Foals

Chapters

Chapter 1: Serotonin
Chapter 2: Renovation
Chapter 3: Monsters
Chapter 4: Root Cause
Chapter 5: Holding On
Chapter 6: Release
Chapter 7: Traditions
Chapter 8: Glühwein
Chapter 9: Princess and the pee

Chapter 1: Serotonin

Author's Note

Forgive me ponies for I have sinned, it's been ten years since my last story post on FIMFic.

While I never dropped out of the community, life got in the way as they say, and with one thing and another I have not written horsewords in quite some time.

The past year though, I've been heavily immersed back in Equestria and have started to feel the need to tinkle on the old keyboard.

For those of you who have read my incomplete first fic Flying Dreams, the good news (if you liked it) is that I'm finally actively working on some new chapters. It was never intended to leave off where it did.

This fic is something I've had bouncing around in my head for a little while now, inspired soley by some of the terribly cute art of Cadance wearing diapers that exists on the internet in various horse related image repositories. I've enjoyed fleshing the bones of this idea out with some additional OC characters and backstory and I hope it can serve both as a fun fetishy romantic clop fic and as a light psychological examination of some of some of the common issues experienced by those in the ABDL and /ageplay community.

While the first chapter barely hints at it, please note as above that this will contain ageplay, diapers, daddy issues, and other such things that some ponies find repugnant, so if that is not your thing please trot along and read something more aligned to your interests. Forewarned is forehooved.

~ Millyhooves

Chapter 1: Serotonin

Princess Cadance leaned back in her seat, trying to enjoy a moment of respite while the carriage was otherwise empty. It wasn’t a very comfortable respite; The Crystal Flier had been commissioned for the occasion of her accession as the Princess In The North, and her and Shining Armor’s subsequent royal tour. The train was stunning, but somewhat imposing, the outside of the carriages having been hewn out of solid crystal of various hues, with diamond shaped polished sections serving as windows. It looked like something she would have drawn as a filly, but with enough hard edges that there was no mistaking it as anything but a projection of the Crystal Empire’s power. What she hadn't expected when she signed-off on the concept drawings was for most of the interior - including the seats - to be made out of crystal too.

Her latest trip to Canterlot had gone well, if predictably. She had ostensibly been visiting to open a new wing of Canterlot Academy - her old alma mater - and to meet with a delegation from the Equestria Games organizing committee. However Celestia had made it clear in private that the main reason for her visit was to ensure she was getting plenty of sunlight away from the long northern winter. As Princess of the Sun her aunt was of course uniquely disposed to assist with this, and had ensured beautiful autumn weather in Canterlot, the local weather team working overtime to keep the skies empty of clouds for the duration of her stay.

Taking time out from the northern winter had been nice, but she knew her aunt’s intentions weren’t purely motivated by her health. Serotonin production from exposure to sunlight was known to be an important factor in lessening or avoiding anestrus, the fallow periods in a mare’s estrus cycle. Celestia - and just about everypony else in the royal court circles it seemed - had made it crystal clear on her accession that her and Shining’s first duty should be to ensure a Northern Line of Succession.

The connecting door to the forward carriage opened, and her equerry Charteris Stone came trotting back inside, levitating two tall drinks in front of him. He set one down on the small drinks table protruding from the carriage wall in front of Cadance’s seat, and the other on the matching table in front of his own seat facing hers. He gave her a polite but professionally reproachful look, and she quickly moved her hind-hooves from his seat, sitting upright.

The unicorn reclaimed his vacated seat. His coat was light grey, with a shimmering silver mane and an opalescent white horn. Immaculately dressed as always, he sported a charcoal grey blazer and a black and silver striped tie. Only his regimental tie pin marked him as a high ranking E.U.P. officer and member of the Northern Equestian Household Cavalry, now colloquially known as the Crystal Guard since it had re-absorbed the Crystal Empire’s defense forces. “Not long to go now Your Highness. Another half-an-hour and we’ll be back home,” he said, noting her tired appearance. “You might want to go freshen up before we get to the station,” he added, taking a sip of his drink, his nose wrinkling slightly.

She sighed. As much as she was looking forward to seeing Shining again, his insistence on meeting her at the station would no-doubt have alerted the local paparazzi to her arrival. Quite why that was considered news she had yet to work out, but she needed a drink before she was ready to deal with that, and was thankful that Charteris had come through for her on this.

She levitated the glass to her lips, taking a sip, then almost spat the drink out as she tasted it. “Perhaps there has been some mix up with our drinks?” she said, a sly smirk spreading on her face as she knew a mistake in etiquette of this magnitude would be sure to embarrass her normally stone-faced equerry. “I asked for a G&T, but this seems to be some kind of rather inferior non-alcoholic lemon, lime and bitters.”

“I’m afraid not Your Highness, not today,” he said with an apologetic smile. “It’s that time of the month.” He tapped a leather-bound folio beside him on the seat. “I’m sorry,” he said doing his best to appease her frustration. “If it’s any consolation, the G&T isn’t very good either. I don’t think the onboard bartender has ever met a fresh lime. They don’t grow natively in the northern climate you know,” he said, sounding pained.

Cadance clasped her hooves together in annoyance, looking out the window. In the past few minutes the landscape outside had transitioned from bright autumn foliage to snowy pine barrens, corroborating Charteris’ statement that they were getting close to home. She felt as frigid and devoid of energy as the landscape outside. Home was a relative word. Both ponies had been born in Canterlot and while the royal genealogists had insisted conveniently that she shared an ancestral link to the Crystal Empire, to say it felt like home yet to either of them was a stretch.

She reluctantly drank the sweet non-alcoholic beverage in front of her, sipping in silence. These days it felt like everypony had more control over her time and her body than she did. She knew for a fact that Charteris was more in tune with her estrus cycle than she was, since she had never been that good at keeping track, and he was keeping an official diary on the subject.

Finishing her drink, she excused herself to the bathroom as Charteris had suggested, her state rail carriage being equipped with its own en-suite. Slumped on the cold crystal toilet, she buried her head in her hooves and sobbed.

When she and Shining had first gotten married they had frankly gone at it like rabbits for the first few months, taking their duties seriously but managing to have a lot of fun with it. Getting to know each other’s bodies intimately after having saved (most of) themselves for their wedding had been exhilarating.

Most palace courtiers had assumed that she would be with foal imminently, but when no pregnancy had materialized after the first six months, whispers had started around court that perhaps the couple were barren. Less savory tabloid publications had even started reporting conspiracies, such as claiming that the real Princess Cadance was dead, murdered by Shining so he could elope with the harlot changeling Queen Chrysalis masquerading as Cadance.

With no apparent forthcoming issue from the couple, Celestia had started paying close attention, and for the past month any number of court appointed fertility experts had been circling around the couple like discreet buzzards. Keeping an estrus schedule had been her sister in law’s suggestion, bless her hooves. Medical tests suggested there was nothing physically wrong with either party, but the increased pressure had taken its toll, leading to performance anxiety on both sides. They were still very close as a couple, but the joyful novelty of sex had given way to a series of carefully scheduled appointments organized around that damned diary.

According to the diary she should be horny right now and needed to have sex with Shining at the earliest opportunity, but after a full week of diplomatic and social engagements all she felt like doing right now was curling up into a ball under a blanket and forgetting all about her Celestia-damned adult responsibilities.

Ten minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom looking much fresher, her mane freshly brushed, and any sign of tears having been carefully wiped away, with eye makeup reapplied. She was wearing her usual game face for the waiting media, and anypony who didn’t know her well would be hard-pressed to tell that anything was wrong.

It was approaching dusk as the train pulled into Crystal Central Station. Shining was there waiting for her as promised, along with the expected gaggle of media. His face lit up as she alighted from the train, stepping onto the arrivals platform, her suitcase floating behind her.

“Cady! I’ve missed you!” he said excitedly, stepping forward to hug her.

“Missed you too!” she whispered in his ear as she returned the hug, conscious of the clicking of the media’s cameras. She could feel her spirit lifting from seeing him again.

Charteris stepped off the train behind her, levitating only a red leather royal dispatch box beside him. Adjusting his tie, he gave a nod of greeting to the Prince’s Equerry, a crystal pegasai captain named Lock Step. “Your carriage awaits your royal highnesses,” Charteris said, checking his pocket watch, ever conscious of the official schedule.

The media pack in the Crystal Empire was relatively small and well behaved compared to Canterlot and the other larger cities, but it didn’t stop them shouting out daft things like “Cadance - when are you expecting?!” and “Princess - how are you and the Prince getting along?!”

The young royal couple spent a few moments ignoring questions and smiling for the cameras before trotting over to the black state carriages. Shining opened the door of the lead carriage and held it open for Cadance. “Your ride awaits, Mi Amore,” he said playfully waggling his eyebrows and motioning inside the carriage with his hoof. He knew she loved to hate him using her official name. “You are my royal ride, you dork,” she said once the door was closed, sticking her tongue out at him and enjoying watching him blush. That never got old.

Charteris and Lock Step boarded the rear carriage with Cadance’s luggage. The two carriages pulled away from the station and into traffic for their short journey from Crystal Central up Crystal Mall to the Crystal Castle.

Protocol dictated that Charteris should accompany the Princess in the lead carriage for her service and protection, but he was smart enough to know when he was getting in the way, and had every confidence in the Crystal Guard driving teams in the unlikely event of a security threat.

He felt the other officer’s hoof slide on top of his own, and smiled. Plus he hadn’t seen Lock Step in over a week and it was nice to have a few minutes of discreet alone time together.

He kissed the pegasus stallion's cheek and leaned his head on his shoulder. “Missed you.”

“Those two must be glad to see each other,” Shining said cheerfully, looking back over his shoulder at the rear carriage and noting the blinds had been pulled down “Lock has been looking mopey all week.”

Cadance smirked. “You know relationships between EUP officers are technically forbidden. We’ll have to pretend to find out sooner or later.”

“I’m sure that’s part of the excitement for them. And it’s just too precious watching them sneaking around trying to hide it. Especially when Charteris is normally so reserved,” Shining said, turning back to look at his wife.

“You don’t think I should have them punished then?” she said, laying a hoof on his flank.

Shining had been constantly exposed to his sister’s love of checklists growing up, and some of it had rubbed off on him, a skill that had actually come in useful as an officer. Closing his eyes for a second he composed a quick mental list, taking a deep breath.

“OK, firstly,” he said opening his eyes to look at Cadance, holding up his left forehoof, “they are not even from the same regiment. Secondly,” he held up his right forehoof, “As personal equerries, they are on secondment to the royal household, and only ceremonially representing their regiments...”

“Doesn’t the fact that they’re ceremonially representing their regiments mean it’s more important they don’t disgrace themselves?” she asked sweetly, playing Tirek’s advocate.

Shining ignored her. “Thirdly,” he said, running out of forehooves and resorting to raising his left hoof higher, “that rule is only ever enforced at the CO’s discretion, even in Canterlot, and as Knight-Commander of the Crystal Empire and the North you’re technically their commanding officer, so they are at your discretion love. And fourthly,” he waved his right hoof, “We’re...”

“Not in Canterlot anymore,” she finished his sentence for him grinning.

“Exactly.” He looked at her with puppy-dog eyes, “Oh go on, can we keep them? Please? Lock is much better than my previous Aide-de-Camps, and I know you don’t hate Charteris.”

She rolled her eyes. “Only if you look after them and promise to give them walkies every day. And if their relationship causes any issues, I didn’t know about it and they’re your problem. I have plausible deniability.”

“Deal!” he said, giving her a peck on her cheek.

There was a slight jolt as the carriage left the road, rolling over the crystal cobblestones lining the triangular courtyard beneath the towering Crystal Castle.

“What’s up with you anyway? You seem in an unusually playful mood.” She jabbed him in the ribs with her hoof as the carriage made its way to the postern gate nearest the castle’s living quarters.

“What makes you say that? Can’t I just be happy to see my lovely wife?” he said, trying to sound hurt.

“You can... But you’re a terrible liar, and I’ve known you long enough to tell when you’re excited about trying to keep a secret.” She looked at him with a stern expression. “Please tell me you’re not throwing me a surprise welcome home party? I’ve only been gone a week, and I really just need to put my hooves up for a bit.” And curl up under a blanket.

He gulped, looking crestfallen. “Er, no. No, not a party, just a small surprise.”

“Does it have anything… per chance… to do with why your coat is covered in paint splotches?” she asked innocently.

“I guess you’ll have to wait and see,” he said, grinning sheepishly, looking down at the flecks of pink paint on his fetlocks.

Chapter 2: Renovation

The Royal Suite of the castle was situated on the twelfth floor at the top of a tower that looked straight out of a fairytale, with stunning panoramic views of the Crystal Empire and its environs. The couple had moved in there after their wedding and the whole Sombra debacle, however the tower was not serviced by working plumbing, and while it had an ancient hoof-cranked elevator there was currently no elevator maintenance budget and it had been deemed unsafe for use. After a very sweaty couple of weeks the couple had decided to relocate to more practical lodgings, moving to one of the guest suites on the northern side of the third floor. They still occasionally visited the tower for sex though.

Their new adopted residence was more humble but still well-appointed, and most importantly did have running water. It was not wanting for space, and had a rather nice view of Mount Everhoof off in the distance. Most of the rest of the floor was unused for now, with a few other rooms maintained as guest bedrooms.

Cadance wasn’t sure what to expect as they climbed the comparatively small number of stairs from the courtyard to the residence. She opened the door in trepidation, still half-expecting a room full of ponies to jump out at her yelling “Surprise!” If Shining was lying about not organizing a party, then so help me.

The first thing she saw when she entered their drawing room was Princess Luna sitting alone in an armchair by the fire, calmly drinking tea.

Even having assumed that Shining had something planned, she was caught off-guard.

“Oh…uh, your majesty… This is a surprise!” she stuttered while hastily genuflecting.

Luna looked up, rising from her chair and clapping her hooves together in excitement. “Excellent! That was the intended effect.” She made a sound that Cadance assumed was intended to be a laugh.

“But dear niece, we recall that we have spoken with you previously regarding protocol. There is no need to stand on ceremony between us Princesses.” Luna waved a silver-shod hoof in an exaggerated display of exasperation. “When in private we would take it as a personal endearment if you would simply address us as Luna. Or even… Auntie Luna if you should so wish!?” she added waggling an eyebrow conspiratorially and nudging Cadance with her knee.

“Ow… yes, Auntie Luna then. It’s good to see you, I missed you in Canterlot.” Celestia had told Cadance that Luna was out of town on official business. She certainly wasn’t expecting to find her waiting for her here when she got back home.

“Come here and give your Aunt a hug then!” Luna commanded, and Cadance obliged.

Charteris cleared his throat politely. The two equeries had been standing discretely in the doorway behind them. “Your Highnesses,” he bowed and Lock Step did the same, “if that will be all for this evening, we shall retire and leave you to it.”

“Yes, thank you Charteris, you boys may as well get an early night.” She winked at them, noting to her satisfaction the slight flush of color on Charteris’ face.

“Thank you Maam. Your dispatch box…” Charteris nodded to the red leather case which he levitated across the room, setting it down safely on top of the rosewood writing desk that sat under one of the room’s large sash windows.

She dismissed him with another nod of thanks and he and Lock Step retired, closing the door behind them with a quiet click.

“Are those two…?” Luna asked.

“Good friends. Yes,” Shining said, poker faced.

“So, Auntie Luna, can I ask what brings you out to our little empire?” Cadance asked curiously.

“Do we need a reason to visit our favorite castle?” Luna said.

Cadance blinked. “This is your favorite castle?”

“Aha! That was a humorous jape dear niece!” Luna said. “While this castle is a fine example of first-age neo-romantic crystal architecture, it does not in fact qualify as our favorite castle! However, you are arguably our favorite niece. We said castle instead of niece to subvert your expectations you see.”

“Ah… I see… Good one Auntie. You had me going there. Expectations subverted.” She gave Luna another hug and shot Shining a get me out of here look over her aunt’s shoulder.

Shining cleared his throat nervously. “This is great, you two catching up like this, but Cadance is still on Canterlot time… I think she may be feeling a little tired.”

“Oh yes, of course, enough japes and dilly dally. We did anticipate that you would be curious as to why we are here… Behold!” Luna’s horn lit up with a pale blue glow and the door to the royal bedchamber burst open dramatically, the heavy oak paneled doors opening inwards from the drawing room with a squeak.

Cadance squinted. Looking through the doors from where she was standing, nothing in the bedroom looked out of place. “Am I missing something?” She asked, confused. “Or is this actually another jape?”

Shining laid a hoof upon her withers and led her inside the bedroom. It still looked almost the same, but now she could see that a new door had been added, presumably connecting the Royal Bedchamber directly with an adjacent room off the same corridor.

“We did some minor renovations while you were away,” he said, unable to hide the pride welling up in his voice.

“We?” Cadance asked.

“Me! I did the carpentry and the paintwork,” he beamed proudly. “Well, mostly, Lock helped.”

“Oh dear. Well that explains your mane.”

“We also helped if you recall!” Princess Luna said, stepping into the room behind them. Her aunt’s coat was spotless Cadance noted.

“Uh…yes of course your… High... Luna.” Shining gulped nervously, turning back to his wife. “Princess Luna provided invaluable assistance planning and directing the works, and…and… helped so much with… all the other things!”

“Shining…What other things? What did you do to the castle?” Cadance asked suspiciously.

Luna took another step forward “Behold! … Again!” she said excitedly, opening the new conjoining door.

Cadance gaped. The adjoining suite had been converted into a large foal’s nursery painted in shades of pink, cream and purple like her coat and mane.

She stepped through the doorway and into the room, looking around. The floor was freshly carpeted in light pink. A large heart-shaped shag-pile rug covered much of the floor in the center of the room, its turquoise a fairly close match to the color of her cutie mark. A giant pink and purple plush ursa was sat in the middle of the rug.

Against the far wall, dominating a full quarter of the room was the largest crib Cadance had ever seen. It appeared to be a tidy conversion of a filly’s double four poster bed, with crib railings added, the whole thing painted a light pink with fuscia colored bedding.

Near the door as they entered sat a large diaper changing table and colorful cubicle shelves carrying the largest assortment of diapers Cadance had seen in one place. In one corner of the room there was some kind of foam play-mat surrounded by a play-fence.

“Shining…?” She said quietly. “What is all this? You know I’m not pregnant yet right?”

“I know. I know.” He said trying to sound cheerful, but only succeeding in sounding worried. “This was Princess Luna’s idea actually. The thing is, we’ve both been so stressed from other ponies worrying about when you’re going to get pregnant…”

“We know our sister means well, but we understand the pressure to… perform to Celestia’s expectations.” Luna stepped into the room beside her, laying a wing around her niece’s shoulder and patting her gingerly in a manner Cadance could only assume was intended to be comforting.

“We, that is to say we ourself personally thought that an alternate approach might be warranted. We read in a parenting tome once that conception can be inhibited by psychological stresses leading oneself to compartmentalize and abstract the concept of foal-making as a duty, rather than as as a natural biological imperative.”

Cadance didn’t feel like making foals as a biological imperative sounded any less stressful than as a duty, but she didn’t say so. “Go on.” She said, tapping her hoof on the soft plush carpet distractedly, looking around the room, her head filling with questions.

“The author asserted that surrounding oneself with objects intended for the forthcoming issue - by which we mean foalish objects intended for foals - can help make your body’s subconscious desire for bearing foals concrete, and act as a marital aid in conception. In other words, help your mind prepare for having a foal.”

“I see…” Cadance said, sounding unconvinced, her muzzle wrinkling slightly. “And which book was this? I have read a lot of parenting books recently, and I don’t recall reading anything like that.”

