Changing Love

Shining Armor awoke to feel the first rays of Celestia’s sun on his face and the soft sheets of his and Cadence’s bed. He kept his eyes closed to enjoy the sensations for just a moment longer. His mind drifted to the previous night. Cadence had walked into their bedchambers with a bottle of wine in her mouth, and a very familiar glint in her eyes. Shining was still upset about their fight earlier and had spent the rest of the day planning what he would say to Cadence. Once Cadence entered, Shining jumped up and went over to confront his wife. However, Shining was, first and foremost, a stallion, and as soon as he saw the look in his lover’s eyes, anything he had to say immediately disappeared. It was a very good night. Stretching his limbs, he noticed that something felt...off. After running through a quick mental check list, he determined that the familiar warmth near his left side that he was so used to wasn’t there. With a groan, he opened his eyes. As he suspected, the beautiful pink mare that was his wife was not in their bed.

Shining Armor’s first thought was that he had slept in and was late. He jumped out of bed and dove for the alarm clock. The familiar green numbers flashed “7:00”. This left Shining confused. He wasn’t late, on the contrary, he was a half-hour early, but his wife wasn’t in bed and it seemed that she hadn’t been in a while. With a final stretch, he decided to look for his missing spouse. He opened the thick wooden door separating their bedchambers from the hallway outside.

He figured he would start searching for her in the kitchen. If she was in there, maybe they could sit for a nice breakfast. If she wasn’t, he could at least grab a quick bowl of cereal before he continued his search. He walked down the hall and descended the spiral staircase. At the bottom, he opened the familiar swinging doors that led to the kitchen. Once inside, a quick scan of the area proved that his beloved was not in their.

“Damn,” he muttered. A loud clank made him jump and turn to see the Palace’s chef, Poppy Seed. She was a sweet old mare with a charcoal grey coat. Shining always had a certain fondness for her, as well as her cooking.

“Good morning Poppy!” said Shining warmly, causing Poppy Seed to look up from the pot she was tending to.

“Good morning Shining Armor!” said Poppy with a smile, “what would you like for breakfast? Will Cadence be eating with you?”

“Only cereal this morning Poppy. I was actually hoping that you had seen Cadence. I haven’t seen her since last night.”

“Sorry Shining, I haven’t seen her this morning. However, I can help you with the cereal.” Poppy proceeded into the kitchen’s enormous pantry and returned with a box of “Celesti-O’s,” his favorite, poured some in a bowl, and added some fresh milk.

Shining took the bowl, thanked Poppy, and made his way to the throne room. He could tell immediately upon entering it that the throne room was abandoned. He turned around and opened the door to leave. Suddenly, his ear perked up as he heard a faint noise. Listening closer, he heard the noise again. Where was it coming from? Shining looked all around the room until his eyes rested on the staircase leading to the basement. He walked over and put his ear downward. Sure enough, the sound was louder. Shining decided to descend the stairs to figure out what the hay was making that noise in the basement. Finding his wife would have to wait.

Cheerilee sat with a small grin on her face. She loved teaching the fillies and colts of Ponyville. She could never imagine doing anything else. Her students, however, were not so happy. They had just been told that there would be a quiz tomorrow on tonight’s homework assignment.

However, one particular, pink-bowed, filly looked as if she was daydreaming. In reality, she had spent all day trying to purge the horrors of the previous afternoon. She shuddered every time she remembered her sister’s moans, and practically convulsed every time the visual replayed in her head. The other two fillies weren’t much better off. Sweetie Bell’s mane was in tangles and Scootaloo looked as if she hadn’t slept the previous night. All they had wanted was to get dating advice from Applejack for Applebloom. Applebloom had developed a crush on Spike and they wanted AJ’s advice on the matter. Unfortunately for them, they got much more than they bargained for, namely irreversible mental scarring.

Cheerilee was oblivious to the three fillies’ suffering, though, and dismissed her students with a kind farewell. All of the students bolted for the exit, causing Cheerilee to chuckle. Some things never changed. As the children left, she began shuffling through the papers that she had collected earlier.

“Applebloom, B. Scootaloo, D. Diamond Tiara, F. Silver Spoon and Sweetie Bell, A. Nothing really out of the ordinary there,” muttered the teacher to herself.

