Unexpected Changes

The following Wednesday, they had received their assignments, and the class was broken up into groups of four, plus two groups of five to keep the last two students from being unable to form a full team. They were to join together for their science class and make a report on the reproductive cycle of plants. There was also a bonus, extra credit question that seemed to have nothing to do with the matter: "What is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable?" Aside from being plants, what did that have anything to do with plant reproduction?

They were given a few days to work on their project in independent study. Once they had all made their presentations, Ms. Mayberry would tell them what was right and what was wrong, and then lead them through the rest of the course work. In doing so, they would be able to look for their own answers, rather than just regurgitating them back to her, and they might actually remember it.

The first day of this independent study was spent at the school library, reading books and looking at diagrams, but after school, they all went to the real library. Unfortunately, some of the books they were wanting to look at had already been checked out by the other students. They were about to give up and go home for the day, when Daisy had an idea.

"Do you have any books on pony anatomy?" she asked the librarian.

He cocked his head to the side. "I thought you said you were studying plants? If anything, I'd have thought you were going to look into animals next."

"We are," Daisy admitted. "But you said the books we were looking for were already gone, and we don't know what animals we're supposed to look at. But we can start on ponies and know more about that when the last quarter comes around."

With a nod of approval, the librarian pointed to the biology section. "Row seventeen, shelf six."

As Daisy led the other girls back, Lily whispered to her, "What are we doing?"

"I've been thinking," answered Daisy. "We've had a lot of questions recently, and if we can't find answers to the questions on the test right now, we are in a library, so we can find answers to other questions. I'm right, aren't I?"

"That grammar is atrocious," scoffed Snapdragon. ""I am right, am I not?" not "I am right, are not I?""

"Then what is the proper contraction?" asked Glory.

Snapdragon didn't answer. This was just like the time she'd spoken out against the word "grateful," for not meaning "full of grates," rather than "full of gratitude."

"It doesn't matter," breathed Lily. "Is it really okay to be looking at anatomical models at the library? Children come here!"

"Lily," snorted Daisy, "we are children."

"Yeah, but, like, younger children..."

"Then that's the library's fault for keeping books like that in the first place. If a kid could walk in here and just pull it down off the shelf, it wasn't really locked away, was it? Besides, this is educational. We're not going to be in trouble because we're supposed to be studying this stuff soon, anyway. Besides, the librarian told us we could."

She pulled down a book labeled "Pony Reproduction Reference Guide" and sat down on the floor with it. Opening it up to the female anatomy section, Lily instantly recognised the shapes and images.

"This is one of the diagrams my dad showed me," she said, pointing to one. "Except, this one's in colour. Mine was just black lines on white paper."

"It's still white paper," noted Glory. "Show us around!"

Lily pointed to the various parts and gave them all names. Some of them were the correct names, like the womb and the fallopian tubes, some were inaccurate, but not entirely wrong, such as referring to the vaginal canal as the pussy, and some of what she said was outright wrong, such as the ovaries being called "test-sicles." Luckily for the girls, there was a labelled diagram on the next page with higher detail, and knew things she didn't, like the cervix.

As fascinating as this was, they quickly moved to the next chapter, male anatomy. What the fillies found out when they saw the first diagram was that Lily had undersold it. The drawings involved in this section were highly detailed, showing the mostly flat battering ram that was the head, the difference between the flared and unflared tips, the medial ridge, the urethra, and a great big pair of testicles. There were pictures of it being fully erect, protruding but flaccid, halfway out for the purposes of urination, and even tucked away inside of the prepuce. There were also pictures of various rashes and diseases that they didn't want to look at, so after the clean pictures, they flipped past that to the cutaway shots of how mating was performed.

Despite being very informational and clinical in how it was written, the pictures were exceptionally graphic and highly detailed, with labels for almost everything. Lily was able to point out a lot of stuff that she'd already learned, even things she'd already talked about, like the white substance that was excreted by stallions. As the book was primarily focused on how reproduction was performed, it skipped a lot of information she had experience with, such as blowjobs and cunnilingus, and things she'd heard about like anal and facials.

Finally, they came to the section Daisy had been looking for. Chapter six was about the growth of the foal inside of the womb, and chapter seven was about giving birth. They would also need chapter nine, which was about how to feed a newborn foal, though this book didn't have a lot in the way of baby care tips. There was definitely no section on how to change a diaper; they looked twice. There was, however, a section on birth that made Lily feel a lot better. Mostly, it was because she would need to push her foal out of her vagina, and not her belly button. In fact, her belly button wouldn't even come into play. It was exclusively the foal's belly button that would matter, and that was only because she would have to cut it to sever something called an "umbilical cord."