“Oh some seminal work, by an eminent pony in the field no doubt. The name escapes me.” Luna said unconvincingly. “Alas we doubt there are any extant copies to consult. We probably read it quite some time ago.” She added, playing her immortal card.

Cadance sighed, looking around the room again. “Well, thanks. I guess?” She took a deep breath, composing herself, not wanting to appear ungrateful. “I'm sorry, that sounded rude. I mean actually thanks Auntie. And you too Sweetcakes.” She gave Shining a playful kick. “This is very nice… It just took me by surprise.”

She stepped further into the room, patting the giant ursa plush on the top of its head with her hoof, then inspecting the paint finish on the bed with her wing. “You should really have included me in the design process, but I have to say, you did a good job, I’m impressed. I didn’t know you were such a hoofystallion,” she said to her husband.

“I haven’t had much practice since shop class at the Academy, but I like to think I’m pretty hoofy,” he said, blushing proudly. “Also Lock worked for his family’s furniture business as a joiner before he, er… joined the Guard,” he admitted. “I wanted to do most of the work myself, but he made sure I was doing stuff right.”

“I do have some questions though. This bed… it’s quite large for a crib?” Cadance observed.

“That was our idea.” Luna asserted.

“She means her idea.” Shining whispered.

“Yes, that is what we said,” Luna said, her hearing as sharp as ever. “We thought, in the eventuality that the foal is born as an alicorn then on balance of probability they may be quite large. Celestia doesn’t believe it will happen, but we suspect we have read more books on Alicorn genetics than our dear sister. And of course there is always the happy possibility of you bearing twins.”

“Besides, this way it will be easy to convert the crib back into a bed when they get older,” Shining pointed out.

“It’s very pink?” Cadance continued, running through her mental list of questions.

“Not just pink. But we did want a filly right? We can always repaint if we have a colt, if you’re that worried about gender stereotypes. There’s nothing wrong with pink though. I like pink. In fact,” Shining leaned in and whispered in her ear, “some of my favorite ponies are pink.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek, successfully making her turn more pink than normal.

She pulled away from him and continued her inspection of the room, heading for the changing table which also seemed to be built unnecessarily large. Just how big does Aunt Luna think alicorn foals are? Is there something she isn’t telling me? Should I be worried?

She eyed the large cubicle wall of diapers.

“That’s a lot of diapers,” she said, looking suspiciously at Shining. Her husband just shrugged, indicating with his head towards Luna.

“Auntie, why does it look like you just walked into a diaper store and bought everything?” she asked.

“We did. Is that not how purchasing transactions are performed these days? We’re afraid we don’t get to go out shopping very often.” Luna said, not blinking.

“I meant, it looks like you bought all their inventory.”

“Yes. It seemed an efficient means of procurement.”

Cadance blinked, taking a closer look at the stacks of diapers. “Some of these diapers aren’t even for foals,” she observed.

“We don’t know much about modern diaper sizing. We assumed they would grow into the different sizes if they don’t fit right away. That is generally how it works with foals we understand; they increase in volume over time proportionate to their age. Up to a point anyway."

Cadance levitated a very large very pink diaper from one of the shelves and held it up in front of her aunt for closer inspection.

“If you think an alicorn is going to grow into these as a foal then I think maybe I need to reconsider whether a natural birth is the best option after all… at least a third of these diapers are adult sized.”

“Oh.” Luna said dismissively. “We had not considered that a foal supplies store would stock such things when we asked them to deliver everything they had in stock. Perhaps the castle tailor could bring them in a bit?”

“They are disposable diapers Auntie, they aren’t made of cloth. I don’t think you can cut and sew them. And we don’t have a castle tailor here.”

“Well if they are disposable we suppose you could simply dispose of them, though it seems like such a waste. Perhaps you could donate them to a charity, or use them for practice.”

Cadance blinked and turned away from her aunt, back towards the diaper wall, hiding her blush. “What… exactly… do you mean by use them for practice?”

“On each other dear niece. Or on the guards if you prefer. So you are familiar with how to change a diaper when the time comes.”

If Cadance had been drinking at the time, she would probably have done a spit take. As it was, she definitely did a take. “I…what..? I assure you I’m quite familiar with changing diapers. I was a babysitter for years after all.”

“And your husband?”

“No experience whatsoever I’m afraid!” Shining said helpfully. “I had poor hoof-eye coordination when I was younger and Mom wouldn’t let me near Twily when she was changing her, in case I poked her eye out or something.” He grinned sheepishly.

Luna shot Cadance a concerned glance. “There you are then. Q.E.D. We don't want any foal eyes being harmed."

“That doesn’t mean I’m about to make Shining diaper me for practice! I like my eyes too! There are classes for that… where you practice on dolls. I’m pretty sure,” Cadance protested.

She watched as Shining and Cadance both averted their gaze from each other, blushing. “Parenting techniques have changed over the aeons, and we perhaps haven’t kept up with the latest trends,” Luna acknowledged. “It was just a suggestion, maybe you should sleep on it?” she said shrugging.

At the mention of sleep, Cadance stifled a yawn. “Well I have to say, this is all really very generous. I certainly wasn’t expecting this. If you don’t mind though Auntie, I’m very tired..."

“Of course! You must be exhausted from your trip dear niece, and in any case we must imminently be about our night duties. We have taken the liberty of sequestering ourselves in a spare suite in the Southern wing, and our guards are very discreet. You won’t even know that we are here. We shall return to Canterlot early on the morrow, but no doubt we will see each other again before we depart.”

“Good night Auntie Luna. Thank you, for all this!” Cadance hugged Luna, who returned her hug beaming happily, then stepped back waving her hoof and disappearing in a flash of blue light, teleporting to her room.

Cadance breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be alone with Shining again. She rested her head on his shoulder, savoring the quiet. She was about to kiss him in a semi-naughty manner when her aunt suddenly teleported back into the room with another blinding flash.

“Apologies… have either of you seen our opossum? He seems to have scampered off somewhere!” Luna said, kneeling down to check under the crib.

Cadance forwent the hassle of a proper dinner in favor of a hastily constructed cucumber and dandelion sandwich and a mug of chamomile tea. Shining took this as an excuse to eat junk food for dinner, guiltily wolfing down a packet of barbecue flavored hay crisps before bed.

She spent a few minutes relieving herself and removing her makeup in the en-suite, before changing into her favorite pajamas. They were a simple affair made of cozy brushed cotton with a design that was fillyish in its simplicity, light pink with purple trim and covered with a pattern of hearts in white and a darker pink. She had been gifted a much more luxurious and finely crafted set of silk pajamas by Twilight's friend Rarity for the wedding, but she preferred wearing these.

She climbed into bed next to Shining who was reading some kind of espionage novel with skimpily clad mares on the cover. She planted a kiss on his cheek before putting her reading glasses on and levitating her red dispatch box over with a sigh, turning to her much less sexy reading material.

At the top of the stack of papers was a yellow adhesive note on which ‘Remember to procreate tonight’ was written in Charteris’ elegant hornwriting. She frowned, peeling it off, and shoving it somewhere in between reports further down in the stack. Tomorrow's problem.

After signing several documents requiring her immediate approval and making a valiant effort to make it through an unnecessarily long report on hay taxation reform she dozed off.

Shining gently lifted the case off Cadance’s lap and set it on the ground with his magic. He removed her reading glasses, and kissed her cheek before turning out the lights, draping a fore-hoof around her barrel.

Chapter 3: Monsters

When Cadance opened her eyes she was sitting in an armchair by a roaring fireplace, sipping chamomile tea, a fuzzy pink blanket covering her lap.

Eventually Luna sat in the armchair opposite her. She didn’t teleport in, rather one moment she wasn’t there, and the next moment she had always been there. She looked younger, closer to Cadance’s age in the dream realm.

“I had a feeling you might show up here tonight,” Cadance said. “Did you find Tibbles?”

“He does not like the Northern cold, poor thing. One of our guards found him curled up in their kit bag.”

“Good to hear.” Cadance set her tea down. “So do you want to tell me what in Tartarus that was really all about tonight?”

“We are sure we don’t know what you mean,” Luna said, doing a poor job hiding the mischievous tone in her voice.

“Have you been spying on my dreams Auntie? I think you know the ones I’m talking about.”

Luna smiled unsettlingly, her bright white teeth glistening in the firelight. “That my dear filly is like asking a raindrop if it has ever seen the ocean. We do not spy on dreams, we are the dreams, and the dreams are a part of us.”

Cadance sighed. “Are you saying that you’re to blame then? For…this part of me?”

Luna shook her head, her mane floating around her, sparkling with the starlight of untold aeons. “No. We can intervene to shape ponies' dreams, as we are now in fact, but generally we provide the clay, and ponies' subconscious minds decide how to shape it, so to speak. Ponies often shape their dreams as an exaggerated or distorted reflection of their waking life it seems. We have not shaped those dreams for you child.”

“But you do watch and take notes sometimes?”

Luna shrugged. “Sometimes. The dreams of alicorns and other high-magic users are especially vivid in the dream-realm; asking us not to notice them is like leaving my sister alone in a room with a cake and expecting her not to eat it.” She smirked. “In any case, as you know, we were on… sabbatical when you were born, but Celestia has told me this is something you dreamed about often as a filly.”

Cadance nodded, looking down at her hooves.

“And we can see that you have been having these dreams often again of late.”

“Yes.” Cadance sighed.

“It’s hardly surprising, dear niece, given the responsibilities of your office. We can empathize.”

“It’s not normal though! I haven’t acted on it in years, not since I was a teenager. But I can’t seem to stop dreaming about it… about this!” Cadance said, hanging her head, tears welling up. She pushed the blanket off her lap, revealing the diaper she was wearing beneath. When she looked back up at her aunt she saw that they were now both inhabiting younger versions of themselves, appearing to each other as fillies. They were no longer sitting in armchairs but directly on the rug in front of the roaring fireplace.

“Why would you go and buy me all those diapers? It’s bad enough that I dream about them. Do you realize how hard I have worked to suppress that desire?”

Luna gave her a wistful smile. “Perhaps not. But we could tell that it has been causing you some distress. And only some of those diapers were intended for you, some of them really are for your foal.”

“If I ever have one!”

“You will.” Luna laid her hoof on Cadance’s withers. “Ponies are too impatient with such things; it comes with having mortal lifespans we suppose, though my sister should know better.”

“She has been trying to help,” Cadance said.

“Yes, in her own way; Twilight too we hear. How is that working out for you?”

Cadance glared at her.

“Pay no attention to your old aunt if you wish, but we have a feeling that you just need to let your mane down for a bit.”

Cadance rolled her eyes angrily. “Let my mane down? By wearing diapers?! To cement my subconscious desire for bearing foals?”

“To start to feel comfortable with yourself first. Maybe if you can achieve that you will feel comfortable having foals.”

Cadance laid down, avoiding her aunt’s gaze and staring at the roaring fire.

“As interests go, it is not harmful, nor is it as uncommon as you would think,” Luna said. Her voice was softer and more filly like, having lost all traces of Royal Canterlot Voice. “Trust us, we have seen a lot of ponies' dreams, and you aren’t the first lost little pony we have had this conversation with, or one like it.”

“Y…yes, I’m aware there are other ponies with the same interests. I’ve read a lot of the scientific literature on the topic,” Cadance admitted, “but it doesn’t make it normal!”

“Try not to think of it as normal or abnormal, it simply is what it is. We try to think about bedroom matters such as this like music. Some ponies enjoy formal classical compositions, while others enjoy more modern forms of expression, such as the wub stepping as we believe it is called. The point is, a degree of heterogeneity is healthy.”

“Do you make a habit of setting up nurseries for every pony you meet with this… interest?”

Luna smiled. “No, you’re family. In any case, the nursery really is intended for your foal you know; we just tweaked the design specifications a little. We thought it might help you to relax and relieve some of the exigencies of your office in the meantime, if you should choose to utilize it for your special interests.”

“That crib might be a bit big to use safely for actual foals.” Cadance pointed out, fighting back her blush.

“It is a trivial matter to adjust the sizes later with magic if needed. Or it would be if your husband wasn’t intent on doing all of the carpentry by hoof for you. That was very sweet of him by the way. Inefficient, but sweet nonetheless."

“You shouldn’t have brought Shining into this,” Cadance said. “He doesn’t know about this part of me.” She lay there fidgeting with her hooves. “You didn’t tell him did you? How did you convince him he needed to make all the nursery furniture oversized like that? Wasn’t he at all suspicious?”

Luna giggled. “He didn’t question the dimensions at all! And we don’t think he noticed the adult sized diapers until you pointed them out either.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially, giving Cadance a nudge in the ribcage with her elbow “Stallions! Are we correct?”

“Stallions.” Cadance rolled her eyes again. “So, you think he bought the part about practice diapering me?” she asked shyly, looking down at her hooves again, a hint of curiosity in her voice.

“It seemed so. Although having spent some time with him, he really could do with some practice. We think he was speaking in jest about poking the foal’s eyes out by accident, but he does appear to be quite ignorant about foal-care techniques.”

They sat for a while, staring at the fire, before her aunt spoke again.

“If that is something you think you might enjoy, you should talk to him about it. We think that he might be receptive to the idea. Judging by the dream he is having right now, it at least piqued his curiosity.”

Cadance shot her aunt a dirty look, but said nothing, continuing to stare at the flickering fire for a minute or two before she next spoke.

Eventually she looked up at Luna, her eyes wet. “Don’t you think that… giving in… doing things like this makes me a bad ruler? How can I be responsible for a whole empire when I feel like I’m just a filly at heart?”

Luna put her wing around her niece, no longer appearing before her as a filly, but as a comfortingly soft adult.

“On the contrary, we think it would make you a good princess and a good filly. And a great mother when the time comes. How can you look after your subjects, as the Princess of Love of all things, if you can’t love and tolerate such an important part of yourself?”

“It shouldn’t be important though, it’s just so silly! Why do I have to care so much about such a silly thing!?” Cadance bemoaned in her squeaky filly voice, stomping her hoof angrily on the rug.

“Well, we’re not a psychologist, but we think that the more important thing is to accept that it is important to you. Do you think you can do that?”

Cadance crossed her fore-hooves and lay her head on top of them, staring angrily at the flames. “I don’t know, Maybe. I guess I’ll sleep on it.”

Luna and her entourage had already left for Canterlot by the time Cadance woke. Shining was lying in bed beside her reading his novel. “There’s my princess!” he said as he saw her stretch and yawn. He leaned over to give her a kiss on her forehead.

“Wait wait…what time is it?” Cadance asked blearily, yawning and rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her fetlocks.

“Almost nine-thirty Hon. Princess Luna had to leave already but she left her regards. You looked like you were having a good sleep for once and I didn’t want to wake you."

She sat up in a panic, looking around in vain for her diary.

Shining took his hoof and gently pulled her back down beside him. “Don’t worry. I had Charteris clear your appointments.”

“You did what? Those might have been important!” she scolded him.

“Relax sweetheart, I’m sure the Crystal District Sorghum and Wheat Growers Association pre-AGM breakfast will be a lot less sparkling without your presence, but it’s not going to affect the harvest. Charteris is going to put in an appearance as your representative.”

“Oh Celestia, that does sound dry,” she laughed. “Remind me to apologize to Charteris when I see him.” She rolled over, lying with her head nestled in Shining’s chest fur, a hoof draped around his waist.

“Don’t worry about it, he already owed you a favor,” Shining smirked.

She lay there stroking his belly absent mindedly. “I should be apologizing to you as well. What you did with the nursery… that was really sweet. I’m sorry if I came across as ungrateful. I was just surprised and really exhausted.”

“Oh, I know.” Shining said, stroking her mane with a forehoof. “I told Princess Luna we should probably wait till morning to show you, but she couldn’t wait.”

Cadance sighed, draping a forehoof over her husband’s chest “I knew something was up as soon as I got off the train you dork, I would seen the new door in the bedroom and pressured it out of you last night anyway.”

“But do you like it?” He asked hopefully, giving her horn a playful kiss. It was probably the arousal from the horn kiss that made her lose her composure.

“I actually LOVE it!” She gushed, to her own surprise, squeezing his hoof in hers. “It’s the kind of nursery I’ve dreamed about having since I was a filly!”

“Whoa there… I wasn’t expecting that level of enthusiasm.” He looked down at her with a quizzical expression, one eyebrow raised. “Luna said she had a feeling you would love it. Is this just one of those things all mares get excited over, or is there something you two aren’t telling me?”

Cadance blushed, averting her eyes. “You tell me Mr. Hoofystallion. You’re the one who was plotting this with her,” she said, trying to sound coy.

“Nope… sorry… not buying that,” he said before taking her ear in his muzzle and giving it a playful but gentle bite. The ear play instantly overwhelmed her senses and she could feel her filly headspace rushing in to take over.

“Ow… I’m innocent I swear… It was all Auntie Luna’s fault!” She lay back, looking up at him, bringing her fore-hooves up to her chest submissively.

“You know, I get the feeling I was just the dumb accomplice in all of this," Shining said, sounding more playful than cross.

Cadance giggled nervously, not saying anything.

"You and Luna are definitely up to something. The adult diapers, the weirdly large crib… she thought I didn’t notice, but I noticed! Well, actually Lock noticed, and told me it was odd, but I went along with it anyway… because, well who goes against Luna?”

He looked down at her, making eye contact and slowly running the tip of his hoof in circles around her belly fur. When he spoke again it was in a whisper, directly in her ear.

“So you want to tell me what’s going on? Why does Luna think you’re going to have a monster sized foal? Does she want us to adopt a whole orphanage or a litter of dragons? Are you pregnant with quadruplets?”

She started giggling uncontrollably, squirming. Despite herself she could feel her arousal, her pyjama bottoms looking worse for wear as they wicked away her excitement.

“You want to tell me what’s so funny?” He asked teasing, tickling her belly with his hoof mercilessly.

“Stop! Please! It’s.. It’s me… I’m the monster sized foal!” She gasped between giggles. Oh Celestia, what did I just say?

“Wait what?” Shining stopped the tickling, a confused look on his face.

She stopped giggling, her face flushed, gasping for air. “It’s a long story.”

He looked at her. “Well we have all day for once. You know you can tell me anything right?”

She blushed deeply. “Uh… yeah… maybe after breakfast. I’m starving.”

Unlike the palace in Canterlot which operated as the main seat of the diarchy and a diplomatic hub around the clock, the Crystal Castle - massive and imposing as it was - was more or less being run on a care and maintenance basis with minimal staff. Most of the castle was actually empty, or being used for archival storage. There was a cook who provided lunch and dinner on weekdays and a chef on retainer to cater for official engagements. The rest of the time it was left for the Castle’s occupants to feed themselves, though Shining had been known on occasion to sneak food from the officer’s mess of the household cavalry battalion stabled downstairs.

Today being Saturday, the cook had the day off, and Shining cooked pancakes for breakfast; a recently established tradition. Neither Cadance nor Shining were particularly adept cooks, and with the pressures of the job neither had a lot of energy to learn. This meant they had ended up eating a lot of toast and cereal for breakfast and often resorted to getting takeout food delivered on weekends, but Shining had actually gotten rather good at making pancakes.

After they had filled up on coffee and eaten entirely too many pancakes, they retired back to the bedroom to talk in private. Cadance could feel her heart in her mouth as she thought about telling Shining everything, and loading up on coffee and maple syrup probably hadn’t helped things.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Shining prompted when they were both settled, lying on the bed again.

“Can’t… too full.” She moaned.

“Sweetheart, I know you well enough to know when you’re trying to stall me,” Shining said, giving Cadance a playful nudge which elicited a moan from the overstuffed alicorn who rolled over on her side, facing away from him. “What exactly are you too full to tell me?”

