Rarity stepped nervously towards Twilight Sparkle’s kitchen table, glancing around, her horn glowing as she carried a needle, thread, and cloth.
Derpy peered in the window from a safe distance. She remembered that Rarity had promised to help her and she’d visited Carousel Boutique and Sweetie Belle had giggled and said that Rarity was over at Twilight’s house for the night and wrinkled her nose cutely. She’d then been pulled out of sight by a little orange pegasus, so Derpy’d flown straight over to the old library tree where Twilight lived.
Derpy didn’t want to break the window again, so she had to watch Rarity through the window, and then land and go in through the door. She began to turn away, satisfied that Sweetie had told the truth, when she saw a scuttling motion that froze her blood.
A horrible, spider-like creature was in there with Rarity, behind her, stalking her.
Derpy screamed. Rarity’s head jerked around, and then she saw the creature too and her eyes went wide. She didn’t run, though. She just stood there, and Derpy watched as the horrible spider thing rushed, leaped, grabbed…
It had grabbed Rarity’s butt. She was just standing there and it looked like it was biting her—oh, sweet Celestia!
Derpy screamed again and dove straight into the window, smashing through it. Rarity squealed, “No, no!” but Derpy was not to be denied. She reared, and struck at the monster with her hoof, and it made a woody clonking noise like some sort of box.
Rarity shrieked in anguish. The thing had jerked and gone after her poor vagina again when Derpy kicked it, grabbing her so fiercely that it dug into her pretty flanks. Derpy’s nostrils flared, and as Rarity screamed, “Hold still, hold STILL!”, Derpy attacked the monster some more.
As her hooves battered it, it went crazy, and Rarity quit standing still and began to kick and jump. Her rear hooves caught the monster going up just as Derpy came down like vengeance upon it, and there was a big blue pop and a smell of tin, and a clattering noise, and suddenly Derpy was staring at Rarity’s bottom and watching trickles of blood leak from different places, and the monster was lying in pieces on the floor.
The pieces were wooden boxes and sticks and ropes and two forks like the unicorns used for fancy dining, the tines of which had Rarity’s blood on them. Derpy looked closer. It was worse than that. They’d got a little piece of Rarity’s pink vagina, just a tiny scrap. She glanced up in horror to see where the piece had come from, and found herself staring into Rarity’s enraged gaze.
“You BROKE it,” snarled Rarity, and Derpy’s jaw dropped.
“Huh?”
“Did I, or did I not tell you, to hold still? Damn you! Damn you and damn her, talk about irresponsible, doesn’t she understand it may not always be about my superlative self-control?”
Derpy blinked, dismay coming over her face, and she gulped and repeated, “Huh?”
Rarity looked down. “Oh, no! It did get a piece of me, oh damn it, damn it to pony hell! Ow! Derpy Hooves, what have you done?”
Derpy just stared helplessly, and then sagged backwards, plopped onto her rump, and began to cry.
Seeing that, Rarity cooled off, gritting her teeth and controlling her temper with a heroic effort. She glowered at nothing, and muttered, “This is going to be very, very difficult to explain.”
“Explain?” sniffled Derpy.
Rarity sighed. “And yet, I had better. Oh, Derpy! I cannot expect you to understand this. Perhaps the fault is really with Mistress. I’m not sure whether maybe Twilight is right after all, and she and I are not good for each other. Trixie is so terrifyingly ingenous regarding my pleasure, and when she tops she is so intimidating…”
“Pleasure?” sniffled Derpy, looking totally confused.
“That was a device, darling,” said Rarity, gently. “It wasn’t real. It is—was—a magical punishment device. And rather magical it was, too, I must say… while it lasted.” She pouted, annoyed.
“I don’t understand! I don’t understand any of this!”
Rarity sighed, again. “You don’t need to, darling, it is not for such as you. It’s for very bad ponies, who are very, very guilty, and need punishing. It lurked, waiting for me to not pay attention, and then it would pounce and bite me in a rather personal area. When it did, I was required to hold still and be completely submissive, at a moment’s notice, even while startled by the attack. After ten seconds of no motion, it would release, and then later it would pounce again when I was not expecting it. If I leapt or kicked, it would bite harder until I submitted.”
