all just lived under one roof in some perversion of what a family unit was supposed to be. Flurry and Shining's relationship had blossomed from daddy's girl to something resembling a happily married couple, the same kind of relationship she had had before her heart filled with jealousy and resentment of her daughter.

If Flurry were any other mare, Cadance would have destroyed her and enforced a red line ultimatum with Shining for any future shenanigans but as her only child, her feelings about the situation were too complex to unknot. It was a slow boiling pot she couldn't get out of and now here they were, like roommates in college.

She loved Flurry Heart. But if she really loved her, how did she let her end up like this? But if this was really such a bad thing, as she argued, how was her daughter so happy and content while Cadence felt awful. How did a reckless, incestuous fling grow to eclipse a normal, healthy marriage in terms of being stable and fulfilling? How did she become the interloper?

"Grandma," called Remedy from down the hall.

Cadance blinked, suddenly realizing that she'd been spacing out in the mirror for probably minutes.

"I'm tired of reading for the moment. Where's mom?"

"Oh, I think she's probably just resting somewhere," she sighed.

Remedy cocked her head to the side. "Then, can we do something together?"

Cadance smiled. "Want to make cookies?"

"Yeah," she exclaimed before teleporting the two of them to the cavernous, unstaffed kitchen.

Her grandmother laughed at her eagerness. Advanced as she was, no foal could resist the allure of sweets, even a twelve year old one.

"Can I lick the bowl?"

"Of course," replied Cadance, floating a cookbook from a shelf, "if there is anything to lick. Maybe we'll just eat wads of cookie dough instead."

"Yes," agreed the filly, tapping her forehooves together conspiratorially.

"Want to make your favorite?" asked her grandma, opening the book to the marked page.

"Hmm… Let's make something new that we've never done before," suggested the filly.

Cadance flipped slowly though the pages. "Chocolate peanut butter fudge?" She turned the floating book around to show her the picture. Her eyes landed on the wall behind the filly where a rack of seductive looking cooking wine hung.

"That looks amazing," marveled Remedy.

"Yes it does," muttered Cadence absently, still eying the bottles. "Uh… well, here's the list; why don't you start getting out the ingredients and I'll get a bowl."

The girl nodded exuberantly and quickly set to work, rummaging through the cupboards.

Cadence snuck a corkscrew out of a nearby drawer and wandered over to the wine rack. She loved Remedy but never imagined becoming a grandmother so young or… any of the other things in her life for that matter.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a hot, spontaneous dicking like the one she'd heard happening in her bathroom. One where she and her husband went at each other like starving wolves. Part of that was that he was never starving like she was. If she didn't get him first thing in the morning for some fumbling, half asleep sex, all too often, her only option was sloppy seconds at a later time with a lower energy Shining. She could no longer say she was unfamiliar with the taste of her daughter's essence since she regularly left it behind on her father's lips and shaft.

The cork squeaked out and Cadence took the biggest, classiest, most discreet swig she could manage.