Suddenly, a familiar purple dragon burst through the schoolroom door, causing the papers on Cheerilee’s desk to fly onto the floor.

“Cheeri, Cheer, Ch,” gasped Spike, trying desperately to gather oxygen into his body.

Cheerilee just sat there with a mildly annoyed look on her face.

“Take your time, Spike, breathe a little.”

After a few moments, Cheerilee had gathered up all of the fallen papers and Spike’s breathing had resumed to its normal rate.

“Is Applebloom still here?” asked Spike finally.

“Sorry Spike, she’s not,” said Cheerilee, secretly wondering why Spike would want to catch Applebloom so badly that he would run all the way over here.

“Aw, shoot,” muttered Spike.

Suddenly, Spike remembered the second reason he had traveled all the way the the schoolhouse.

“I almost forgot! Twilight wanted me to deliver this message to you Cheerilee.”

Spike handed the message to Cheerilee, waved her a hasty goodbye, and ran out the door in hopes of catching up to Applebloom.

Cheerilee quickly opened the message and read:

Cheerilee,

I would love it if you and your class were to come by the library tomorrow around noon. It’s been a while since you have brought your students by and I would love to catch up with you!

Hope to see you then!

Sincerely,

Twilight Sparkle

Cheerily reread the message thoughtfully. She was going to give that quiz tomorrow, but she supposed her students deserved a day off. Besides, Twilight was right. It had been far too long since the class had visited the library and she was dying to catch up with her good friend.

Little did she know, a certain purple alicorn across town was nervously pacing and planning.

None of the Cutie Mark Crusaders talked as they walked to their clubhouse from their school. None of them felt like crusading. The current plan was for all three of them to place pillows on the clubhouse floor and crawl into fetal positions until the sun went down and it was time for them to return to their homes. This would be particularly difficult for Applebloom, who would have to go home and possibly face the source of her current trauma. Forcing that unpleasant possibility out of her mind, she started moving faster towards their destination.

About halfway there, they stopped due to a faint voice calling out Applebloom’s name. Turning around, they saw a familiar purple dragon quickly approaching.

“Oh, hey Spike,” said Applebloom once Spike was in earshot.

“Hey Applebloom! I just wanted to see if I could join you guys in your crusading today!”

“Sorry Spike, we don’t much feel like crusadin today.”

“Uh, ok,” said a very confused Spike, “I’ll come back some other time then. Oh! Before I go, I wanted to give you something Applebloom.”

Spike pulled out a folded piece of paper, gave it to Applebloom, waved goodbye to the two other fillies, and made his way back to the library.

Applebloom examined the top of the paper. On it, her name was scrawled in Spike’s messy claw-writing. She decided she would wait until they got to the clubhouse to read it.

“What are we gonna do Rainbow? How am Ah gonna face Applebloom after that?” said the orange cowpony for the upteenth time. Nearly 24 hours after the, ahem “unfortunate” encounter, Applejack was still in the full-scale panic that she had been in since the CMC ran out of the barn. She was wearing an impressive groove into the floor of her room while Rainbow Dash was sitting on her bed and casually munching on one of the farm’s apples. While she didn’t look nearly as bothered, Dashie was secretly concerned about what Scootaloo thought of the whole ordeal.

“I really don’t know AJ,” said the prismatic weather mare, “I’m not too worried about it though, I’m not even sure they knew what they saw.”

“Ah know Applebloom did, Ah already gave her “the talk.”

“Yeesh! How young do you teach ‘em here?”

“This is serious Rainbow! I can’t think of any way to talk to Applebloom that will make this okay!”

“Well, my sexy friend,” began the cyan mare, putting on her best bedroom eyes, “ it seems the you are s-c-r-e-w-e-d screwed. That reminds me, do you wanna...”

“No!”

Fluttershy woke up from a deep sleep. She slowly sat up, let out a large yawn, and took in the sounds of her home. All of her animal friends must’ve already been awake, as there was quite a bit of noise coming from the other side of her door. She didn’t mind though. She always thought the chorus of noises was soothing. She wondered how long she had been out. Looking at the clock, she saw it was just about time to prepare breakfast for the many creatures that took residence in her cottage.  She started to stretch when she realized that she couldn’t move her left foreleg. Confused, she slowly turned her head to the left. She jumped in shock, disturbing the giant mass of red fur and muscle next to her.

“Eep!”