Still facing away from Shining, she found herself hugging a spare pillow against her chest for comfort. “You might not love me anymore if I tell you,” she said, only half joking.

“Hey, love, please don’t say that.” Shining said, sounding a little hurt. He lay down beside her, draping a hoof over her barrel and holding her gently. He could feel her heart racing as they spooned. “You know that isn’t true. I said before you could tell me anything, and I meant it.” He said quietly, his voice softening.

“Promise?”

Chapter 4: Root Cause

“I can’t promise I’ll understand, but whatever it is, I promise I’ll listen and try to understand, and I promise I’ll still love you.” He gave her neck a kiss and slid a hoof over hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

Cadence sniffed, realizing that she was blinking back tears as she clutched at her pillow tightly. She took a deep breath, it was now or never.

“I… I don’t know where to start explaining… so I’ll just say it. I have this thing… where a part of me wants to be a little filly.” She instinctively brought her wing up to hide the shame on her face.

There was a short pause, which seemed like an eternity to Cadance.

“Is that a kink thing?” Shining asked, sounding more curious than anything.

“Yes… well, kind-of? It’s more than that though.” She let out a sobbing sigh. “A big part of it is comfort? Stress relief? You know how stressful the job can be. Well sometimes when I feel overwhelmed, I just want… I want to curl up in a ball and go back to being a filly. Or a foal. I know that sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid,” her husband said after some thought, giving her hoof another squeeze. “It makes a lot of sense actually. To find yourself wanting to go back to a time when things were simpler, with less expectations and responsibilities?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head, her voice sounding small. “Basically.”

“Did this start after you took over the Crystal throne?” he asked. “You probably need a real break. We haven’t had a proper vacation since before we got married.”

“I do,” she said, “but no… I think this has always been a part of me. Or at least since I was much younger.”

“Oh,” he sounded surprised by this. “How do you mean?” He laid his hoof across her belly, pulling her gently to him.

“N…not the kink side. But growing up… It’s hard to explain. You know I wasn’t born an alicorn, but I was still of the blood, and groomed for being a working royal from a fairly young age. Part of me desperately wanted to be a grown up, so I could prove how well I could handle my duties like Aunt Celestia; become an alicorn, marry a hoofsome prince, have my own little pony, live in my own castle… you know, the usual fantasy tropes fillies are into, except…” She giggled, leaning into Shining’s cuddle, starting to feel more relaxed.

“Except for most fillies that’s just a fantasy? But you’re the real deal,” he whispered, nuzzling at her ear and giving it a gentle nibble.

She shivered, squirming. “Hey, two out of five ain’t bad right?”

“At least three out of five,” he said reproachfully.

“Hey, I never said you were hoofsome!” she giggled.

“Maybe not, but don’t don’t undersell yourself, you do handle your duties like Celestia.”

“Pff, hardly. I feel like a fraud most days.”

“You don’t think Celestia feels like that sometimes too?” he asked, giving her another gentle squeeze.

“I doubt it. Even if she did at the start, she’s had an eternity to learn the role. And let’s be honest, running the Crystal Empire isn’t really comparable to running Canterlot, never mind Equestria. It disappeared for years and almost no-pony in Canterlot even noticed it was gone.”

“Cady!”

“What?”

“Don’t ever say stuff like that in public here OK? I like your head.”

“I won’t. I like your head too.” She giggled, letting go of the pillow and turning over in bed, giving Shining a little peck on his cheek before nestling her head into his soft chest fur, hugging him back.

“Which one?”

She gave her grinning husband a thwack on his flank. “Get your mind out of the gutter, I’m trying to bare my soul here!”

He craned his neck and kissed her forehead, stroking her back lazily with his hoof. They lay like that for a while before either of them spoke again.

“OK, so being a princess is more stressful than you imagined as a filly. That’s not surprising. When did that go from wanting to grow up to wanting to be a filly again?”

“It’s not really that black and white,” she said, thinking. “I did still want to be a grown-up, and show everypony how responsible I could be, but also at a certain point, I started wishing that I could go back to being a foal. Not all the time, just sometimes.”

“And when did that start, do you remember?” he asked.

“Well, I was six when I became an alicorn…”

“The youngest alicorn in recorded history! It was a big deal. I remember Mom and Dad talking about it. It was in all the newspapers.”

“Pff, that’s tabloid tosh. The Canterlot newspaper archives only go back a few hundred years or so. Celestia didn’t correct them because it was good press.”

“Huh.”

She looked up at his surprised expression, stretching out her hoof and giving the top of his head a playful pat. “I wasn’t the youngest by a long stretch. I could tell you a lot more about alicorn genealogy than the papers, but then I’d have to kill you,” she teased.

“I bet you were still the cutest though,” he said, giving her mane a stroke with his hoof.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

He grinned. “Sorry, anyway you were saying?”

“It was painful, growing a horn as a filly. My thaumic exposure from the magic event that triggered my ascension must have been a much weaker dose than what triggered Twilight’s, because my horn didn’t appear all at once like her wings did, it took weeks for it to grow out, and the worst migraines I’ve ever had.” She rubbed the base of her horn thoughtfully, remembering. “I was off school for six weeks.”

“Ouch!” he tapped his own horn. “Born with horn here. Hadn’t thought about it being painful to grow one later like that later.”

“The worst part was, my parents took me to all these doctors and specialists who poked and prodded at me and did all these tests, but nopony thought to bucking explain to me what was happening to my body. I guess they assumed that because I’d always dreamed about becoming an alicorn as a foal that I understood what was happening, but I honestly had no idea at the time. My father was mostly annoyed because I missed so much school, and my mother was too busy drinking and boasting to her Canterlot society friends that her daughter was now an alicorn to care what I was going through.”

“I’m so sorry Cady. I knew you didn't get on with your parents, but I had no idea it was that bad when you were young,” he said.

“This was all before Celestia took me under her wing of course,” she continued. Anyway, it took a while for my body to start feeling like my body again. There was some temporary nerve damage, and a lot of adjustment learning how to control my new magic, and I guess I was a little traumatized. Nothing too bad, but I started having nightmares and wetting the bed.”

Shining took her head gently in his hooves and kissed the base of her horn delicately. “Is that when…” he stopped, before whispering the word “Diapers?”

She nodded. “Mom put me back in them for a while. Not for that long. I don’t really know why, but they made me feel more… comfortable? Comforted? Beyond the obvious comfort of not waking up to wet sheets I mean.”

Shining nodded. “I can understand that.”

“As I recovered, now that I was an alicorn I was expected to take on more duties as a Princess. It’s much less common, you know, for a pegasus to ascend like that compared to unicorns. I went from just being a pegasus filly in one of the minor houses on the fringes of the royal household to an alicorn suddenly surrounded by attention from the whole court and half of Canterlot. In retrospect I guess it felt like a big piece of my foalhood had been suddenly wrenched away from me.”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” Shining said, wishing he could have been there to protect her as a filly.

“In any case, the diapers made me feel… I don’t know, but I felt safe wearing them. I felt like when I wore them to bed at night I could still be a carefree little filly when I needed to be. But that only lasted a few months before I stopped wetting the bed, and they were taken away from me. I never forgot what that feeling of safety felt like though.”

Shining just nodded, listening attentively.

“After that, I would go to bed without them and cry myself to sleep at night. Eventually I got over that phase, but the feeling of wanting to be able to be a filly again sometimes; it came and went but it never really went away. As I got older and expectations on me kept growing I would find other silly ways to rebel and feel more like a filly again when I had the time and privacy, which wasn’t often.”

“Such as?” Shining asked with more than a hint of curiosity in his voice.

“Little things like sleeping with a stuffed animal, until Mom got rid of them like she did with everything. Sucking my hoof - she couldn’t take that away. Braiding my mane with ribbons, drinking milk, making drawings using my mouth not my horn,” she giggled.

“That’s adorable,” Shining said smiling, “I had no idea you could draw!”

“I absolutely can’t. I’m terrible at it! Especially if I don’t use my horn,” Cadance giggled. “But that’s what makes it fun to do when I’m in my filly headspace.”

“Filly headspace?”

“I’ve read about it being called that sometimes, describing the mental state I get into when I need to feel… little again. That’s what I like to call it now, but there are other names…”

“Wait, you read about it? Someone’s been writing about you?” He frowned.

“Not me silly. I’m not the only one into this stuff. It’s actually fairly common. I’ve never met any other pony who is into it, but I’ve read quite a lot about it in psychology journals and um… special magazines,” she said blushing.

“Ohhh. That makes more sense. It’s good to know you’re not alone I guess? What did they say about it?”

“Yeah. I thought it was just me for the longest time growing up; it was good to find out that there are other ponies like me. The psychology papers I read were interesting. It used to be considered a mental disorder, but the modern medical view seems to be that it’s generally harmless. It gets complicated, but they make a distinction between ageplayers, like with my filly headspace, where there might be an attraction to objects like diapers as a comfort object versus and diaper fetishes where there’s a sexual attraction to diapers. Some ponies are into one or the other but not both.”

“But it’s the… ageplay you are into?” Shining asked, sounding the word out loud for the first time.

“Well, uh, that’s how it started for me, but um, now it’s actually both,” she admitted shyly.

“I see. And what do the magazines say about it?” he asked.

She blushed more. “Uh, they are… less academic. Ponies write in, with stories, and send in pictures of themselves… dressing like foals, wearing diapers… stuff like that. There’s adverts for stores that supply products specifically for the adult-foal community, and even for a couple of adult-foal nightclubs.”

“Wait... nightclubs, really? There must be a lot of ponies into this if there is enough of a market for custom products and nightclubs?” Shining sounded genuinely surprised and interested.

“Yeah, at least in the bigger cities. The ones I’ve read about are in Canterlot and Manehattan.”

“You’ve never tried to visit?”

“Oh gosh no, can you imagine the optics if that got into the press? I did once send in a piece of… fiction that I wrote to one of the magazines though, which ended up getting published! Under a nom de plume of course.”

“Well well well, my little pony, a published author! You’ll have to let me read some of your work sometime!” Shining said teasingly, making her turn bright red.

“Uhh… it’s more on the kink side of things,” she said nervously, not making eye contact.

“Mmhm… I figured. Want to tell me more about that side of things?”

“I… uh. Yeah… I guess,” she buried her head into his mane.

Grinning at her uncharacteristic shyness he leaned his head down to her ear and whispered, “Tell me about your kinks little filly,” before softly biting down on her ear. The effect was profound and immediate, her body trembled and she let out a whining noise halfway between a squeak and a moan that sounded very small and filly-like. She buried her head deeper into his mane and wrapped her fore-hooves around him, hugging him with a new level of needy intensity that he couldn’t remember feeling from her before.

He let her lie there, hugging him for a while, listening to her breathing. Stroking at her back with his hoof, he could feel her trembling, her hindlegs kicking a little every so often as his hoof passed by a sensitive spot near her flanks. Eventually, when it became apparent she wasn’t about to speak, he reached into his mane, guiding her muzzle firmly but very gently with his hoof until she was looking up into his eyes. Her face was flushed with embarrassment, but her purple eyes glistened with a look of desire and pleading.

“I know you’re shy about this,” he said, gazing directly into her eyes. “You can trust me. You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to, but I think you do want to, don’t you?”

She gave him an almost imperceptible nod, not breaking eye contact.

“I thought so. Would it help if I let you put your head back in my mane and whisper it to me?”

She nodded again with slightly more vigor.

“Good girl,” he said, kissing her forehead. He noted with satisfaction how she squirmed when he called her that. He could definitely get used to this new side of Cady.

He let her sink her head back down, reburying it in the space between his neck and mane. This time she hugged him with her hind-hooves as well, draping her left hock over him. He placed a fore-hoof on her flank through her pajama bottoms, massaging it slowly.

When she resumed speaking it was in a whisper. “It wasn’t sexual at first at all… just a…a comfort thing like I said. I don’t really know when it became a kink for me. After they took my diapers away, I would feel this intense longing for them, like another part of my fillyhood that was taken away. As I was growing up I tried a few times to recapture that feeling.”

He nodded “You said. The mane braiding and drawing?”

“Y… yes… but there were other… naughtier things. I…I tried drinking lots of water… or milk before bed hoping that it might make me have accidents during the night. It worked once or twice, but then stopped working as my bladder grew bigger and stronger like the rest of my stupid alicorn body. Then… I tried wetting myself on purpose.”

She paused, gaging his reaction before continuing. He gave her flank a squeeze of encouragement and she made an adorable squeaking sound.

“I tried wetting the bed deliberately, and it didn’t feel the same without a diaper, so I tried to make my own diapers out of things like towels, or stuffing toilet paper down my knickers. That was kind-of fun, but it never worked very well, and only gave me a little bit of the old comfort feeling back.”

While still hushed, her voice had grown above a whisper as she grew in confidence talking about this part of herself. The feel of the vibration from her talking and her hot little breaths against his neck was slowly starting to drive him wild.

“Not having access to them, I almost forgot about diapers for a while growing up, but I continued to experiment with… peeing. After a while I stopped trying to wet the bed, because that was getting hard to hide, but I kept wetting my pajamas or underwear on purpose sometimes. Not often, just every now and then, when I had privacy. I’d lock myself in the bathroom and wet my knickers and just sit there on the floor or in the bath sucking my hoof or something, whatever made me feel most like a little filly.”

“Aw,” Shining said, stroking her back.

“But I also found that I enjoyed the wetting part in its own right, separate from wanting to feel like a foal. Not really in a sexual way at the time, I wouldn’t have had a clue what that was back then, but I remember it was … exciting? It felt thrilling to be doing something I knew was so… taboo. Especially given all the expectations on me to be a perfect princess… It became my naughty secret, I guess, which honestly felt empowering when I didn’t have much else in my life I had control over.”

He kept stroking her reassuringly, leaning down and kissing her neck where it emerged from his mane.

“Then at some point after I’d hit puberty I guess it became tied up with my sexuality as I started to figure that out. Sometimes I’d drink lots through the day and see how long I could hold on for before I really had to pee, because the feeling of holding my bladder like that was… stimulating. I eventually learned from other fillies at school about… pleasuring myself in other ways, and well it all just kind-of got jumbled together in a big complex mess of sexuality at that point I suppose. I got interested in colts, and other fillies, but I stayed interested in peeing and diapers, and in my filly headspace, and I guess they all started to become somewhat sexual for me at that point.”

Shining found himself staring at the obvious wet patch that was growing between the legs of Cadance’s pajama bottoms.

“I think I was twelve or thirteen when I started foal-sitting. Celestia’s idea, not mine. I didn’t want to do it at first. I felt… envious seeing other ponies getting to live normal foalhoods. But I came to enjoy it, and I realized then that while part of me still wanted to be a foal, maybe a part of me did still want to be a mother too.”

She paused before going on. “Foal-sitting also meant that I had access to diapers. I’m really ashamed to admit it, but I would steal some occasionally… I’d give the family some discount for my services to cover the cost, but I didn’t tell them I was taking them… I know that was wrong.”

“I think that’s forgivable,” her husband said. “You were young, and it was the only way you could experiment with that side of yourself.” He hesitated. “Cady… you… you never did anything sexual with the foals you were sitting for did you?”

She sounded horrified. “Oh Celestia, No!” Her voice was louder now, shaking, and she removed her head from his mane to meet his eyes. Believe me. I would never do anything like that. This… this kink… it’s about wanting to feel safe like a foal again yourself, and admittedly for me it’s complicated, and it involves other other learned sexual responses about wearing diapers and wetting and stuff. But believe me, I would never bring any real foals into it. I’m not like that!”

“Forgive me love. I knew you wouldn’t, but I had to ask.” He said quietly.

She sighed deeply. “Look, I understand. It’s a common misconception about infantilism - that’s one of the psychological terms for the adult-foal stuff,” she explained. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve never spoken about this with anypony until now. If I’m honest, it’s one of the main reasons I quit foal-sitting, even though I ended up loving doing it. I didn’t want anypony to jump to conclusions and get the wrong idea if it ever came out… the stuff that I am into.

He nodded, hugging her. “That’s a shame love, but I get it. It seems like a sensible decision.”

She burst into tears, speaking angrily through her sobs. “Yet here I am, trying to have a foal with you! And I know deep down that there is nothing wrong with my… kinks, they aren’t harmful to anypony, and... and I also think that I could make a good mom too. But I can’t! I can’t help feeling that I have to choose; like in order to be a good mom I have to give up the part of me that is still desperately holding on to being a filly. The only thing that made me feel safe…before I met you.” She looked up at Shining, tears streaming down her cheeks and a look of desperate pleading in her eyes.

His heart broke for her when she spoke again, “And I feel so guilty, because I don’t want to let her go.”

“Thank you for telling me.” He said, holding onto her hooves in his and looking her in the eyes. “It’s going to be OK, Cady. I know that you would make a great mother. But I’m not ever going to ask you to give up who you are to become one.”

She trembled, and he pulled her tight against his chest, holding her as her body was wracked with sobs.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I can see you Cady. You’re still the gorgeous, kind, sexy, mare who I fell in love with at first sight, who inexplicably agreed to marry me. I can see you as an alicorn and a strong ruler, and I can see you as a mom; I always could. But now… now I can see this beautiful, scared little filly looking at me too, and I’d like to get to know her better.”

Chapter 5: Holding On

Foals - Chapter 5: Holding On

“I think I’d like that,” she said eventually in the quiet fillyish voice that was starting to become familiar to him.

“Good” he said, before adding “Good girl,” remembering how she had reacted when he had called her that earlier.

She gave him a watery smile. “I… I’m sorry for getting so emotional.”

“Hey, that’s fine Sweetheart. There is a lot to unpack. I guess we hit a nerve huh?”

She nodded, sniffling, levitating a handkerchief out from under her pillow and blowing her nose. When she was done, she sat back on the bed facing him. “So… can I ask… the stuff I’ve told you about, the fillyspace, the diapers, the watersports… doesn’t any of that bother you?”

Shining wrinkled his nose. “Watersports? You mean like water polo?” he asked. “You didn’t mention you were into that… I guess it would depend on what team you support?”

She blushed, looking down at her hooves. “No, no, I should have explained… watersports is like, um, I guess it’s the blanket kink term for playing with pee, like if a pony likes to wet themselves, or watch other ponies pee, or drinking pee, or if they like peeing on another…” her voice trailed off as she noticed his grin.

“I know what watersports are Cady, I’m not completely vanilla! I just think it’s really sexy hearing you explain your kinky stuff like that to me. Plus, I was just imagining you in your polo uniform from school…” He laughed, dodging as she threw her pillow at his head, and kicked his shin.

“I think I still have that polo uniform in storage somewhere,” she said. “I could wear it for you one day if you’re good.”

“I’d like that. But no, your kinks don’t really phase me,” he continued. “Honestly, I don’t think there are many colts who haven’t fantasized about mares peeing. The diapers and the filly space stuff are all new to me, but if it’s important to you, then it’s cool in my book. Like I said, I’d like to get to know this filly-you better.”

She looked down at his burgeoning erection, which she took as proof that he was comfortable enough with her kinks to share being turned on by them, at least at a conceptual level.

It does feel good telling you about all this stuff though. It feels… like a weight has been lifted I guess,” she said eventually.

She was crying again, but this time he was pretty sure they were happy tears.

“Come here,” he said, patting the bed beside him with his hoof. She moved over, sitting next to him, and threw her fore-hooves around his barrel, resting her head on his shoulder. “Are you doing okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’ve been holding on to my filly side for years, keeping it suppressed, living with it in my head, but I’ve never talked about it with anypony until now,” she sobbed. “I guess I convinced myself that nopony could possibly understand. That you wouldn’t understand.”