Derpy stared. Rarity added, “Trixie made it for me, knowing I could enter subspace very abruptly, as a sort of exercise in submission and expanding my experiences.”
She swallowed, gazing into space. “She’s good: dear Celestia, she’s good.”
Derpy trembled, shaking her head, her wings flapping spastically, and then wailed “No! No, that is not good! She’s a bad pony to make monsters that bite nice ponies!”
Rarity hid her face in her hoof. “Oh, machine-stitched shirring! No, Derpy, I asked her to do it! Perhaps not exactly that. And we did not bargain on a stranger bursting in, attacking the device, and preventing it from turning off!” She winced. “Damn it, though, Mistress, how dare you not build in failsafes? That is trusting me far too much.”
“Why? Why did she do such a terrible thing to you?” demanded Derpy.
Rarity set her jaw. She glowered at the floor, flushing slightly pink in the face, and when she looked up at Derpy it was with a petulant glare that belonged on a much younger filly.
“Because, my dear, darling Rarity is a bad, bad pony—and keep your derpy hooves out of it, for it is not your business!”
Derpy met her gaze, shocked. She kept staring into those bitter, angry violet eyes, and then she tossed her head, silky blonde mane flying, and she stamped a forehoof and looked Rarity straight in the eye, and ear.
“No! You’re a good pony, Rarity. You’re wonderful and kind and generous and you make beautiful dresses, and you promised to help me!”
Rarity’s gaze faltered, and dropped.
“I did, didn’t I? Twilight insisted on it. I agreed. Oh, hell! Look at me: Mistress may think nothing of such things, but oh, selfishness incarnate, caught up in my own dark pleasures like this! I apologise, Derpy Hooves… ah, yes, I suppose that is the most formal epithet we have for you, isn’t it? I do apologize, and indeed I will help you, darling.”
Derpy bounced, having understood the last bit. “Yes! Help me enjoy Dusk Shine penis!”
Rarity choked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Because there should be a name for when Twilight Sparkle grows a magic penis, which is Dusk Shine, which can be the name just for me to use when…”
“I’m sorry, Derpy, she didn’t ask me to arrange that,” interrupted Rarity. “I am to beautify you, and bring you to some likely den of pony iniquity that you may enjoy the favors of some other stallion. No?”
Derpy considered this. “No.”
“Oh, darling, be reasonable, do!”
“But I saw the penis Twilight makes, which looks like it would feel so good, and she is the most magical pony ever, and my Mama told me that one day there would be a magical pony…”
Rarity’s hoof zipped out, and gently touched Derpy’s lips, and for just a moment both eyes converged on the unexpected touch.
“Please, Derpy,” said Rarity earnestly. “No. Not Twilight. Humor me?”
She withdrew her hoof, and Derpy stayed silent, gazing into her eyes and thinking. Derpy’s lower lip quivered and pouted. Her big light-golden eyes brimmed with tears.
“If it’s humor, why do I feel like crying?”
“Oh, Derpy,” sighed Rarity, and gathered the wall-eyed pegasus into a hug, petting her and stroking her mane as she began to sob. “It’ll be okay, I promise. We’ll have you radiant and devastatingly enticing in no time, which will necessitate doing something with this mane and the eyes, eurgh… never fear! Poor thing. Once you’ve had a few nice stallions you’ll soon forget this foolishness about ‘Dusk Shine’.”
Derpy shook her head frantically. “Uh-uh! Nooo!”
Rarity’s gaze grew fixed. “Well… I had better change that no to a yes, yes. If I cannot, I fear Twilight will ask Trixie to intercede, rather than me.” She gulped. “I do not wish to see that. Let’s bring you back to the Boutique, and work on your mane, and not ask difficult questions for a while?”
Derpy sniffled, but accompanied Rarity willingly. They walked off, Derpy Hooves still dripping tears of romantic distress, Rarity dripping a thin trickle of red down the inside of her leg.
Behind them, they left a few smashed wooden boxes, some dowels and ropes no longer animated by a perverse spirit—and the tiny scrap of Rarity that represented a line she’d never been willing to cross, and which neither she nor Trixie had intended to cross.