He hugged her tightly, holding her close to him. “I never want you to feel like you can’t talk to me about stuff, Cady.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I love you Shiny.”

He stroked her mane fondly. “I Love you too Sweetheart. I’m glad we had this talk. Have you really never discussed this with anypony else though?” he asked, sounding sad for her. “Holding on to all that yourself must have been so lonely!”

She shook her head. “Not until I spoke with Auntie Luna last night, and now you.”

“You spoke with Luna about this last night?” he said, confused. “Do you mean, just the nursery stuff I was there for?”

“No. She stopped by my dream for a one-on-one after I went to sleep. She had… noticed some of the dreams that I have about this stuff. I’ve dreamed about it a lot. The nursery was her way of trying to help.”

“Oh. Ohhh. That explains a lot,” he said, rubbing his temple. “You know, funny enough, I did have a dream about you wearing a diaper last night. It was surprisingly cute,” he added.

She grinned. “I know. Auntie Luna mentioned.”

“She did what?!” Shining looked at her with a panic-stricken expression.

They were both blushing now, averting their gazes from each other.

“She told me that you were having a dream about me wearing, and um, encouraged me to talk to you about this stuff,” Cadance said, fidgeting with her forehooves uncomfortably.

“I guess I should thank her then?” Shining said eventually, “It still feels like an invasion of privacy though.”

“Yeah, sorry Hon. I don’t think Auntie Luna really understands privacy boundaries very well.”

She didn’t… tell you about any of my other dreams did she?”

She shot her husband a curious look; he was sweating a little. “She didn’t go into detail or mention any other dreams.”

He relaxed a little, exhaling. “Good good. Not that I have anything I’m hiding from you or anything Cady, but you know… a pony’s dreams…”

“Trust me, I know. I wasn’t too happy to find out she knew about the diaper stuff.”

They held each other, her head resting on his chest with Shining stroking her mane softly. His penis was still throbbing away needily. “So you want to tell me about any of those dreams?” she asked, reaching out to pet his erection with her hoof.

There was a knock at the drawing room door next door, and Cadance and Shining exchanged glances.

“I thought you said you’d cleared my calendar,” she said, sounding a little huffy.

“I did. I asked Charteris not to interrupt us unless it was urgent.”

“Buck. I honestly don’t know if I’m up to dealing with urgent state business right now,” Cadance whispered. “Maybe if they think we’re not here they’ll go away?”

They heard a click as the door to the drawing room opened, and the soft tread of hooves on carpet. Cadance hastily rolled back to her own side of the bed and pulled the sheets up, covering them both for the sake of modesty. Her heart raced, unsure who their unannounced visitor could be.

A pony walked into their bedroom carrying a set of freshly pressed linen sheets. Cadance breathed a sigh of relief; it was just one of the maids, who looked about as surprised to see the bedroom occupied as they had been to be interrupted.

“Oh, begging your pardon, your highnesses. I didn’t realize you were in. Sorry for the interruption,” the maid said in her sing-song lilt, backing up a little and curtsying hurriedly. “The schedule said you were at some wheat growing breakfast, so I thought I’d do your turndown while you were out and all.”

“That’s quite alright, Áedammair. We had a late change of schedule,” Cadance said with the covers pulled up to her neck, looking up at the mare who was dressed in traditional black and white maid’s pinafore.

The maid stood there, looking down at the fresh sheets she was carrying, and then eyeing the sheets on the bed, her eyes lingering on the covers, and the forms of the two ponies under them, for what seemed to Cadance like just a little too long.

Áedammair was not a native Kristallpony; originally from the Ponish Isles, she had come to the Crystal Empire on a working holiday months ago and had stuck around longer than originally intended. Diminutive for an Earth Pony, her mottled coat had hues of moss growing on an old worn stone, and her mane and tail glowed with fiery autumnal hues of red and orange. If somepony told me she was some kind of forest nymph I would have a hard time not believing them, Cadance thought, her mind wandering a little, as she watched the maid’s deep emerald eyes.

“You can probably leave the change of sheets for tomorrow.” Shining said eventually, after clearing his throat. “We’ll try not to get them too dirty for you.”

“Of course, thank you, your Highness, your other Highness,” she curtsied again. “How about I leave these sheets here, just in case you need them? You really never know when you might need a change do you?” Áedammair set the pile of freshly folded sheets down on top of a dresser, and patted them with her hoof.

“Er, yes, that will be fine,” Shining agreed.

“Well I hope you’re enjoying your new schedule. Everypony needs a good lie in on a Saturday once in a while, don’t they?”

“It has been quite rejuvenating,” Cadance agreed.

“I’ll bet it has,” Áedammair smiled.

The smile on her face belongs to a young (innocent?) filly, Cadance thought. But her eyes look much older and wiser. Like the soul of some ancient forest.

“And what about your guest suite Ma'am, will that be needing servicing today?” the maid asked, bringing Cadance out of her thoughts.

She blinked. “Which guest suite? You can service the rooms that Princess Luna and her team just vacated.”

“I was meaning your private guest suite Ma'am.” Áedammair pointed her hoof in the direction of the connecting door to the nursery.

“Ohhh… No no no. That room is not occupied at present,” Cadance said hurriedly, feeling herself blushing.

“Sure, sure, not a problem Ma'am. Will there be anything else I can help you with this morning?”

“No thank you Áedammair. That will be all.”

“Alright your highnesses. Do let me know if you should change your mind about that change, or if you need any other help at all. I’m only a little bell pull away.” She curtsied for a third time and stepped backwards out of the room.

Cadance heard the click of the drawing room door closing a moment later, followed by what sounded like muffled giggling and excited voices coming from the hall.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she exchanged glances with her husband before her eyes wandered down to the tent in the sheets where his erection was still very much in evidence.

“Well that was awkward, I think she was checking you out,” she said, smirking.

“What? No she wasn’t. She was checking you out,” Shining grinned back.

“Perhaps. You were definitely checking her out though,”

“I was checking you out checking her out!” Shining protested.

“Let’s just agree she was very interested in changing our sheets then.” Cadance shrugged, stretching and throwing off the covers. “I suppose all the maids know about the nursery?”

Shining looked down at his hooves bashfully. “I’m afraid so, sorry. They’ve already been cleaning in there, but I can ask them to leave it to us in future if you prefer.”

“I’d say that horse has already bolted,” Cadance said. “I wonder what they are thinking though?”

“I doubt they would assume that it is for you, surely? Even if the furniture is a little on the large size,” Shining said reassuringly.

“I wouldn’t have thought so, but I can’t be sure, especially with Áedammair. There is something slightly unsettling about her. It always feels like she knows things about you before you know them yourself. I swear that filly is half fae.”

“She might be a manic pixie, but you’re still my dream filly Cady. I won’t let her steal you away.”

Cadance snorted, giggling, batting her hoof playfully against his chest. “Thanks. I feel safer already.”

“So… to pick up where we left off before we were so rudely interrupted.”

“Sexily interrupted,” Cadance corrected him, still giggling.

“To pick up where we left off before we were sexily interrupted by a pixie intent on changing our sheets… where to next? What’s the next step? Assuming you don’t want to keep neglecting this little filly part of you. And how can I help?”

“I…I don’t really know.” She looked at him, biting her lip distractedly. “I’d love to try some things with you, but I think I’d like to take things slow to start and see what feels right. I know you said you are OK with it all but I don’t want to rush into anything and spoil that.”

“That’s fine by me. Maybe we could start by making a list of some of the things you’re comfortable with us trying together?” he said hopefully.

“Ugh, you sound like your sister!” she giggled. “Not that it’s a bad idea, but there is no need to be so formal about it,” she added, seeing his crestfallen look. “Sorry, not your fault, I’m just sick of everything in my life being scheduled for me. I think I just need to relax and loosen up a bit. Can we just try being more spontaneous and see what feels right in the moment?”

He nodded. “We can do that.”

“So long as you tell me if we’re doing something that makes you uncomfortable or doesn’t feel right. And I’ll do the same?” she said.

“Deal.”

She flopped down on the bed beside him exhausted, and her eyes caught her bedside clock. “Mother of ponies, it’s already twelve-thirty. We’ve been talking for like, two hours.”

“Would you like to go out somewhere for lunch?” he asked, stroking her flank lazily.

“Honestly, I’m still really full from the pancakes, I’d rather stay here with you if that’s OK. I’m parched from all the talking though, I could do with a drink.”

He nodded. “Fine by me. I’ll go get us some water. Or would you like tea?”

“Water sounds good, but I could do with an actual drink,” she said.

He shot her a look.

“What, it’s after midday! And you cleared my calendar!”

He looked at her uncomfortably. “Yeah, but are you allowed to drink at the moment? What does your estrus schedule say?”

“Frankly my dear,” she said, “I don’t give a damn about my estrus schedule. Not today. If you still want to hear more about my kinks then I will need to trade you my remaining inhibitions for a drink.”

He shrugged. “Fair enough. Charteris won’t be happy.”

“Charteris can go get himself bucked by Lock.”

He grinned. “I’ll tell him you said that.”

They both got up to fetch drinks and stretch their legs. Cadance wandered over to the window and looked out. It was a beautiful crisp looking day outside. In the square below she could see Crystal Ponies at work setting up stalls and decorations for the Winter Market, which the royal couple were due to officially open the next day. It looked very peaceful from this height, and she could already feel herself salivating at the promise of glühwein.

She wandered into the kitchenette that ran off their drawing room and poured herself a glass of tap water, which she downed in a couple of gulps. She then turned her attention to the more important matter of fixing herself a proper drink. Filling the bottom of the glass with ice from the icebox, she levitated over a bottle of Hayeaters Canterlot dry gin, pouring herself a generous measure, and topping it off with some San Palomino tonic water and a dash of aromatic bitters. She settled for a lemon wedge as a garnish since no limes were available. She took a sip, and sighed peacefully. Bliss.

Levitating her drink back to the bedroom, she found Shining on the bed drinking a bottle of Dos Equus and guiltily munching his way through another packet of hay crisps.

“I won’t say anything about your day drinking if you don’t say anything about my snack addiction,” he said with his mouth full.

“Deal.” She took a long sip of her G&T and set the glass down on her bedside table, then lay down next to Shining with her head on his chest, listening to him finish the packet.

“So I realized,” she said, stroking his chest with her hoof, “we’ve spent the whole morning talking about me and my kinks, and I haven’t really asked you about yours. Is there anything that you are into that I could help with in return?”

Shining stopped licking his hooves, blushing. “Well despite knowing what watersports are, I think I’m probably fairly vanilla by your standards; you know I haven’t really done things with anypony but you, so I’m pretty much an open book as far as my actual experience.”

“You must have fantasies though, surely? Things you’ve clopped to?” she asked hopefully, levitating her drink over for another swig. She hadn’t had a proper drink in over a week and she could already feel its effects, relaxing her and lowering any barriers she might have felt talking about such things.

“Honestly? I think you’re my biggest kink,” he said. “And I’m not just saying that because I used to clop thinking about you in high school, before we got together, when you used to come over to sit for Twily.”

She blushed happily and he started to run his hoof through her mane, stroking her.

“Aw. You know I clopped off thinking about you in high school as well. I guess we were fated to be together,” she whispered.

“The idea of pleasuring you. Catering for your needs. Being able to indulge your fantasies. I find that unimaginably bucking hot, Cady.”

She shivered a little, feeling her blush taking over her whole body as he played with her mane. She buried her muzzle into his soft white fur, planting little kisses against his chest. “Go on?”

“And, well, I… I guess I find learning about what other ponies' kinks are… what gets them off… really hot in general. Like, maybe that is a kink of mine? I don’t know.”

“Oh yeah, I can’t remember what that’s called, but that’s totally a thing,” she said, temporarily pausing her snuggling to take another drink. Setting her drink down, she ran her hoof along his thigh, watching his erection twitching away. “Anything else? I promise not to laugh.”

“Maybe there’s a couple of things…” he said blushing. “But I need another drink.” His horn flared, and there was a clinking from the fridge in the other room as he levitated a fresh bottle of lager into the bedroom and his waiting hoof. “Cool trick huh?” he said proudly. “I’ve been working on my long-range magic dexterity.”

To his chagrin, as he twisted the top off, the beer’s head foamed up and overflowed, excited by his magic, managing to spray both Cadance, himself, and the bed. In an effort to stop the spray, she shoved the neck of the bottle in his muzzle, drinking what he could of the foam, with the rest dribbling down his chin.

Cadance burst out laughing. “Oh yes, quite impressive Mr. Magichooves. In fact it seems you’ve gotten me quite wet.” She giggled, fluttering her eyelids at him.

“Hey! You promised you wouldn’t laugh!” he said protesting, his erection starting to flag forlornly.

She climbed on top of his lap and kissed him full on the muzzle, tasting the honeyed citrus notes of the lager on his lips and tongue. He placed his fore-hooves on her flanks, squeezing and pulling her closer. The sudden playful movement made her realize that she needed to pee, but she decided to ride it out for now and see where things went.

“Apology accepted,” he said grinning when she finally pulled away.

Cadance brought her head down, and started to lick and suck at Shining’s chest fur where he had spilled the drink. “You said… there were… a couple… more things… you were into?” she asked between licks, noting in satisfaction that his erection was returning.

“Ahaha… yeah… OK… I might need to add something to that list actually,” he said, squirming as she worked her way up until she was licking at his neck.

She grinned. “Oh, I already knew you like it when I suck you off. Or when I do this…” she said, biting down on his neck.

He moaned loudly, wriggling under her bite until she eventually let him go.

“And I know we both like this too,” she whispered, letting go of his neck and biting down on his ear.

“Hnnnggngf… Buck Cady, are you trying to make me cum already? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you keep on like this,” he protested, shivering.

She let go of his ear and gave his very erect stallionhood a playful pat with her wing. “No, I’m just teasing you. I still want to hear what else you like,” she said, sitting back and draining the last of her G&T. “I’m just going to get another drink first. I’ll be right back.”

She rolled off the bed and onto her hooves, surprised to find that her balance was a little wobbly as she trotted back to the kitchenette for a refill. I guess I’m a lightweight if I don’t drink for a week, she thought.

She returned to the bedroom a couple of minutes later, levitating her refilled drink in front of her. She had realized she was also walking a little funny due to her full bladder and considered stopping to use the bathroom on the way back, but decided against it, climbing back on the bed with a slight wince and lying down beside Shining. When she wasn’t trying to move too much, the pressure was pleasantly stimulating, and her growing horniness was overruling her need to pee for now.

“You were saying?” she said nonchalantly, taking a sip of her drink.

He swallowed, looking down bashfully at his penis which was still sitting there fully erect and happily throbbing of its own accord. “Um, so one thing… I’m kinda interested in magic use… as like… a sex thing.”

“Oh?” Cadance gave him a look of expectant curiosity. “C’mon, I told you all about my most embarrassing stuff… tell me more please!”

“Um… well I’ve read some pretty hot fantasy novels where they have done things with horns,” he blushed.

“What, like hornjobs, or horning?” she asked. Horns were traditionally considered quite taboo when it came to sex, but it was a very common kink and certainly didn’t phase her at all. She had tried horning a pegasus in high-school once and the other mare had climaxed three times in fifteen minutes. She had never tried ‘doing it’ herself with another pony’s horn though.

“Y…yes. That’s a part of it, but also… have you thought about using magic for other stuff during sex? Like levitating each other or teleporting during sex, or using magic to shape water into some kind of sex toy, or using transmutation or illusory magic for roleplay… there’s lots of possibilities really.”

She realized to her surprise that this was something she hadn’t really given much thought to before. Desite now having years of practice with magic as an alicorn, she was still used to thinking like a pegasus, leading with her wings, not her horn.

“Wow, you unicorns are really horny!” she said, smirking. “Those all sound fun. I thought you said you didn’t have many kinks?”

He gave her a sheepish grin. “There are also these horn rings you can get that inhibit magic. Could be fun to play with too.”

“I didn’t realize you were into BSDM?” she said, her eyes lighting up.

“Um, yeah, not like the really hard-core stuff… but like…” he trailed off, looking for the right words.

“You like the idea of loss of control? Relinquishing control to another pony?” she asked.

“Y…yes. Sometimes.” He blushed cutely.

“Me too. It’s just as well I’m a switch then.”

“Oh… uh… good,” He said. “Uh, Cady, stupid question, what’s a switch?” he asked, “In this context obviously.”

She sighed and took another gulp of her drink. “Didn’t you talk about sex at all with your friends in high-school?”

“All of my friends were O&O nerds like me,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I was the first one to lose my virginity.”

She laughed. “OK, well, you know how in Ogres & Oubliettes there is a Oubliette Master who controls things, and you would take turns who played as the OM?”

He nodded, trying his best to ignore his massive hard-on.

“Well being a switch in BDSM is like that, only sexier,” she said grinning. “You take turns who is being submissive, giving up control, and who is being dominant and taking it, controlling the scenario.”

“Oh. That makes sense, thanks! And the dominant pony keeps track of the stats for your party?” he asked, earning a playful thwack on his penis from her wing.

“Ow… Seriously though, how do you know all this stuff Cady?” he asked curiously, when they had both finished watching his cock rebounding from side to side between his thighs.

“Some of it is experience. I did more experimentation in high-school than you; before we were together. And like I said, I read a lot of magazines and other stuff growing up. I don’t have very much direct experience with BDSM but there can be quite a lot of cross-over between the BDSM and ageplay communities, so I have read quite a lot about it.”

She sat back, resting against a stack of pillows and crossing her hind-hooves, and absent mindedly feeling her distended belly with her wing.

He frowned. “Are you okay there Love? You’re not pregnant are you?”

She giggled. “No dear, I’m still not pregnant. The doctors in Canterlot were pretty adamant about that. I just need to pee, is all. I haven’t been to the bathroom since breakfast.”

“You should probably go then? It looks like you’re leaking,” he said, pointing at the large wet patch on her pajamas that had formed between her legs.”

She looked down, noticing the fresh wet patch for the first time. “That’s not pee darlin’.”

“Oh.”

“I told you I like talking about this stuff too. And I’m fine holding on for now, I’ll go soon. Is there anything else you’re into?” Cadance asked.

“Well I kind of like socks.”

“Aw. You and half of Equestria buddy. Socks are cute though, I don’t mind wearing them for you! You only gotta ask.”

“Um… well that’s mostly it, but well, okay actually there’s one more big thing… promise you won’t tell anypony?”

She nodded. “Promise.”

He blushed. “I ah, I do kind-of have a thing for manes and tails, and… and brushing them.” he admitted playing with his own mane nervously with his forehoof.

“Aw.” She grinned. “I mean I knew that you liked manes from how you like to play with mine or have me play with yours sometimes during sex. But I didn’t realize there was more to it? You like the brushie brushie huh?”

He nodded shyly, the movement making his penis bob. “I do really like the brushie brushie,” he admitted.

“Tell me what you like about the brushie brushie sweetheart,” she said, teasing him.

“Uh…” he said, sweating, “I really like how the brush feels, um, specifically when another pony brushes your mane or tail…” he lowered his voice, “or even your fetlocks! It feels so different than when you try to brush yourself, and it’s really… intense.”

“You’ve been letting other ponies brush you?” she asked, raising her eyebrow in mock shock.

“Only my barber!” he said guiltily. “And… and… and sometimes when I was in the guard, we would brush each other’s tails for parade, since it was hard to reach your own when you’re in full dress armor, especially for the non unicorns.”

She giggled. “Go on.”

“Well, I… I guess I found I also really like brushing other ponies too. The sound, the tactile feeling, helping to make other ponies look pretty… it’s all quite exciting.” He glanced down again with a nod to his penis which was still standing to attention, dripping precum onto the sheets.