Yet, there it was.
Applejack stalked her prey, fat stallionhood swinging heavily under her belly.
“Aw, yeah. Gimme that kitty tail. I’mma give you a pr’per buckin’ this t’me.”
Gilda panted. “Gently! Don’t push me. Not rough. Gotta keep my head.”
Her pony stallion smirked at her. “Do you r’lly want it gently an’ slow? R’lly?”
That got a fearsome glare. “Stop it! You’ll get yours. You’ll get yours when I’m in fucking control of myself! Don’t you dare take me too hard. It’s not safe, I clawed Dash that time and you know it!”
Applejack’s grin widened. “But I l’ke you wild!”
“Oh, you wait, you just wait…”
Then she let out a shriek. Applejack had leapt forward onto her, knocking her over and straddling her leonine body, grinning around the magic bit. Gilda writhed frantically, trying to dislodge the pony between her legs. “Gah! Not this way, this is how I got D… UHHH!”
The squelch was positively filthy. Pony flare prodded Gilda’s crotch just right, and wedged into her taut feline vagina with equine force… just a few inches, and then stopped.
Gilda’s beak hung open, and her eyes were wider than Applejack had ever seen them. The country mare with the big throbbing magic horsecock gazed down into those eyes, her teeth showing around the bit she held.
Gilda quivered all over. She tensed, and Applejack felt that griffin vagina grasp at the intruding bulk, and still she gazed up in vulnerability and alarm, terrified of flipping out feline-fashion and harming her lover.
“Th’s ‘s your pony lesson,” said Applejack. “Go limp. Be taken like a m’re. Ah k’n bite y’r ass if you ain’t got th’ idea prop’ly.”
Gilda panted. Her eyes began to glaze over. She squeezed at the ponycock entering her.
“I’m… good…”
“Y’re great,” corrected Applejack, and began to move.
Gilda let out a ragged squeal as she felt that massive horsecock thrust deeper, but Applejack had been listening after all. It wasn’t rough, except that the equine bulk itself sent Gilda mad with overwhelming sensation, and slid up her tight greased tunnel like griffin Doom packed into one unbearably thick erection.
She clutched at Applejack in every way, clenching onto the ponycock with all her might to try and manage it somehow, and embracing Applejack with frantic force: wrapping fore and hind legs around that equine barrel of a body to get her claws and talons out of play, feeling ruddy pony hide moving placidly against her inner thigh-fur.
“Oh! Ah! Nhhhh!”
“Th’re’s a good k’tty,” crooned Applejack, her eyes half-lidded. “G’d girl…”
She nuzzled Gilda’s throat as she took her, feeling her shudders and jolts of erotic madness as she stirred the griffinpussy with a very thick stick. As requested, there was no jabbing, no brutal stallion overload to drive the predator insane with feral, clawing orgasm. There was just the dreamy, sedate thrusting into her reeling, squelching lover.
It seemed almost a pity, thought Applejack. It was so tempting, in spite of or maybe because of the terrible risk. Gilda was so wickedly sexy when she was scary. She was awful sexy when she was a shuddering, moaning puddle, too. This time, it was the puddle: in fact, she’d been lubricating so hard out of that griffin-pussy of hers that Applejack was working the magic cock inside a noisily squelching pocket of slippery goo. Applejack could feel her flare was expanded, but her lover was so lost in arousal that there was little resistance as she worked a fleshy, mushroomlike bulge back and forth across Gilda’s vaginal walls. It swelled up fit to bust a birdkitty, but as long as she didn’t shove or buck…
“Ah! NGH! Ghh! Stop! Ohstop!”
Gilda’s feathers were all ruffled up, and her eyes were totally unfocussed. Her cry was breathless and panicky, and Applejack could see the tremors jolting her, driving her into that zone where she’d go totally insane and thrash and claw.
Applejack stopped. Then, before Gilda could get her breath, Applejack gritted her teeth on the bit, to swell up for a last send-off.
She grinned as she bore down. Gilda’s face was memorable, a look of utter shock and then a completely unguarded, defenseless expression as she went off like a party cannon. It wasn’t all mare-ish submission to the stallion, either. There were fierce grimaces, and convulsive kicks of the hind-legs wrapped around Applejack’s waist, a very exciting reaction. Applejack clung to her savage lover and allowed the spasms to subside, keeping herself stiff inside there.