“We’ve been together for years, Shining. How come you’ve never asked me to brush your mane or asked you to brush mine?” she asked.

“I…I just didn’t want you to think I was weird. It’s silly I know. I don’t know why I’m into it. Sometimes I get this feeling like I was somehow designed for being brushed.”

“I always knew you were weird, you nerd, it’s part of why I fell for you.” She gave him another kiss on his neck. “I don’t think liking your mane being brushed is that weird though.”

“I… um… I also really like the brush itself as an object… just seeing one can give me frisson. S… sometimes I like to lick the brush after I’m done brushing. Or sleep with it under my pillow… like a comfort object.”

“Huh. Interesting,” she said. “That is a little bit weird, but hey, as long as you clean it after.” She paused, remembering something. “You know… I used to clop with the handle of my manebrush when I was a filly.”

From his expression, she thought he might be about to cum, but he managed to recover his composure, looking up at her with excitement. “Wait, seriously?”

“Uh huh, I had some good times with mine. That’s the way a lot of fillies learn. That or toothbrushes or cucumbers. It’s just a convenient object that’s a useful shape that a lot of fillies have access to.”

“Buck! Why didn’t anypony tell me that was a thing!” he moaned. “I could have been clopping off to that.”

She shrugged. “Better late than never.” She leaned over to kiss him again, and her full bladder made her double up in pain. “Buck… sorry, I really do have to pee now… I’ll be right back,” she said, climbing down from the bed carefully and starting to hobble towards the bathroom clenching her pelvic floor muscles.

“Would you mind if I watched?” Shining asked suddenly, grinning at her shyly.

Chapter 6: Release

“Uh, sure!” Cadance said, breaking out into a surprised grin. “If you hurry. I’m about to burst!”

He jumped off the bed and trotted over to her, helping to support her as she staggered across the room.

As with most things in the castle their en-suite bathroom was oversized, incorporating a toilet, vanity, walk-in shower, and a large bathtub that was practically a small spa. Cadance’s hooves skittered on the tiled floor as she made a beeline for the toilet. Her horn lit up, and she was about to pull down her pajama bottoms to pee when she hesitated. “Uh, did you just want to watch me go on the toilet, or did you have something else in mind?” she asked Shining sweetly with a hint of uncertainty. She had that shy but coy fillyish tone of voice again which he was now realizing he would have to add to his list of kinks.

Shining smiled. “Why don’t you show me how filly Cady likes to do it?” he said, watching in satisfaction as her wings started to unfurl themselves of their own accord.

She nodded blushing. “I… I could… it would be easier to clean up if I did it in the bath though.” She looked up at him shyly, biting her lip a little, her hind hooves crossed and shaking in desperation.

“Alright,” he said simply, giving her a reassuring nod.

She encountered some difficulty trying to climb into the bath in her condition. Shining ended up using his magic to assist her, carefully helping her lift one hoof at a time until she had all four inside the tub.

She stood there in the bath in her pajamas, trembling as her bladder tortured her.
Shining climbed into the bath as well and gave her neck a nuzzle.

“You OK there love? Did you make yourself this desperate on purpose?”

“Maaaaybe…” she nuzzled him back, her voice taking on a mischievous pouting tone.

Shining took a step back, as far as the bath-tub would allow, and looked at her lovingly; her face was red with embarrassment, and she was shifting from one hoof to another, trying to stay continent. He could smell her excitement.

“Would you like to show me how long you can hold on for?” he asked gently, eliciting a wordless nod and a squeaking moan from her that told him he was on the right track.

He grinned. “Good. This is cute Cady. I like seeing you all blushy like this. It makes a nice change from you teasing me.”

“H…hey! I can still tease you!” she said indignantly, trying to keep her hind legs tightly crossed and not fall over.

“Oh yeah?”

Her eyes crossed in concentration so as not to lose control and her horn lit up. Shining heard the drawer of the vanity opening and his heart skipped a beat as she saw her levitating her mane-brush towards him.

“W…what are you doing with that?” he stammered.

“What would you like me to do with it?” She started to giggle, then winced, “Oof, no, laughing is a real bad idea.”

“Uhhh…” Shining gulped, his cock giving her a wave.

“You’re looking quite disheveled sweetie. Maybe it’s time for some brushie brushie?”

“Uhhhhhhhh!”

“Hold still.” She levitated the brush over to her husband, gently starting to brush his mane, working from the top near his ears and taking her time working her way down. It actually did need brushing she thought as the brush caught on some burrs.

He shivered, shutting his eyes and exhaling in a long sighing moan.

“Oh wow, your mane has so many kinks. It looks like it hasn’t had a good brush in ages!” she teased, putting on her best impression of a cheesy clop film actress.

“Buck, Cady, that feels so nice! I should have asked you to do this before!” he whined, nuzzling her side as she brushed him.

“I’m glad you like it Sweetheart.” She kissed the top of his forehead below his horn. “You know, I could see me brushing you while I’m in my filly headspace. It’s kind-of soothing. I used to have a brushable foal doll that I played with when I was little, before my mother threw it out.”

He whimpered.

“Or maybe, you could brush me sometime, and help braid my mane like a filly?”

“Mmm, yes please! Anytime!” he said quickly.

“Well then, we have something to look forward to when I introduce you to little Cady,” she said happily.

She leaned in and whispered in his ear. “You know… if your mane is this in need of brushing, I bet your fetlocks must be filthy.”

“Mmmmmfm!”

“Show me your messy hooves honey.”

Trembling slightly, he raised one of his fore-hooves for inspection, presenting slightly matted fetlocks, still dotted with paint spots. She went to lean in to take a closer look, but her body was wracked with a sudden spasm as her bladder protested, and she realized she couldn’t just keep ignoring it.

“Buck… sorry… I… I really do have to go now,” she said, squirming desperately and using her wing to press between her crossed hindlegs.

Shining grinned. “Here, let me help you.”

He guided her, supporting her to stand on her hind-legs, bracing her fore-hooves against the wall, then he stood on his own hind-hooves, wrapping his fore-hooves around her barrel as if he was going to mount her, and she let out a loud desperate moan.

Instead he slid a forehoof down until it came to rest between Cadance’s thighs, pressing softly against her marehood through her already damp pajama bottoms, and she gasped, pressing herself against his hoof needily.

He hugged her distended belly with his other forehoof, cuddling her close to him, and she shivered, feeling his warm breath on her neck.

“My turn,” he said, picking up the brush with his magic from where she had dropped it, and starting to brush her mane soothingly.

“Buck… that feels nice… I… I need to go!”

“Yeah?” he said. “Why don’t you tell me how much you need to go?”

“I really really really bucking need to pee!” wriggling her hips desperately, pivoting her weight on a single hind-hoof as she had the other crossed trying to keep control.

“But you’re going to be a good girl and hold it for me, while I brush your mane, right?”

“Aaaaaaaahh!” she screamed, quivering, her wings curling in blissful agony. “Buck.... Buck. Fuck fuck fuuuuuck!”

“Mind your language filly!” He moved his forehoof from her belly to her flank, giving it a experimental little slap.

“Ahhhahhhh! Buck! Sorry! I… I don’t think I can hold it anymore!”

“Just a little bit longer, for me,” he said firmly, feeling like he was starting to get the hang of being the Oubliette Master in this scenario. He gave her flank another playful little slap for good measure.

“I...I can’t!” she cried. “I’m going to explode!”

“Hmmm.” He nuzzled her ear, and whispered, “I’m counting on it.”

She shivered violently, whining, pressing the crotch of her pyjamas hard against his hoof to stop herself from leaking.

“What do you say then sweetheart?” he whispered in her ear.

“Ahhh…. Please! Please let me wet myself! I need to go so bad! Pleeease!”

He nodded. “Good, that’s all I wanted to hear. Now hold still and let me brush your mane, and you can relax and do what you need to do.”

She moaned, slumping against him and he hugged her to him again, her back pressed against his chest, wings spread. He kept one fore-hoof wrapped around her belly, holding her securely while he kept the other firmly pressed against her pajamas, rubbing it slowly in circles. He started to brush her mane again using his magic, brushing more firmly and deeply this time, pulling gently at her hair.

A warm sense of serenity overcame her whole body as she surrendered herself to him, allowing her body to relax as he brushed her. She felt herself losing control as she started to pee, just a trickle at first, soaking the crotch of pajamas and running down her leg.

“That’s it, just let it happen sweetheart,” Shining said approvingly, earning a squeak and a blushy wriggle from Cadance. “I know that’s not all. Show me how much you have to go.” He looked down, and kicked the bath’s plug in, stopping her pee from escaping.

He could feel the growing flood of her warm wetness under his fore-hoof on her crotch as she lost control, a dark stain spreading across the whole front, and down both legs.

“Good girl.” Still brushing her mane, he moved the hoof on her crotch up, then slid it down the front of her pajamas, letting her piss directly against him, drenching his fetlocks. Her pee felt deliciously warm on his hoof, and he started to move it about a little, rubbing at his wife’s clit as she wet herself. She seemed to like that, judging by the amount of wriggling and non-verbal squeaking noises she was making.

Her pee was pooling below their hind-hooves now, forming a growing yellow puddle in the middle of the bath. His erect stallionhood had naturally come to rest between her legs as he hugged her, and he could feel her pee as it tricked out of her pajamas around his cock.

He leaned in and took her ear in his muzzle, suckling on it while she finished peeing, making her shiver and squirm. Eventually her stream tapered off to a trickle, and then a drip.

“Buck me, that was amazing!” she said, flicking her ear as he let go of it and hugged her close, giving her mane a last brush.

She turned herself around on her fore-hooves, leaning her back against the wall, and wrapping her fore-hooves around him, pulling him against her and kissing him passionately on the muzzle, with her tongue. He stroked her mane as they kissed, and she could feel the wetness of his soaked fetlocks. Eventually, she broke the kiss, and took his wet fore-hoof in hers, bringing it up to her muzzle. She started to lick it clean, tasting her own fluids.

Shining squirmed as she played her tongue over his frog. “I don’t know how I got so lucky to find you, but I love you Cady.”

“I love you too, you big dork,” she said, kissing him again, her lips tasting like pee this time. It tasted more pleasant than he was expecting, not too different from the lager he had been drinking earlier; a little bitter and slightly salty, with notes of citrus and honey.

When they finished their kiss, Shining laid his forehooves on Cadance’s sides, and slowly slid them down her flanks, pulling her sopping wet pajamas down with them. He moved down her body until the sodden mess of her pajamas fell around her fetlocks, and he was standing on all four hooves again, with his head at a convenient height. He pressed his muzzle between her wet thighs, and started to lick the wet fur around her marehood, which elicited a happy whimper. It tasted more intense than her muzzle had, but still quite palatable.

He kissed her on her perfect pink lower lips, then started to run his tongue slowly along their length from bottom to top, ending each stroke with a flick of his tongue against her swollen clit, pausing every so often to suckle on it directly. She squirmed as he worked on her, moaning softly.

Shining felt a sudden jolt of pleasure and he realized that Cadance had started brushing his mane again while he was licking her. He shivered, moaning happily, and dove his tongue firmly between her labia, licking harder and deeper, releasing fresh bursts of flavor and more appreciative sounds from his wife.

After licking her for a while, the taste of her pee receded somewhat, replaced by the milder but intoxicating flavor of her excitement, which grew in volume the deeper he licked until she was moaning constantly and practically dripping. When he was sure she was ready, he pulled out, stepping back and looking up at her.

“Fuck… Shining… I was nearly there!” she said panting, a pouting look on her face. “Why did you stop?”

“Ready for something better than my tongue?” he asked, wiping his muzzle with his fetlocks.

“I… I’d like to… but we probably shouldn’t tonight,” she said in evident frustration. “We’ve both been drinking. Unless you have a condom?”

He shook his head. “I had something else in mind.”

“Oh? Like what?” she asked curiously. Sliding down from her hind-hooves back on all fours. She kicked the wet pajamas away from around her hind-hooves, stretching and rubbing the muscles in her flanks with her wings.

“Remember how you said you used to play with your mane brush?” he said grinning.

She smiled. “Now that I can do.”

She sat down in the tub with a splash and lay back against the sloping end of the bath, lying in the puddle of her own pee.

“I can’t believe I made all of this in one wetting, I guess I must have been pretty full,” she giggled.

Shining picked up the mane brush between his hooves looking at it closely for the first time.

It was the type of brush primarily designed for unicorns, rather than the more cumbersome general purpose models with a hoof strap. Looking at it now, he could see why this kind were so popular with mares, even if the mouth grip handle was less practical for non magic users. It was only less practical for brushing.

The handle was firm pink silicone, about an inch in diameter and a full six inches long with a series of ridges and stylised white butterflies cast as raised sections along its length for extra grip, which made it look like it was designed for fillies. At the brush end, Pink plastic coated metal bristles radiated outwards as spokes from a central shaft, with each bristle terminating with a tiny rounded ball. It looked well loved, but in good condition.

“H…how long have you had this?” he asked, looking from the brush to her and back to the brush.

“Not long after I became an Alicorn. It’s the same one I learned to masturbate with,” she said, grinning at his excitement.

He held the brush out for her to take. “Show me. Please?” he begged.

She giggled, and took the brush, levitating it down between her legs. Since she was using her magic, he had a nearly unobstructed view as she played with it, tracing the handle between her wet lips.

After it was well coated with her juices, she inserted its end between her labia, but only a small way, using her magic to pull the brush back towards her by the head, so the middle of the shaft was pressed firmly against her swollen clitoris as she started to circle and flick the tip of the handle around the mouth of her vagina. She started to buck her hips, letting them do the work of moving the brush against her.

Shining was watching intently, practically drooling.

“This… is how… I learned,” she said between moans, looking up at him. “Before… I broke… myself in… getting a little… too rough with it.”

“Wait… you lost your virginity to your brush?” he asked incredulously, his cock pulsing.

“That’s not really how virginity works Sweetie. But yes, I lost my hymen playing with my brush.”

He nodded, swallowing. Something about watching her bucking like that, pleasuring herself with the brush was incredibly arousing to him, and his cock was once again standing at full attention.

“And this… is how I did it… once I could… go deeper.” She repositioned the brush’s angle, and pressed it in deeper. Her lips wrapped around the handle in a very satisfying way, swallowing it whole all the way to the flared hilt separating the handle from the brush. They both moaned at the same time, creating a lustful harmony.

She played like that for a while, moving it in and out with her magic, while she used a wing tip to feather at her clit, but she soon became frustrated with the lack of tactility that her magic afforded, and decided to try a more direct approach. She placed her fore-hooves down in the puddle in front of her, forming a ‘v’ shape, and leaned forward so the head of the brush was wedged between her hooves as she thrust her hips rhythmically, slamming the handle inside herself harder and faster than before. She started to moan more loudly, a singular long wail punctuated by her thrusts.

“Mmmm... fuck… me… yes…mmmm… mmmmfmfff!”

Shining watched her slack-jawed, his stallionhood pulsing. “Fuck Cady, that looks so good. That brush makes the best dildo!”

“Mmmm…yeah… you like it… when I fuck myself… with my brushie… brushie… don’t you?” she moaned, and he nodded vigorously, his cock leaking a steady string of precum that made little splashes as it dripped into her pee puddle.

The most arousing part for Cadance was how naughty she felt splashing about in a puddle of her own embarrassment as she desperately thrust herself against the brush. She had owned better dildos than this, but seeing how much it aroused Shining and teasing him with it more than made up for the brush’s comparatively humble girth.

Also, she had to admit, there was also something nice about fucking herself again with the brush that she had owned since fillyhood. It was actually one of the few things from that time she still possessed, somehow escaping her mother’s purges. It had been around ten years since she had used it for this particular purpose, and she had forgotten just how good it felt, a well loved comfort object.

“You… like… watching… me…don’t… you?” she managed, between gasping moans, the wet sound of the brush pumping inside her mingling with the splashing sounds from her constant needy thrusting.

“Y…yes!” Shining nodded again. His horn was lit up, and when she looked down she saw his blue aura surrounding the head of his cock, playing with himself while he watched her.

“I bet… you spied… on me… brushing… my mane… in the… girls… locker… room… at school… didn’t you?” she moaned, feeling herself edging closer.

“What! No I didn’t!” Shining gulped, stroking his cock faster with his magic.

“You did… didn’t you?”

He nodded, hanging his head in shame. This was clearly part of the fantasy for Cady and he decided to just roll with it. Anything that was getting him this hard had to be worth playing along with.

“I bet… you liked… to watch… all the… fillies… brushing… their manes… didn’t you!”

“Just you, I swear!” he protested, stroking himself harder.

She changed her pace, grinding her hips slowly and deeply around the brush.

“I bet you’d like me to cum with my brushie… and let you lick it clean… wouldn’t you?” she said in a soft coy voice.”

“Ahhhaahh… yes…. yes… I’d like that!” he gulped, tugging himself furiously.

“Shining… would you do something… for me?” she asked in her fillyish voice.

“Ahaha… Yes Cady! Anything!”

“Would you pee on me?” she asked, shyness creeping back into her voice.

“Uuuhhh…” Shining was sweating.

“Sorry, is that too much?” she asked, embarrassed, dropping the roleplay momentarily.

“N…no… I’d like to… it’s just… I’m not sure I can pee while I’m as hard as this.”

“Ooh…. right.” She giggled. “Then would you cum on me first, and then pee on me? Please?” she asked in her best filly voice.

“Y… yes!” His magic grew brighter as he stepped up his clopping, letting it envelop his whole cock in a shimmering magenta haze, and he started to thrust cock into the magic cloud like he was making love to a mare.

Cadance watched interested, she hadn’t seen him pull this trick this before. She started to thrust her own hips against the brush in time with his strokes, exaggerating her moaning just a little to help him along.

“Mmm… buck… yes… this brushie… feels so good… make… cummies… for me Shiny… cum all over me… show me… how much… you want me.”

Shining panted, concentrating intently while watching her as he thrust himself hard inside his magic. “Buck… Yes… Cady… I’m going to… I’m going to cum Cady! Buck it, I’m cumming!” he whined feverishly.

“That’s it, cum for me, cum all over me Sweetheart.”

“Aaaaahhahahaaaagghhfffgglgllll, he cut his magic at the last moment, and started to cum all over her, hot jets of his seed splashing her coat, wings, mane and face.

She smiled happily, pausing her thrusting to wipe some of the cum off her face with her hoof, which she then licked. “Good boy… you really needed that didn’t you?”

He nodded. “Yeah… That felt amazing, thanks Sweetheart. I definitely needed that after all of this.”

“I bet!” she said, grinning.

She needed it too. Badly. She had practically been edging since they had started talking this morning, feeling herself leaking constantly from her excitement talking about, and now experimenting with some of the things she had only ever dreamed of being able to do with a partner.

She watched his erection hungrily as it started to shrink in size. She could feel the need burning between her legs, and was getting quite desperate to resume her bucking and finish the job, but she didn’t want to risk giving him another erection just yet. Sitting there waiting for him, she realized she actually had to pee again, so she decided to just let go, her pee splashing all over the brush head and trickling into her growing puddle.

The noise of her peeing must have made Shining need to go, because when she finished and looked up, he was standing there with his now only semi-erect cock pointing at her ready to go.

“I think I can do it now,” he said a little shyly. “I actually do need to pee too.”

“Yes! Pee on me Shiny… please! Pee all over me and show me what a naughty filly I’ve been?” she whined with hunger in her voice.

He blushed a little, and tried to relax, a small gush of warm pee squirting from his cock and splashing her thigh.

“Buck yes, that’s it. Let it go. I need it! Fucking cover me!” she whined, starting to buck her brush again in earnest, eager to finish herself off while he was peeing on her if she could.