“B’t,” she said speculatively, “I din’t c’me…”
Gilda looked stunned. “Gimme a minute,” she panted, still quivering all over.
“A whole m’nute?”
That got a smirk, which crinkled the corners of Gilda’s eyes and stole across her beak until griffin and pony were grinning manically at each other.
“How… about…”
Gilda’s paws, once more under strict cortical control and claws carefully sheathed, drew back and whisked under Applejack’s soft underbelly like they knew just what to do.
“NO!” squawked Gilda, and flung Applejack off her with one powerful and cautious heave. Her strength was fantastic, like the day-long power of an applebucking pony had been saved up to expend in brief mad bursts. Applejack flew through the air, bit flying from her mouth, and landed heavily on her side, scrambling to get up, but before she could get her bearings that powerful predatory form seized her, mock-biting the upper part of her foreleg, then her throat as Applejack whinnied in delicious alarm, and then a furry paw pinned her head to the bed while talons splayed her legs apart…
That tongue rasped her clitoris with manic intensity, and Applejack again could not tell eros from mayhem, and squealed wildly as her body surrendered to the onslaught and went off in titanic orgasm. It was a roaring sea of red and white flashes and then darkness, warm nurturing darkness.
When she came to, Gilda was wrapped around her and purring. Applejack sighed, dazed with satisfaction, and nuzzled back against her lover’s embrace.
“Oh, the little pony’s back with us, hmm?” crooned Gilda.
“Mmm,” agreed Applejack. “More.”
Gilda cuffed her ear with the back of her talons. It felt like dry sticks, but strangely hot. “I think you had enough! Seriously, though—was that good? Was that what you like, what gets you off?”
Applejack shrugged against her. “Maybe jes’ a lil’! Mmmmm…”
“Yeah, well, I was testing you. Are you okay, Applejack?”
Applejack tensed. “What you mean, Gilda? Okay how?”
She turned to look up at Gilda, and got a calculating, birdlike stare in return.
“I went for your throat. It was a play bite. Applejack, that sent you over the edge bigtime. I hardly even needed to go for your clit. I got the feeling I could have, you know, worried your throat with my beak and it would have got you off… Shit. Look at you!”
Applejack’s eyes were wide as saucers. Between her legs, her pony vag winked frantically, and her jaw was slack as she processed that vision of Gilda seizing her throat and biting and tearing.
“Applejack!” demanded Gilda. “Snap out of it! We gotta talk, Dash never wanted me to hurt her, and now this? I mean, I’m totally fine with playing, it just seems like…”
“No, I’m okay!” protested Applejack. “Jes’ takes me funny now and then. I jes’ like it rough, you know what I mean? You know me. You can count on me, like ever’pony counts on me! It’s fine, it’s all fine…”
“Listen. I have my reasons for worrying about what you’re doing. I don’t like it one bit. I can’t even begin to tell you how done I am with that whole scene. I like wild rough fucking as much as the next griffin, or I guess more, considering that I’m getting fucked by a little horse…”
Applejack interrupted, again. “An’ you’re fine with that ain’t you? Where do you come round askin’ me fussy questions about what gets me off?”
“Maybe we do need to think about what gets you off, Applejack.”
The earth pony shook her head, her eyes flashing. “No, ma’am! Ah do not want to discuss it. Y’all jes’ make me happy in your special way an’ I’ll make you happy in mine. Don’t you judge me!”
“I’m not judging you, what the fuck, Applejack?”
“Well, then, there ain’t nothin’ to talk about, is there?” said Applejack, her heart pounding.
She waited, as the griffin mulled that one over, and then went dizzy with relief to hear a contemptuous snort and clack of Gilda’s beak.
“Fine! Bitch.”
“Stallion,” corrected Applejack, and was reminded again of Gilda’s basic nature. She sounded pissed off, she’d just called her pony lover a bitch, but she was purring, and she snuggled Applejack close again. It seemed like starting a fight was a good way to not think about stuff.
Applejack resolutely refused to think further about what she’d just refused to talk about. A mare’s kinks were her own affair, and she could handle it, like she handled every damn thing in Equestria, seemingly. That was what everypony—and now, every griffin—expected.
She likewise refused to think about how the solution to every problem seemed to be her turning more and more into a stallion, with no way to be feminine anymore, ever.
Except that dark, final surrender.
“Anyways, ah don’t badger you about your damn mysteries,” she added.
Gilda stirred. “What the fuck are you talking about? What mysteries?”
“You know. Th’ C-word.”
“Cunt? Coffee?”
Applejack blinked. “What’s so mysterious about coffee?”
“Oh,” grumbled Gilda, “Dash always got on my case about it. I drink huge amounts, especially when I’m h… going out, and then I don’t sleep and I toss and turn and knead the covers and sometimes jab her with a claw, and I usually give bullshit excuses about that, too. I guess it’s safe to tell you, because you don’t dare bitch about it. Otherwise I’ll bug you about your perverted masochist crap, fair warning. Hell, you’d probably like it.”
Applejack snorted with laughter. “Fair enough! But naw. Do I gotta spell it out? Starts with Princess. Am I gettin’ warmer?”
Gilda tensed against her.
“That isn’t a mystery at all, Applejack. You just don’t want to hear it. Don’t ask.”
Applejack’s ear quirked, swiveling to pick up every word. “Don’t you tell me what I want. If it ain’t a mystery, what is it?”
“It’s worse, it’s a history,” said Gilda, and sighed, and regarded Applejack through slitted eyes. “Promise you won’t tell other ponies. I have enough trouble with them. Not even Dash! She isn’t curious about stuff like this.”
“All righty! I swear, I won’t tell nopony. Now, why don’t you like Princess Celestia?”
“The obvious reason,” said Gilda darkly.
“Um,” said Applejack. “She got better wings’n you? She’s prettier?”
“She killed my mother,” said Gilda.
“But my Mama told me I was a pretty pony,” protested Derpy.
“Why, yes, darling, certainly,” said Rarity. “I’m not doubting that. We seek only to heighten the loveliness that you already enjoy. We are gilding the lily. In truth this is ninety percent of my work, except with some of my clients it is rather more like gilding a rock. Or possibly a toad.” She shuddered. “But happily, our challenges here are nowhere near as daunting. You’ve got a lovely body, darling, we must simply do something with your mane and, of course, I shall have to work out an eye strategy.”
Derpy hesitated. “You don’t like my mane?” she asked, plaintively.
“It does not whisper ‘Fillydelphia’ in a sultry manner, darling.”
“Huh?” said Derpy. She blinked, and then pranced, flapping her wings excitedly and sending gusts of air around Rarity’s bathroom. “Oh! Oh! I can whisper!”
“Augh! Darling! Cease!” cried Rarity, as bottles of exotic lotion tumbled from the counter to be caught by frantic unicorn magic.
Derpy was heedless. “Ready? Ready?” She concentrated, and whispered “Fillydelphia!” like it was a very special secret she had to share.
Rarity’s mane hinted at wildness confined by the restraints of her grooming and coiffure. Her eyes betrayed no such restraint. “Please! Derpy Hooves, cease—that means stop—your mad flapping! You are spilling beauty aids!”
“What’s that for?” asked Derpy.
Rarity levitated the bottle she’d caught. “Oh! I suppose I must consider that a stroke of luck, no? As it happens, this is precisely the conditioner I was looking for.”
Derpy eyed the bottle, and the nearby air, suspiciously. “What does it do, Rarity?”
“Why, you may be under the misapprehension that it does nothing at all…”
“Then what good is it?”
“BUT, I hasten to add, you would be mistaken! Derpy darling, your mane is composed of delicate strands of hair, all the more since you’re a blonde of a particularly light shade and silky texture. Before we endeavor coiffure, we must condition the mane to strengthen and prepare it for beautification. Into the tub!”
Derpy’s eyes widened, and she balked, pawing the ground cutely with a forehoof. She swished her tail, knocking a jar of hoof polish to clatter on the floor, and protested “Do I haaaave to?”