He let himself go, a torrent of pee erupting from his stallionhood and splashing against her belly. Seeing how much she needed it, he did as instructed, directing his firehose all over her body, spraying her thighs, her chest, her wings, her mane, and even her face, when it was clear to him that that was what she was wanting. She opened her muzzle eagerly, intercepting his stream and swallowing what she could, the rest pouring out of her mouth and dribbling down her neck. He tastes like smoky peaches and summer rain.

She felt herself edging closer and closer to orgasm, until she was no longer edging, but falling hard, floating, screaming out his name in mindless ecstasy as her body thrashed in the ever-growing puddle of their combined juices.

It took a while for her faculties to return and her breathing to slow to anything resembling normal. She opened her eyes as she felt his body against hers as he lay down next to her, laying his head on her chest and draping a hoof around her.

“Shining…what are you doing?” she giggled. “You’ll get pee all over you!”

He laughed, and kissed her cheek. “That's okay, some of my favorite ponies like getting pee all over them, apparently.”

They lay there for a while, Cadance with her head back relaxing in their warm puddle.

Eventually she sighed happily. “Well… I guess we’d better take a shower then and clean up. We don’t want the maids to catch us like this.”

“Sure, but um first… you uh… you promised me I could lick your brush clean?”

Chapter 7: Traditions

She was wearing a stunning dress, commissioned especially for the evening’s occasion; or at least she would be if she could get the damned thing on properly.

The dress had little hook closures that were supposed to hold it together while it was being laced up, but no sooner had she managed to do one up and another would pop loose exposing her belly fur. It didn’t help that it was too tight to move around in with much dexterity, and she couldn’t see her underside well enough to try and do them up with her magic.

Indulging in an exasperated huff, her horn flared and she tugged hesitantly on the rope for the service bell. She still found herself feeling deeply uncomfortable about having hoofmaidens at her beck and call, but she had to admit it was helpful having other mares around to help her out occasionally.

A few moments later, there was a polite knock at the drawing room door. “Come in, please!” she called, and heard the drawing room door open and close discreetly in the next room. “I’m in the bedroom.”

A crystal unicorn mare dressed primly in a maid’s uniform appeared in the open bedroom doorway, curtsying. “Ma'am?”

“Good evening Tourmaline, you know I hate to ask, but would you mind helping me with the dress? I seem to have gotten myself stuck,” Cadance said, a little embarrassed. She stood back on her hind hooves, leaning against a wall, offering the other mare a clear view of the underside of her dress.

The mare trotted over to help. Her crystalline coat and mane shone translucently with graduated shades of rose quartz, topaz and aquamarine in the late afternoon sun. She ran her sparkling sea-foam eyes over Cadance and the half-fitted dress appraisingly. As she looked up, she found Cadance meeting her eyes, and they shared an awkward smile.

“Hold still Ma'am, I think I’ve got this,” Tourmaline said, after sizing up the situation. Her horn lit up and Cadance felt the dress tightening around her chest as the maid’s magic pulled the sides of the dress together firmly so she could start to do it up.

“I see why you needed help Ma’am. It is… quite… knifflig!” Tourmaline commented after the third time a hook came undone while she was trying to do up the lace. Eventually she managed it, and Cadance set her fore-hooves back on the floor, checking herself in the mirror.

Credit where credit was due, Rarity had done an outstanding job. The winter dress managed to be both warm and soft as silk. It was the purple-blue color of civil twilight, its folds and trim incorporating iridescent shades of purple, pink and green. Adorning the dress were embroidered stars and snowflakes, inset with opals and blue and pink sapphires sourced locally from the Crystal Empire. It had arrived that morning by train, and Rarity had included an elegantly gilded card with an artist statement, which declared that the design was inspired by the northern aurora and the Crystal Empire’s Purple Flag of Many Hues.

She had a few design notes for Rarity though. Either she had taken the wrong measurements or Cadance had put on weight since they were taken, because it was a very tight fit. Size aside, the dress was practically a corset and she wasn’t a big fan of clothing she couldn’t get herself in or out of without expert assistance. She could never understand why that sort of thing was all the rage in Canterlot court circles. Celestia forbid that the wearer should need to use the bathroom!

She felt herself blushing a little as that thought brought her back to the activities of the night before. Even despite their considerable previous sexual experiences together, it didn’t quite seem real how steamy things had gotten in the bathroom the previous night. Shining had seemed to thoroughly enjoy the experience, and while the pee-play with him had only scratched the at surface of her kinks, it was a surface that had lain undisturbed for years, and now it felt like the flood gates were open - she chuckled internally at the pun - she was hungry to explore more, making up for lost time. Best of all, somehow she wasn’t feeling guilty about what they had done together, only excitement. More than excitement; she had been horny as Tartarus last night!

“Ma'am?” Tourmaline’s voice snapped out of her lewd little daydream. She was looking at Cadance’s flushed face with a concerned expression, “Are you alright? Can you breathe OK?”

“Uhhh I’m fine, thanks,” Cadance said hurriedly. “It’s just a little tight, but I’ll be OK. This dress is made for a supermodel not an alicorn apparently.”

“It looks very pretty on you Ma'am. Like you’re wearing the night sky. I’m sure you’ll make a splash tonight.”

“Sorry, what did you say?” Cadance almost choked, shooting the maid a furtive glance. What did she know?

“I said, I’m sure you and Prince Shining will make a big splash tonight Ma'am,” Tourmaline repeated. “At the Winter Market Gala,” she added helpfully.

“Ahah… yes… I suppose we will. Thank you Tourmaline.”

“Begging your pardon Ma'am, but… it means a lot to us. Us crystal folk I mean, your bringing back the Winter Market.”

“Oh,” said Cadance, surprised. “You’re very welcome.”

“The Kristallwintermarkt is old Ma'am. Older than any of us, saving perhaps the Two Sisters. I was just a filly when he banned it. They were dark days Ma'am, under King Sombre’s reign, But some of us remembered the traditions, kept them alive in secret, rund ums Lagerfeuer. It means a lot to see them returning in our lifetime.”

Tourmaline had tears in her eyes. The maid looked, what, at least four or five years younger than her. It was always jarring to be reminded that most of her subjects were technically older than her by at least a thousand years. It had been assumed by many when the Crystal Empire reappeared that its inhabitants had not aged at all during their disappearance, but some of the brightest theoretical physicists from Canterlot and Manhattan had studied the issue and determined that ponies had in all probability aged, but at a much slower rate, around 200 times slower than those left behind in Equestria. Tourmaline would have been little older than a filly when Sombre started his reign of terror, and for her the great disappearance had lasted perhaps around five years, most of her adult life spent in the liminal shadow of the mad king’s banishment.

Cadance was embarrassed to admit she hadn’t really thought that much about the Winter Market’s significance to her subjects. When she had heard about it, it had sounded like a fun holiday tradition, something that might help to bring in some tourist bits from Manehattan or Vanhoover. She clearly still had a lot of reading up to do on local history.

“Thank you Tourmaline.” Cadance held out a tissue for the mare. “Before I make a complete jenny out of myself tonight, I should be honest and say I’m really not that well informed. Is there anything you can tell me about the festival that you think I should know?”

“You’d want my Oma for that. She’s the family historian,” Tourmaline said, blowing her nose on the tissue. “But I can tell you what I remember.”

“Whatever background you can give me would be most appreciated. And please, you really don’t need to keep calling me Ma'am while we’re in private. You’re older than me for Celestia’s sake.”

They trotted over towards the bedroom’s large windows, overlooking the expanse of yet-to-be-opened market stalls set up along the mall and town square below. Some ponies were already milling about, soaking up the last gleaming of Celestia’s dying autumn sun.

“Well, you know that the market starts each year with the Winter Market Gala at the passing of the Erntemond… the harvest moon. The market stays open all winter, and closes around the vernal equinox, with the Crystal Faire.

Cadance nodded. “Yes, I’ve read that much.”

“Well Kristallwintermarkt, the Crystal Winter Market started out in Princess Amore’s time as a way of ponies sharing food and provisions with each other, to help ensure everypony survived the long winter. At the passing of the harvest moon, all the townsponies would gather together in the Kristall-Rathaus to celebrate - or commiserate if it was a poor harvest - and ensure that the supplies they had gathered for the winter were fairly distributed according to need. The Winter Market ensured no one pony or family had too much of one thing and not enough of another, and nopony had more than their fill if others were going hungry. Ponies would barter or buy what they needed from each other, but if a family couldn’t afford to buy food, or an elder wasn’t able to chop their own wood, well other ponies would all pitch in to help them out.”

Cadance smiled. “What a wonderful tradition.”

“As the population expanded, it outgrew the Rathaus and became an outdoor festival. The Winter Market began to stay open all winter to feed the hungry and clothe the cold. The Market closing for the year with the Crystal Faire is a celebration of spring renewal. Ponies gather in unity to celebrate that we made it through the coldest months, and remember those who didn’t.”

Cadance nodded solemnly, struck anew by the significance that it was the revival of the Crystal Faire which had brought the townsponies from Sombre’s cursed slumber.

Tourmaline looked at Cadance giving her a warm smile. “Then there’s the glühwein. Hot spiced wine was served to the harvest workers preparing the town for winter to keep them warm and raise their spirits. It became a Winter Market tradition, and buying your friends or neighbours glühwein at the Winter Market became a way of wishing them good health over the long winter ahead.

“Ah. That makes sense!” Cadance said, smiling again.

“Really there is a bit more to it than that. For some folks, it is seen more allegorically, as a kind of… blutopfer… an offering to the Pale Mare herself, keeping her from your loved ones doorsteps for another winter. If some pony buys you a cup of glühwein, it is considered bad luck not to return the favor, and when you see her, you should offer her a drink.

Cadance could feel her hackles beginning to rise. “That’s a little creepy for a holiday tradition isn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” Tourmaline said. “We don’t celebrate Nightmare Night here Ma’am, because, well, we totally missed out on the whole Nightmare Moon thing while we were away. But it’s much the same thing really; the end of the harvest season has always been seen as a time when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, where we give thanks to those ponies that came before us and bargain for those who are left. Besides, there were monsters before Nightmare Moon and there will be monsters after, and ponies have always enjoyed scaring each other around a campfire.”

“Yes, I see. There is nothing wrong with a fright from time to time, if it’s all in good humor,” Cadance said, filing facts away in her memory palace for later use. “But still, let’s hope none of us see the Pale Mare anytime soon!” she said with forced cheerfulness.

Tourmaline smiled disconcertingly “Perhaps we will, perhaps we won’t.”

Cadance shivered. “And what about the the Crystal Faire? I think I read somewhere that the Crystal Faire commemorates the return of the Crystal Heart after it was stolen by a dragon?”

Tourmaline nodded. “Storybook stuff. But that’s just the modern incarnation that’s known as the Crystal Faire. My Oma says there has always been some kind of Frühlingsfest, long before the Wintermarkt, going back as far as anypony has recorded. Come the lenzmond - the spring moon - we eat frühlingsblumen and drink eiswein made from the grapes that froze on the vines, and kristallweizen, a beer that’s made from the previous year’s winter wheat.”

“Is there a more allegorical meaning to all that as well?” asked Cadance.

Tourmaline blushed a little. “Originally, but it’s… well, it’s a little crude. Let’s just say that these days it’s mostly an excuse for a good piss-up, if you’ll pardon my Prench Ma’am.”

“And tell me, where does the flügelhorn come into all this?” Asked Cadance, blushing a little herself and changing the topic. “You know Shining was a flügelhorn player in high-school? He won’t admit to it, but he was very excited at being allowed to play it during the ceremony.”

“So I’ve heard Ma'am. Traditionally the flügelhorn was sounded when gathering parties left the city in search of supplies during the winter, and on their return. Now it’s used ceremonially to herald the start of the Winter Market Gala and the end of the Crystal Faire. And just about anything else that crystal ponies can get away with heralding really; the whole city goes a bit flügelhorn mad. You’ll get used to hearing all the public recitals in the square over Hearth’s Warming.”

There was a knock at the drawing room door.

“Enter,” Cadance called, stepping into the doorway between the bedroom and the drawing room, the starry skirt of her dress billowing around her hind hooves in a manner not dissimilar to her aunt Luna’s ethereal mane and tail.

The door opened to admit Shining, Lock, and Charteris, each wearing their crimson and gold ceremonial dress uniforms for the occasion. Shining’s uniform was positively bristling with medals and replete with the azure sash which marked him as a Ritter Prinzgemahl des Ordens der Ehrwürdigen Socken. He was levitating his flügelhorn in front of him, polished immaculately.

Cadance flashed them a smile. “Hello boys. You shined up well.” She didn’t quite have the heart to tell Shining that the sash made him look a little like a contestant in a Miss Equestria contest.

“Wow, Cady, you look… amazing. That dress is lovely on you,” Shining said, giving her a kiss on her cheek.

“You are looking most presentable Ma'am,” Charteris agreed.

“What he means is you’re looking fabulous darling,” Lock said, grinning as Charteris glared at him.

“Thank you. It’s just a pity it’s too tight to breathe properly.”

“We should be heading down shortly now Ma'am, are you nearly done here?” Charteris said, glancing at a nearby grandfather clock.

“Yes, just about. Tourmaline here has been most helpful. She’s been filling me in on some of the traditions behind the Winter Market.”

“Very good Ma'am,” Charteris said, glancing sidelong at Tourmaline.

“It’s just as well. There are some things I probably should have been briefed on ahead of time,” Cadance continued.

“Did you not read the briefing paper Ma'am? In yesterday’s dispatch box,” Charteris said a little reproachfully, eying the red case sitting untouched on her bedside table.

Cadance groaned to herself. After the previous day’s excitement, she had totally forgotten her homework. She would have to look at it when they got back tonight. It was fortunate there were generally no new dispatch boxes on Sundays.

“Oh, no, I didn’t manage to get to it, I’m sorry Charteris,” she said guiltily.

She turned to Tourmaline, leaning in to speak with her, “Thank you for the history lesson dear. Is there anything else you think I should know?”

“Not exactly Ma'am, but, well, if you’ll forgive me, I do have a suggestion.”

Fifteen minutes later the royal couple and their entourage had assembled at the state entrance to the castle. They boarded the waiting carriages which took them the few hundred meters along the mall from the castle to the town square outside the Rathaus at a slow walking pace.

The carriages were flanked by a detachment of Crystal Guard in full parade dress, led by a Drum Major in charge of a small band of flügelhorn players at the head of the procession. The horn players wore especially elaborate uniforms, complete with azure socks and red tricorn hats bedecked with black feathers.

Cadance watched them out the window of the carriage. Well we aren’t about to run out of pomp and ceremony over winter at least.

“Aren’t they great?” Shining said dreamily over the cacophony of the marching band, “I wish I could play the flügelhorn half as well.”

It was approaching dusk as the procession pulled up in front of the Rathaus. Charteris opened the carriage door for them, and Cadance stepped out with some difficulty, the tightness of her dress not making it easy to move. Shining stepped out after her, levitating his flügelhorn. They were greeted with a warm reception, the throngs of mostly Crystal ponies assembled in the square stomping their hooves and cheering, or waving little mini purple flags of many hues in their muzzles.

Brightly colored stalls lined the square as far as the eye could see. The stalls weren’t yet open, but the stallholders were patiently standing by, bracing themselves for the crowds that would swarm their way once the festival was declared open.

They were met by the Oberbürgermeister, a greying crystal unicorn stallion named Graphit, and spent a few minutes greeting Alderponies and other local dignitaries before moving on to greet the crowd.

The press were out in force for the event, and Cadance was aware of the ever-present clicking and flashing of cameras as she shook hooves with citizens. Most of the photographers kept a respectful distance, relying on their long zoom lenses, but every now and then she would turn around to find a paparazzo pegasai with a camera pointed right up in her face. She swallowed the urge to scream at him and made a point of just smiling politely and moving on.

As twilight fell, the square came alive. All along the mall braziers were being lit, providing convenient sources of heat for ponies to congregate around, drink and talk. The air was crisp and thick with the scent of mulled wine and cider, freshly baked bread and pretzels, and charcoal and wood smoke from the braziers. Stalls were festooned with bunting and lights, some glowing with magic enchantments and others with paper lanterns or jars of fireflies, creating a flickering, sparkling sea. The only thing missing from the postcard winter scene was snow.

A hush fell over the crowd as the waning crescent moon became visible, rising over the castle, signifying the end of the harvest season and the start of the long winter. At Charteris’ prompting, Cadance and her party made their way back towards the Rathaus for the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Oberbürgermeister Graphit introduced her and Cadance stepped forward to speak, with Shining by her side.

“Welcome everypony,” she said, “I will try to keep this speech brief, because I don’t want to hold up the festivities any more than I have to. Over these past few moons, you have all shown such kindness to Prince Shining and I. While it’s true I share blood with the Princess Amore herself, you all know that I am no crystal native.” She gestured to her non-crystal coat self-deprecatingly, to titters from the crowd. “Yet you have welcomed my husband and I with open hooves and hearts as your Ritter Prinzgemahl and Vasallenkaiserin.” She slowed down, taking her time to try and pronounce the words correctly. “And it has been our immense honor to represent the Crystal Empire, to represent you all, on the world stage.”

She paused, waiting for the crowd’s hoof-stomping to die down.

“In the short time we have spent with you, Prince Shining and I have worked hard to rekindle and strengthen the age-old ties of kinship and mutual security that bind the Crystal Empire to Canterlot, and we continue to work to spread the friendship that has begun to blossom with other nations near and far beyond Equestria’s borders.” She nodded her head towards a small delegation from Yakyakistan who stood nearby. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Charteris’ pained expression as he watched cracks forming in the ancient cobblestones currently being subjected to the Yak delegation’s approval.

“Six moons ago, in the event that has become known as The Great Awakening, we resurrected a grand local tradition, the Crystal Faire, the inate magic of which helped to bring us all together and bring you back from the waking slumber of Sombre’s curse, shedding his eternal winter and ushering in a new spring. And now, while the nights grow long once again, we are here to lead you into what we hope will be a kinder, more prosperous winter than those of the past. It is time now to give thanks, and bring back another great Crystal Empire tradition. Please join us in tonight’s festivities, and exchange a cup of glühwein with those you hold dear.”

There was a loud cheer from the crowd. Oberbürgermeister Graphit levitated a red velvet cushion towards her, on which was balanced a comically large pair of golden ceremonial scissors, the handles bedazzled with gemstones. She glanced over at Shining, who was standing to attention with his flügelhorn poised at the ready, then lifted the scissors off the cushion with her own magic, and took a step forward towards the giant blue ribbon.

“It gives me great pleasure to declare the Kristallwintermarkt open, for the first time in over a thousand years!” she announced, stumbling only a little over the pronunciation. As she cut the ribbon, Shining sounded a long two note call on the flügelhorn.

The crowd broke into another round of rowdy hoof stomping applause, and she smiled, giving Shining a nod. The crowd fell silent as his horn lit up brighter, a beam of magenta light streaking into the sky, where it melded with the protective magic bubble that surrounded the city, powered by the magic of the Crystal Heart. A look of concentration came over his face as he made some delicate frequency adjustments to the forcefield, then his magic winked out.

“I think… that should do it!” Shining said, looking pleased with himself. The crowd murmured in confusion when seemingly nothing happened.

A few seconds later, the first snowflakes reached the ground and the murmurs of confusion were replaced by shouts and squeals of delight. Judging by the reactions, Tourmaline’s idea had been a good one.

“Prince Shining has made some temporary tweaks to the Crystal Shield,” Cadance announced, giving her husband a smile and turning back to the crowd. “It should let in just enough snow to add to the winter festivities.”

Once the official proceedings were over, Cadance and Shining stepped into the crowd, mingling with the throngs of crystal ponies to the chagrin of the squad of household cavalry assigned as their protection detail. The guards parked themselves nearby while Charteris and Lock trailed the royal couple through the square at a respectful distance, chatting between themselves. Cadance grinned as she spotted a stall selling glühwein, open cauldrons steaming in the crisp winter air.

After exchanging some pleasantries with the vendor, and arranging to set up a tab, she stepped away levitating two steaming wooden mugs of glühwein. Shining looked ready to take one of them, but she moved them further away from him. “These aren’t for us,” She said, laughing at his crestfallen expression. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

She trotted over to where Charteris and Lock were standing, levitating the mugs in front of her. Charteris eyed the drinks, raising an eyebrow like he did whenever he was about to remind her about her estrus schedule.

“Here you go boys. To your good health!,” she said smiling.

Lock took the drink between his forehooves, simply saying “Cheers Ma'am!” She wasn’t positive, but she thought she caught him winking at her as he took a pull.

Charteris’ eye twitched. “Thank you Ma'am, and the same to you, most kind,” he said reluctantly, before taking a sip.

Shining, standing a little way off observing, motioned for Lock to join him. “Am I missing something?” he asked quietly. “Does Charteris just not like mulled wine?”

“No no, he loves it.” Lock grinned. “Your wife just got one over him though. It’s considered terrible luck not to return the favor if somepony buys you glühwein. He has to buy her one now.”

“Ahhhh, sneaky. That’s my Cady!” Shining said, grinning back. He trotted over to his wife, and laid a hoof across her withers, standing next to her for warmth. The gems on her dress flickered and shimmered by the light of a nearby brazier. By now the ground was blanketed in a meagre layer of snow, and they sat watching as a group of fillies and colts tried to scrounge up enough to build a snowpony.

Eventually Charteris and Lock finished their drinks and made their way over to the same glühwein stall, depositing their empty mugs in a barrel. Eying the queue, Cadance was surprised to see a pair of fillies standing in line for drinks, seemingly without any adult supervision. It soon became apparent from the signage in front of each cauldron that the stall was also selling some kind of mulled non-alcoholic cider for children. Her heart sank as she saw Charteris and Lock join the line behind the two fillies, queuing in front of the smaller cauldron.

A couple of minutes later they returned. Lock hoofed a mug to Shining, and Charteris levitated one towards her. “To your good health Ma'am!” he said, with only the merest hint of triumphalism.

A sip confirmed her suspicion that her drink contained no alcohol, though she had to admit the warm spiced apple concoction was still quite delicious. “Thank you Charteris, well played,” she conceded. “But you know I’m just going to go buy myself a proper drink. I have been hearing all about the Winter Market’s famous glühwein for months; I’m not about to go thirsty tonight.”

Charteris shrugged. “That’s your prerogative of course, your highness. But I suspect your aunt won’t be best pleased with you.”

“Celestia can go drink tea and mind her own damn business tonight,” Cadance said, draining her mug. “Please don’t tell her I said that,” she added hastily.

“You have our utmost discretion Ma’am,” he said, glancing at Lock and back at Cadance, “but I’m sure you know she has ways of finding these things out.”

Well that sounded sinister, she thought. Big aunt is listening. She looked around, taking in the Winter Market. It really was very festive with the sea of lights and throngs of revelers, the sound of a flügelhorn band playing in the distance. The air was crisp but heady with the comforting scents of baking spices and mulled wine. The blanket of snow was the icing on the cake. She experienced a wave of frisson as she surveyed the picture postcard scene, feeling the hairs from the back of her coat standing up under her dress.

“If you’ll excuse me, I see somepony else who I owe a drink,” she said, spotting Tourmaline leaning against the wall of a shop in the small alley that abutted the Rathaus. She was chatting with another mare. They were both out of their uniforms, wearing outdoor socks and scarves, but it didn’t take Cadance long to recognize the other mare as Áedammair from her distinctive fiery red hair.

Leaving her husband talking with Lock and Charteris, she wandered back to the glühwein stall’s adult line. The queue had cleared somewhat, and barely a minute later she was trotting with purpose towards where she had last seen the two maids. Turning a corner she was surprised to find them sharing a passionate kiss, snowflakes settling on their manes.

Cadance went to leave them to it, but Tourmaline must have noticed her movement as she looked up startled. “Oh, I’m sorry Ma’am, I didn’t see you there,” she said blushing.

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I wanted to thank you for the snow idea. I think you could say it was a hit,” Cadance said, with a feeble smile. “Anyway, I brought you girls drinks!” she added, levitating the flagons of glühwein towards them.

“Thank you Ma'am, that’s very kind. But, begging your pardon, you’re without a drink yourself. Would you wait right there, and I’ll go get you one, so we can raise a proper toast?”

Finally. Cadance smiled. “Oh well, who am I to argue with tradition! That would be lovely, thank you Tourmaline.”

Tourmaline disappeared off, leaving her alone in the alley with Áedammair.

“So… uh… how long have you two… ?” Cadance asked.

“Been bucking?” Áedammair flashed her an impish grin. “About three months. But it’s pretty serious, I’ve even met her family.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Cadance said smiling. “I had no idea.”

“We’ve been keeping it on the down-low at work. Tourmy is still a little shy about it. I’m her first fillyfooler.”

She definitely lucked out there, Cadance thought, Áedammair is a little firecracker.

“Oh, that’s sweet. You know you have nothing to worry about from me right? I’m technically the Princess of Love after all, and love doesn’t discriminate.”

“Duly noted, thanks Ma'am,” Áedammair said in her lilting accent. “I had a feeling you might be pretty open minded, maybe even a little kinky yourself?”

Cadance blushed a little, looking down at her hooves. “Perhaps, in my youth,” she conceded eventually.

“Aha yes! In your youth, of course. That checks out.” Áedammair’s grin widened. “I’ve always been good at picking em.”

Cadance looked at her in embarrassed confusion, but before she could ask what exactly she had meant by that, Tourmaline returned with her drink. Two drinks actually, one in return for each of the drinks she had bought the maids she assumed; she really wasn’t clear how the maths of this whole glühwein exchange tradition worked.

“You’re not bothering the princess are you M’Láireog?” Tourmaline asked, eying Cadance’s flushed face and shooting her marefriend a dirty look.

“Not at all. We were just chatting,” Cadance said. “But who’s this Liar…Royg?” She asked, sounding out the unfamiliar name.

Tourmaline doubled up giggling at her butchered pronunciation, and Áedammair gave her a stern look.

“It’s pronounced M’Láireog. it’s just a pet name my Da had for me,” Áedammair explained, “I told her about it the one time, and I swear she insists on using it to try and wind me up.”

“If by told me you mean asked me to call you that while I was going down on you, sure,” Tourmaline grinned. “And I know it winds you up.”

Tourmaline reached over and gave her marefriend a little peck on her cheek. To Cadance’s surprise Áedammair was blushing more than she was.

“Aw, cute! You two are cute.” Cadance smiled.

“Yeah, alright. I’ll drink to that!” Áedammair said, raising her drink in one hoof.

Tourmaline set the spare drink she was carrying down on the side step of the Rathaus and levitated the other towards Cadance, then picked up her own drink from where she had set it down earlier on the steps.

“To cute mares then!” Cadance said, raising her flagon.

“To cute mares!” the couple echoed, raising their own drinks, Tourmaline giggling shyly. Cadance took a hefty pull of her steaming drink, finally tasting the famed glühwein. She sighed in satisfaction; it was quite delicious.

After they had all taken a generous sup, Tourmaline raised her drink for another toast.
“May the Pale Mare never cross your threshold,” she said somewhat more solemnly. Cadance and Áedammair echoed her toast, raising their drinks then sipping at them respectfully.

After a moment’s silence, Áedammair raised her flagon again. “May your hearth be ever warm, may your glass be ever wet, and may your bed be as warm as your hearth and as full as your glass!” she declared bawdily.

Cadance wasn’t exactly sure how many drinks she had had. She had lost track after drink four or five, or was it six… and a third? She was most definitely not counting the non-alcoholic cider Charteris had tried to cheat her with.

After they had finished their first round of toasts, they had ended up sharing the spare drink Tourmaline had bought Cadance on her marefriend’s behalf. Their whistles thusly wetted, they had gone in search of more drinks, and they had ended up going from stall to stall together sampling the different glühwein vendors’ wares. As they explored, it became evident there was considerable friendly competition between the stallholders to outdo each other in their offerings and decorations.

They had found a quiet place to sit and enjoy their next round of drinks at a particularly picturesque stall down another of the alleys that lined the square. The cozy pop-up bar was decorated with grape vines and lit by braziers, flickering candles stuck in empty wine bottles, and an array of shimmering fireflies. Their drinks came served in mason jars with straws, which was novel, if perhaps a little kitsch; the glühwein was good though.

Somewhere between her first few drinks Cadance had started to notice the pressure building in her bladder. She had looked around and noted the line of ponies queuing to use the lavatories at the Rathaus, which seemed to be the only building nearby open for public convenience. The mare’s line was long enough for her to dismiss it as an option. Besides, her dress was too long and tight-fitting to contemplate peeing with it on and after ~n drinks she was feeling even less capable than before of getting the dress on or off by herself, and she wasn’t about to ask Tourmaline to help her pee! Instead she did what any working royal enduring a civic occasion would do in her hooves, and elected to push the need to pee out of her mind with the strength of her willpower alone, continuing with their stall crawl rather than interrupt the festivities. It seemed like a winning idea.

As she sipped her drink she became increasingly aware of a cacophony of discordant sounds off in the distance. She looked around to see if she could spot where the racket was coming from; she couldn’t, but after listening intently for a few seconds she managed to isolate the sounds of marching drums and the bleating of several flügelhorns being played in an extremely rough approximation of harmony. They sounded like they were slowly getting closer.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing her hoof vaguely in the direction the sound was coming from out in the square. She lowered her voice to a whisper, “Are they supposed to sound like that?”

“Perhaps we should go see!” Tourmaline said, grinning a little mischievously.

They finished their drinks and stood up to leave. Cadance rose to her hooves, feeling a little lightheaded. She ambled unsteadily down the alley back towards the square to investigate the source of the ungodly noise, the other two mares following on only slightly more steady hooves.

As Cadance rounded the corner into the main square, she came face to face with The Pale Mare.

The mare’s face was a pony’s skull, dark sunken eye sockets staring down at her blankly. She wore a snow white shroud, standing a full hoof taller than Cadance and atop her head sat a crown of hawthorn fashioned into antlers.

Cadance gulped, struggling to breathe. She vaguely felt the small trickle of pee run down her leg as time stood still, her senses blurring as the world closed in around her. The Pale Mare took a step towards her, and Cadance took a stumbling step back, tripping and landing on her flank in the snow.

The mare brought a boney hoof up to where her lips would be if she had any, and the music stopped abruptly.

Chapter 8: Glühwein

Cadance lay there in the snow, the hunched form of the Pale Mare towering above her. She could see her own reflection in its huge soulless black eyes as they bored into her, could smell the stench of death, feel her life flashing in front of her eyes as her life forces were drained.

“Pferdeäpfel! Uhm… Princess? Are you alright?” the Pale Mare said in a distinctly unmarelike voice.

Cadance blinked, disoriented. She canted her head and slowly took a calmer look at the Pale… not-mare. On closer inspection Its eyes looked a lot like mirrored Hearthswarming baubles set into the skull’s eye sockets, but she caught sight of a much smaller set of concerned blue-green eyes peering out at her from the gap between the thing’s jaws.

She felt a gentle hoof on her withers and heard Tourmaline’s voice, “Ma’am?”

Cadance looked about her, her vision and hearing slowly returning to normal as her heart rate evened out. A gaggle of a couple dozen or so stallions were flanking the skeleton pony on either side, peering down at her nervously. They were all wearing lederhosen, feathered caps and clutching flügelhorns, marching drums or other instruments. She peered back at them. Some of the younger colts were holding saucepans and wooden spoons. She thought she recognized a couple of faces as sons of the Oberbürgermeister.

“This is another local tradition isn’t it?” Cadance said slowly.

Tourmaline giggled nervously. “You got it Ma’am. This is Ernteopferparade, the um… Harvest Wassail. The Knochenköpfe in the Pale Mare costume this year are my brothers, Malachite and Jasper.”

“Sorry Your Highness, hope we didn’t give you too much of a scare!” The front half of the skeleton bowed at her, which was followed by an anguished cry of “Hey, watch where you put your rump you klutz!” from the back half.

“Very good. You got me!” Cadance said, giving the skeleton a bashful grin and a wave. “I suspect this means I need to buy you all a drink now doesn’t it?”

A cheer went up from the group of wassailers.

Once drinks for the wassailers had been arranged, the procession started back up in high spirits, blowing horns and banging pots and pans merrily as they marched through the square, the unicorns in the group gathering up the drinks, and holding them aloft like prizes.

“Where are they headed?” Cadance asked, breathing a sigh of relief as the din receded. “Aren’t they supposed to go through the town knocking on every door?”

“No no, that’s the Herdopfer, that takes place closer to Hearthswarming. The Ernteopferparade is much older. It ends in the orchards, where glühwein and cider and um… bodily offerings are given up to the vines and fruit trees to melt the snow and secure next year’s harvest.

Cadance frowned. “Bodily offerings? There’s… there’s no pony sacrifice involved is there?” she asked sternly in a hushed voice.

Tourmaline laughed nervously. “Oh no, uh, nothing like that.”

“She means they piss on the trees Ma’am.” Áedammair said grinning.

“Oh. Ooohh.”

“It’s an excellent fertilizer!” Tourmaline protested.

“And this offering is only made by stallions?”

“And colts. Traditionally yes. It’s… um… it’s just easier for them, you know.”

“Pity. I could really use a tree right now.” Cadance sighed gazing back towards the line outside the Rathaus. “I guess that might go some way to explaining why the line for the little filly’s room is so much longer.”

As they pushed unsteadily through the throng of revelers Cadance found herself salivating at the tantalizing scent of freshly baked goods and dragged her new marefriends over towards a brightly lit stall in an alley off the main square that was conveniently selling both pretzels and glühwein.

They bought each other another round of drinks and Cadance and Tourmaline ordered traditional carnival pretzels topped with rock salt and caraway seeds, Áedammair opting for some kind of rye bun with a sesame topping instead.

They found a cozy place to sit around a barrel next to a brazier, glad to warm up and rest their hooves for a bit.

Cadance bit into her pretzel eagerly, shutting her eyes and savoring the salty butteriness of the warm pretzel tempered by the bittersweet anise taste of the caraway seeds. In the moment, sitting there in the snow, it seemed like the perfect winter snack, just what was needed to soak up all the glühwein.

“Bllecchh!” When she opened her eyes she was greeted by the sight of Áedammair watching her and Tourmaline eat their pretzels, her muzzle screwed up in disgust. “I don’t know how you can eat that forsaken trash.”

Cadance looked at her in surprise with her mouth full of pretzel, sharing a look with Tourmaline. “Not a fan of pretzels then?”

“Pretzels are grand, I’m just not a fan of feckin caraway!” Áedammair said disdainfully, sounding as if this should be obvious to anypony with half a brain.” She turned to Tourmaline and scowled. “I don’t know what you’re grinning at… No tongue for you tonight.” She took a prim bite of her own bun. “Not near your mouth anyway,” she clarified while still chewing, winking at Cadance.

Tourmaline almost choked on her drink, blushing furiously. “M’Láireog! Not in front of the Princess!”

Cadance waved her hoof tipsily, suggesting she was perfectly happy for the two mares to keep flirting in her presence, as long as she could watch. “You still haven’t told me what that name means?” she said grinning.

“M’Láireog? It’s not a name, just a thing my Da called me that stuck. Roughly translated it means ‘my little filly’,” Áedammair explained, licking sesame seeds off her hooves.

Cadance clopped her hooves together in delight and hailed the stallholder to bring over another round of drinks.

After another drink or two, they had bumped back into Shining and Lock. To her relief Charteris wasn’t with them to nag about her drinking; by the looks of things, he had gotten stuck talking with the Oberbürgermeister.

“There you are!” Cadance said loudly, throwing her hooves around Shining’s neck. “I missed you Shiny. I was just hanging with the fillies. Me and the gals. Did you know that Tourmaline and Mlem… M’l…M’leeroyg… Did you know that these two are galpals? Like… galpal galpals… How cool is that?” she slurred, whispering in or around his ear.

“I didn’t. That’s pretty cool,” Shining agreed. “How much have you had to drink Cady?”

Cadance blinked. “A few?” she hazarded, mentally counting on her hooves. “And then a few more, and a few after that? Greater than or equal to seven…ish?” She belched. “Make that seven point three three three recurring?”

“She’s had at least… eight I think.” Áedammair said, doing her own mental calculation. “She’s holding her piss like a champ.”

Tourmaline gave her marefriend’s flank a nudge. “Sorry, we call booze piss where I’m from,” Áedammair clarified.

Shining looked at Cadance with one eyebrow slightly raised. “I think you should drink some water.”

“Whaat? I’m fiiiine! You heard the pretty lady. I am holding my piss like a champ! Have you seen the queues? I can’t drink water or it’ll definitely make me need to pee! I need to save room for more glühwein!”

He sighed. “Hmm, are you sure you should be drinking more? You’ll give yourself a hangover.”

“Psssshh… You sound like Charteris!” She said. She fluttered her eyelids at him. “But you’re not stuffy like Charteris… you’re my sexy hornblower…” She leaned in exhaling, and he could smell the wine and feel the warmth of her breath on his horn. Without warning she gave his ear a nibble, instantly making him blush intensely.

“Ow…Cady! Not here! Save it for the bedroom.”

“Maybe I will,” she said sweetly. “Or the bathroom. I am going to need another drink though!”

“Fine. But just one more round OK? Then we should head back to the castle, and get some water into you.”

It was at that moment Cadance was struck by divine inspiration. “Okay, sure. I’ll just buy one more round then!” She said happily, and pranced off unsteadily towards the nearest glühwein stall. She found herself crossing her hind-legs while she waited in line, willing her bladder into submission. Eventually reaching the head of the queue and exchanged words with the vendor, who nodded their head, before bowing and shaking her hoof vigorously.

To Shining’s surprise she left the stall and returned to the group empty hooved, sporting a cheeky grin.

“Okay, what happened?” he asked warily. “Did they refuse to serve you? That’s probably for the best you know.”

“You’ll see.” She said mysteriously.

The glühwein vendor, a crystal Earth Pony stallion with a flowing golden mane and a cutie mark of a silver stein, stepped out from behind his stall and walked a few paces into the crowd in the square, which had started to thin out.

“Excuse me, excuse me, your attention everypony!” He yelled cheerfully, in a practiced carnival barker’s voice. “Mares and gentlestallions, fillies and colts. To celebrate this most auspicious occasion, our benevolent and generous ruler has seen fit to bless each and every one of you with a tankard of our world famous glühwein, or a fohlenpunsch for the little ones, strictly while stocks last! Please join us in raising a cup to Her Royal Highness, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza!”

“I told him to call me Cadance!” Cadance moaned.

“Cady, what have you done?” Shining asked.

“I bought one more round.” She said sweetly.

A long queue had formed outside the glühwein stall as chattering ponies of all ages rushed to claim their free drink. Shining watched with a sinking feeling in his stomach as happy patrons filtered towards them, many of them bearing multiple drinks.

A portly bespectacled Alderpony Shining recognized from the ceremony earlier was the first to reach them. “Danke, danke, Prinzessin!" He said cheerfully, laying his hoof on Cadance’s in a fatherly manner with a twinkle in his eye. He levitated one of the drinks he was carrying towards Cadance, who took it in her magic. “Ein prosit!” he announced cheerfully, clinking the side of his mug against hers.

“Ein prosit! Cheers!” Cadance responded, before downing a third of the steaming mug in one long gulp.

The Alderpony grinned and nudged Shining in the ribcage with his knee. “Du hast ein außergewöhnliches Stutfohlen.” He whispered in Shining’s ear.

“Uh… yep, she sure is.” Shining agreed. He barely spoke any of the Vormodernes Kristallponisch that some of the older generation of crystal ponies still preferred over modern Equestrian Ponish, but he felt like he got the gist of what the Alderpony was saying about his wife.

A young family had wandered up to Cadance; the parents, a pegasus mare and a unicorn stallion, stepped forward to greet her while their children, who stared up at the Princess in awe. The filly was proudly levitating her half-pint mug of fohlenpunsch an inch off the ground while the colt held his in front of him, gripped protectively between his fledgling wings.

The mother curtsied. “Thank you for the drinks, Your Highness. Please allow us to return the kindness.” Her husband bowed slightly and levitated two of the drinks he was holding in his aura towards Cadance and Shining.

“And I hope you don’t mind, but our kids would like to say a few words.” She nudged her daughter forward gently with her wing. “Go on Bee.”

The unicorn filly stepped forward. She took after her father with a golden crystalline coat and a black mane. “Um… Hi I’m Bee and I wanted to say this is my first Winter Market and I think it’s pretty cool and um tra…ditional? And I think you’re cool for making the Winter Market come back and also for being a princess which is cool anyway and also the snow is pretty cool and we’re not normally allowed outside of the city to play in the snow but Papa said we could play in it tonight because it’s inside the city and me and Jet and my friends from school built a snowpony and it was really cool and its nose was made of a carrot like in the storybooks but then it fell off and somepony ate it,” she said stopping for breath with a look on her face which suggested whoever had eaten the carrot was not cool.

“Goodness,” Cadance said smiling. “Well I’m glad you think it’s all pretty cool. I think you’re pretty cool too.” She went to give the filly’s nose a playful boop with her hoof, but somehow misjudged where her nose was and ended up booping air, which just made the filly giggle.

The pegasus gave her daughter’s flank a small prod. “And what else did you want to say Beryl?”

The filly looked unsure for a moment. “Um… Thank you Princess?”

“That’s better.” The mother said, giving her daughter a pat on the top of her head with her wing.

“Thank you Bee. See this cute mare… waitwheredshego?” Cadance looked around, before pointing her hoof unsteadily. “Thishish my friend Tourmaline,” Cadance said, slurring her words slightly and waving Tourmaline over. “The snow show tonight was all her idea!”

“Wow! Thanks Tourmaline! I really like the snow! It’s cold but fun and pretty cool!” Bee said. She squinted at Tourmaline. “Are you a princess too? I’ve never heard of you.”

“Beryl!” Bee’s Mom chided.

Tourmaline grinned. “It’s okay. No, I’m not a princess, I just work at the castle.”

“Go on Jet” the unicorn dad prompted, picking up his son in his magic aura and depositing him in front of the Cadance. He was smaller than his sister but seemed around the same age, most likely they were non identical twins. He took after his mother with a smoky black coat and a darker black mane poking out from beneath a grey wool bobble hat.

“Um. Hi. This foal punch is delicious, thanks Princess,” the pegasus colt said. “I can’t wait till I’m old enough to try the real stuff.”

“Ahahaha. I’m so glad you like it,” Cadance said. “Just remember not to drink and fly!”

“Well, we really mustn’t keep you any longer,” the mother said hurriedly. “Thanks Princess! To your health!”

They shared the toast and Cadance finished her second mug in as many minutes on top of however much she had drunk earlier.

A crowd had formed around Cadance and Shining, full of other ponies wanting to toast with them. After accepting the next few drinks in her aura, she couldn’t keep up, and ended up setting them down on the ground. The waiting ponies did the same, a circle of drinks forming around her in the snow. She sat down in the snow, surveying her domain contentedly. She was having a good time for once. Even the flashes of the cameras weren’t bothering her now, as their magnesium flares blended into the sea of flickering braziers, lanterns and fairy lights.

Charteris had finally finished talking with the Oberbürgermeister and made his way over to the crowd formed around Cadance. After quickly assessing the situation, he shot Shining a look.

“Ahem… Thanks everypony,” Shining gave the crowd his most charming royal smile. “Despite my wife’s best efforts, I don’t think she’s actually going to get through all of these drinks herself, so please, help yourselves if you need another drink or would like to take one as a harvest offering!”

“Hey! Speak for yourself,” Cadance said, finishing her drink and belching uncouthly, prompting a cheer from the crowd. She tugged Shining towards her by his mane with her magic until his ear was within what she judged to be whispering distance. “I really need to pee, like right now.”

Shining’s eyes went wide, looking around at all the ponies expectantly waiting to shake hooves with Cadance and offer her drinks.

“Can you hold on for a bit?” he asked in a considerably quieter whisper.

“I’m not sure!” she said, giving him a sheepish grin. “I guess we’ll see!”

Shining sighed and looked around. There was still a long line of ponies queued up outside the Rathaus. “Let’s get you into the line then?”

She shook her head. “I can try holding on, but I don’t think I can wait thaaat long!”

“You’re the Princess, I’m sure we could cut in line.”

“Oh yeah, that’ll be real popular,” she huffed, “I am not cutting in line.” She looked around her before sighing dramatically. “Where’s a fruit tree when you need one! Am I right ladies?” She said loudly, winking at Tourmaline who rewarded her with a blush.

“Okay… Well, I’m going to get you home then,” he said firmly.

“Maybe just one more drinky?” she said hopefully, her horn lighting up as she tried to levitate a temptingly full mug of mulled cidertowards her, and succeeding only in spilling it in the snow as her magical dexterity failed her, leaving a yellow stain in the snow.

“No Cady. You’ve had enough. We’re leaving.” Cadance pouted, and he turned to face the crowd of well-wishers, some of whom now had concerned expressions on their faces.

“Thanks Everypony. I’m going to get my wife home now, she has really enjoyed her first taste of glühwein, but it looks like she may have underestimated how strong you Kristallponys take your drinks!” he said, prompting further friendly cheers from the crowd. “Please, enjoy the rest of your night, and help yourselves to what’s left here!”

He turned back to Cadance who chose that moment to fall forward face-planting into the snow while attempting to reach for another drink with her hooves.

“I’m fine!” she said, extricating her muzzle. “Um… I don’t think I can get up though. This dress is too tight.

Tourmaline and Áedammair had already stepped forward to help, each offering her a hoof up.

“Thanks, but… ugh… I don’t think I can actually get back up in this dress without wetting myself.” Cadance said desperately, her head spinning, wishing she was sober enough to teleport herself someplace private.

Shining sighed. “I’m going to pick you up with my magic okay?”

Cadance nodded, moaning quietly as the warmth of his magic enveloped her and she felt her weight shifting.

“Just try not to pee on me,” he muttered under his breath as he gently lifted her onto his back.

“Yet!” Cadance said happily, and a little too loudly, making his cheeks turn as pink as his horn’s magic aura.

“I told you she was a kinky one,” Áedammair whispered to Tourmaline, stoking her marefriend’s blush.

Cadance for her part just started to giggle, lifting a hoof and waving at the receding crowd of onlookers as Shining carried her towards their waiting coach. She attempted one last time to sneak another drink with her, but her magic was too unsteady and she only succeeded in leaving a long trail of spilled glühwein in the snow behind her.

Lock trotted on ahead and opened the carriage door for them, and when Shining looked up, he saw Charteris already waiting by the carriage, his face a blank canvas.

Tourmaline and Áedammair had followed at a distance, watching as Shining bundled Cadance into the carriage and set her down gently on the rear forward facing seat.

“You girls want a lift?” Cadance called out, motioning for the maids to join her in the carriage.

“Oh, no ma’am, we can walk,” Tourmaline said, giving Cadance a tipsy curtsy which set all three of them off giggling.

“Actually, it might be best if you ladies join us, for a debrief,” Charteris said, his face still impassive.

Áedammair shrugged. Somehow the two maids managed to squeeze themselves in on the seat beside Cadance while Shining and Charteris shared the front, rear facing seat. Lock opted to ride up front with the driver on the outside of the carriage.

As soon as the carriage door slammed shut, Charteris’ face fell, his piercing blue-grey eyes sweeping the carriage before landing on Cadance. Without looking away, he banged his forehoof twice on the glass partition between the interior of the carriage and the driver’s cab, and a moment later they felt a lurch as the driving team took off.

“That,” Charteris said finally, “was less than desirable. In fact, I would venture to say it was a royal fiasco.”

“I thought my speech went great thank you! And ponies loved the snow! Did I tell you that was Tourmaline’s idea? S’ good idea. Ponies liked the snow.” She hiccupped. “Gotta have proper snow for Hearthswarming right?”

“Indeed. The speech was commendable, and the snow was well received. I was referring to your deleterious drinking afterwards.”

“It was expected!” Cadance moaned, wincing as the carriage swayed violently as it traversed the cobblestones of the square. “Tell him Tourmaline… the glüwinewines’s really traditional. Gotta have the glühwein for good luck.”

Tourmaline looked embarrassed, her ears drooping. “It’s true ma’am, it is a very traditional part of the festival.”

“Indeed, more’s the pity. The only thing stopping me from calling tonight an unmitigated disaster is that there is a very strong drinking culture in the Crystal Empire, and a lot of the locals might actually respect the princess for… committing to the bit.”

“You see! I’m doing my part for Equestrian relations!” said Cadance, wincing as the carriage hit a pothole. “Buck, I need to pee so bad. Could you ask the driver to slow down please, he could cause an accident!”

Charteris glared at her, but slid the glass partition open and relayed the message to the driver, who barked an order for the driving team to slow down a little. Shutting the partition, Charteris continued.

“Forgive me for speaking frankly ma’am, but it’s one thing to entirely ignore your estrus schedule, and partake in a drink or two for the sake of honoring a local tradition,” he said. “It’s quite another thing to allow yourself to get so… completely blotto that you make a spectacle of yourself and…,” he lowered his voice, “almost wet yourself in public.”

Cadance’s nose scrunched in annoyance as she crossed her legs. She was pretty sure she had already wet herself a little earlier, but she wasn’t about to admit that to Charteris. If she was lucky the cider she had spilled had covered her tracks. “Did you see the lines for the restrooms? I’m surprised it isn’t more of an issue for more ponies there given the amount of glühwein and cider being consumed. I’m definitely going to make sure there are better facilities next year.” Cadance said.

Tourmaline blushed a little, and flashed her a sympathetic grin, but didn’t say anything.

“Improving the facilities would be a sensible idea,” Charteris continued, “But do you really think Celestia doesn’t feel the need to use the conveniences when she is standing in line greeting ponies or partaking in diplomatic tea ceremonies for hours on end?”

“I dunno, but remind me to ask her when I see her.” Cadance said, stifling a giggle.

“That won’t be necessary,” Charteris said sotto voce. “Of course she must. The point is, Celestia knows how to pace herself and comports herself with utmost dignity, something you seem to have sadly misplaced tonight Ma’am. She certainly doesn’t go around drunkenly threatening to relieve herself in public.”

Cadance looked down at her hooves, wriggling uncomfortably in her seat, but Áedammair came to her rescue. “Don’t get your mane in a kink. Unless that’s your thing.” She added. “Krystalponies are famously pretty relaxed about that sort of thing.”

Charteris glared at her. “As for you two… you work for the princess, I would expect you to be looking out for her.”

Cadance looked up at him defensively. “Hey! It’s not their fault. They weren’t working tonight. We were just hanging out… as gal pals! Right girls?”

Áedammair nodded and Tourmaline tittered nervously.

“That’s as may be. They still should have known better than to act as your accomplices in causing such a scene. If we are very lucky the newspapers in Canterlot will think better than to print the photos that paparazzo pegasus was taking.”

“I just wanted to let my mane down for one night and have fun!” Cadance bemoaned. “Is that too much to ask?”

“I can empathise, Princess, but that’s not how the job works. Not in public. Not ever. Remember your oath of fealty. You must always be on your guard, against all threats, foreign and domestic, especially when you want to let your mane down and have fun.”

“Alright Charteris,” Shining said protectively, laying his hoof on Cadance’s. “Are you done?”

“Almost Your Highnesses.” Charteris lowered his voice further. “It has not escaped my attention that not only were you heard discussing your need bodily needs… but certain things were regrettably said, in quite a public setting, concerning your proclivities.”

“My whatnow?”

“I think he’s talking about you announcing you were going to pee on your husband when you got back home,” said Áedammair, nudging Cadance in the ribs.

“Ow… Whaat? I… I didn’t say that, did I?” Cadance blinked, “Out loud?”

“Not in those words, but it was strongly implied,” Áedammair grinned. Both Cadance and Shining were blushing furiously now.

“Quite. Now I am not in a position to judge,” said Charteris in a tone which implied he would very much like to be, “but while Their Royal Highnesses may not be alone in having certain unusual predispositions, as I’m sure you can imagine, they are placed in a unique position vis-a-vis the level of media scrutiny attached attached to senior members of the Royal Household.

Everypony nodded. The cart came to a grinding halt in the castle courtyard.

“Good, then I’m sure you understand it would be preferable if any discussion regarding this matter stays between us. Understood?”

“I think we got it,” Áedammair said, grinning “Your secret’s safe with us Princess, right Tourmaline?” She winked disconcertingly and Tourmaline nodded, blushing.

“Thank you,” Cadance said. “Now that we have that out of the way Charteris, would you mind please letting me out of the bucking carriage before I wreck the upholstery.”

Shining ended up carrying her upstairs with his magic. Charteris, Lock and the two maids accompanied them as far as the door to their drawing room.

The ride and Charteris’ stern lecture had helped Cadance sober up a little, but she cut a far from dignified figure, being carried on her back in a cloud of Shining’s magic while she crossed her hind-hooves, fidgeting like a filly as she tried to reign in her bladder.

“Thank you Charteris, Lock, that will be all for the night,” She said, waving them off dismissively. “Tourmaline, would you mind giving me a hoof to get out of this dress?”

Tourmaline followed them into the drawing room, and since nopony had asked her to leave, Áedammair followed her marefriend in.

“Maybe you should carry her straight to the bathroom?” Áedammair suggested to Shining.

“No, put me down here! Rarity would never forgive me if I ruined this dress. I need to get it off first.”

Shining set her down in the middle of the drawing room floor as commanded, and she swayed unsteadily on her hooves.

“Whoa… this room is spinny,” Cadance observed.

“I’m going to go find a bowl.” Shining said.

“I’m not… I’m not going to be sick... I don’t think,” Cadance said, sounding less than confident. “I think I may have just had… a teensy bit too much to drink.”

“Oh, really, you think?” Shining said, sighing. Once he was sure the two maids were there to stop her from falling over he trotted off to the adjoining kitchenette look for an emergency bowl just in case.

“We’ve all been there Ma’am,” Áedammair said helpfully. “I’m surprised you’re not boking your guts out with how you were knocking them back at the end there.” She lowered her voice, “it was pretty epic!”

Cadance gave her an unsteady grin. “Yes well, I do have the constitution of an alicorn.” She winced. “But still the bladder of a pegasus it seems.”

She stood there fidgeting as Tourmaline worked on her dress. “Did I do alright with the traditions?”

“Your speech went great, and the snow… thanks for that. It wouldn’t feel like a proper Hearthwarming here without snow.”

“You don’t think I offended anypony?”

“Apart from Mr. Charteris? I don’t think so! It’s hard to be offended when you were buying everypony free drinks. I think a lot of ponies will have been impressed by how you kept up.”

Áedammair leaned forward and patted Cadances’ head between her ears. “Aw, hear that? Charteris is just a tight-ass. You did fine, you didn’t piss off anypony important. Good girl,” she teased, grinning mischievously as Cadance eeped and blushed deeply. She pulled a small container out of her saddlebag, and flipped it open, holding it out to Cadance. “Sugarlump? They’re minty.”

Cadance accepted one, sucking on the sugarlump to distract her from her desperation, her cheeks burning.

“I’m nearly done Ma’am,” said Tourmaline, her horn glowing, a look of concentration on her face as she unlaced the underside of Cadance’s dress. “Now I’m going to have to pull the dress in tight to undo these fixtures, alright?”

“Uhhmf, buck. OK, yes, get it over with. And for the last time, stop calling me Ma’am. Cadance is fine… BUCK!” she squealed as Tourmaline pulled the dress tight, crunching down on the sweet. She could feel herself right on the edge of losing control and had to squeeze her thighs together tightly to have any hope of holding on.

“Nearly done… just one more hook to go,” she heard Tourmaline say, but she sounded far off and indistinct as Cadance focused her entire being on holding her bladder.

Shining was watching from the kitchenette door in horror, clutching a mixing bowl. “And I thought our dress uniforms were difficult to get in and out of,” he muttered.

Cadance let out a loud moan as Tourmaline pulled the dress tight again to undo the last clasp, the closest to her bladder.

“That’s it, we’re nearly done.” She barely heard Tourmaline say. “Just let me get this over your head.” Cadance felt the dress being lifted up around her, and over her head, until it was resting on the ground in front of her, and Tourmaline helped her step her forehooves out of it lifting each in turn with her magic.

Cadance breathed a sigh of relief, no longer constrained by the waist-line of the dress cutting into her bladder. It was almost a very bad idea as she immediately felt herself losing control, but she was able to resume pressing her thighs together like a vice at the last moment. She looked down at the carpet, half expecting to see herself standing in a puddle, but it was mercifully dry.

“Made it!” She said, grinning at Tourmaline and her husband.

“Well, close enough I suppose,” said Áedammair from somewhere behind her. “It looks like you may have had another teeny accident. Might need a change of knickers sweetie.”

Cadance blushed beet red.

“Oh.” Tourmaline said, stepping behind her, and presumably also eyeing her wet panties. “I wouldn’t worry, the dress is fine.”

To her horror Cadance could feel a drip running down her leg as she continued to leak. She shot her husband a desperate imploring glance.

“Alright. I think I can take it from here,” Shining said, taking the hint.

“Aw, just as things were getting interesting.” Áedammair said, emerging from behind Cadance and giving her an impish grin. “I suppose we’ll be getting out of your manes then. If you’re sure we can’t be of any further assistance to you tonight?”

Cadance shook her head. She was actually crying now from the strain of holding on, her body shaking.

“Well, goodnight then, you two have a lovely evening,” she said “Come on Tourmy, let’s go have some fun of our own.”

“G… Goodnight,” Tourmaline gulped, blushing as she followed Áedammair out of the room obediently, shutting the door behind them.

Cadance was hunched forward, her hind legs tightly crossed. “Take me to the bathroom love? Please?” she managed to moan pitifully.

Shining stood there looking at her for what seemed like an age. “No,” he said eventually.

“But… But… I… I can’t hold it anymore,” she whimpered, collapsing on the floor.

“Mmhmm,” he said. “And whose fault is that?” She thought she saw him grinning from a brief moment. What the buck was this?

“Mine! It was my fault. I drank too much, and I let myself get a little bit silly, and I guess I wasn’t thinking about later, and now later is now and AUNTIES FUCK ME WITH A CUCUMBER, I REALLY FUCKING NEED TO PEE!”

“And?” he asked calmly, looking into her eyes.

“And I’m sorry I drank too much glühwein okay! I shouldn’t have drunk more than I could hold. Now will you please help me to the bathroom!”

“No. No, I don’t think so. Not tonight,” he said firmly.

Chapter 9: Princess and the pee

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