Rarity had seized up the hoof polish jar with her magic, and stood defiant, regarding her ungroomed gray pegasus with a commanding gaze. “You do! Trust me, darling, the rewards shall be great. Have you ever had a spa treatment? I’m tempted to turn you over to the professionals, I simply felt it within my grasp because of your natural beauty.”
At this, Derpy’s face lit up radiantly, and she beamed at Rarity, placated. “My Mama told me I was a pretty pony, and she was right!”
“Yes, yes,” soothed Rarity. “Now, into the tub, and no more stalling!”
She winced, as Derpy took one big wing-assisted bound and splashed water everywhere. “I suppose that is one way of entering a bath…”
“My Mama told me that, too!” cried Derpy.
Rarity jerked. “Oh! Is she well? She seems to tell you so much!”
Derpy blinked. “She’s dead, silly!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” said Derpy, “but I am so glad she was my Mama. Rainbow Dash said she went to a special happy place and not to be sad for her.”
“Ah,” said Rarity, “well, Rainbow Dash would know all about going to a happy place.” She bit her lip, blushing slightly, but Derpy would probably miss the double entendre: Dash, were she here, would be insufferable about it, but Dash wasn’t present.
“Did your Mama tell you good things and teach you to be happy?”
Rarity coughed. “Ah! Er. Oh yes. Of course she did. I may say I was not always an easy unicorn to have as a daughter, to be perfectly honest.”
Derpy nodded. “I understand, Rarity. Mama said there is a place in her heart for me no matter how many things I knocked down by mistake. Did your Mama tell you that when you broke stuff?”
Rarity gulped. “Oh, yes! Something like it, yes.” Technically, she thought, ‘there’s a place in pony hell for you, stallion-stealer’ was not that much like what Derpy’s mama had said, but one had to make allowances for being unbearably provoked. And dreadfully out-classed, as well, thought Rarity, and winced anew at the arrogant vanity of herself.
“Oh, good,” said Derpy. “You’re such a nice pony, Rarity!”
Rarity gulped. “Well, thank you, Derpy Hooves. Now, shall we attend to your dear mane? I may say that you seem to keep it admirably clean, darling, kudos for that.”
Derpy nodded. “My Mama taught me how to do that!”
“Of course she did,” soothed Rarity.
“What did your Mama teach you?”
Applejack stared at Gilda in horror. “What?”
“She killed my mother. I told you, you didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t I say, she’s not sweet unless you’re a pony?”
“But… How do you know that?”
Gilda glared. “I fucking watched, that’s how. I’ve come a long way, Applejack. I really shouldn’t be telling you this…”
“No,” insisted Applejack, “you should. What the hay did she do that for? Are you sure it was Princess Celestia?”
“Hold on, hear me out, okay? Yes, I’m sure. I don’t think she really had to but I can’t blame her because my mom was eating a pony at the time. We’d only just got it. Her. It was a mare.” Gilda winced. “In fact, I was helping to hold her down. She was pretty good, too, I’ll never forget that. Uh… real fresh.”
Applejack couldn’t breathe. She trembled, and couldn’t look away from Gilda’s ashamed, burning eyes.
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” said Gilda. “I was very little at the time and I didn’t know any better. I wish I had. Remember how it shook me when your masochist shit started throwing you into, I guess it’s shock? I watched this pony do that before she died. I couldn’t understand why my mom said she wasn’t feeling pain but I didn’t really give a shit about it at the time, I was so little.”
Applejack was still staring. Gilda sighed.
“Look, you know this. Griffins used to eat ponies.” She poked Applejack’s rump with a talon. “You’re very delicious, and not just the way I want to eat you, baby. One pony, that could feed a whole family. My mom was fixing to do just that. Let’s just say your Princess Celestia doesn’t agree.”
“D… did you…”
“I’d like to say no,” said Gilda. “The truth is, I didn’t get much. It was my first time out with Mom hunting. She was really excited she’d got a pony on our first hunting trip, and she was so busy eating and lecturing me that she didn’t watch the sky, which is funny because part of it was teaching me about other griffins coming to take your kill. I’ll never forget it. She was in the middle of telling me the practical and moral reasons for eating some of it right away. You don’t want to let the prey get up and run around if you can help it, you take it into that death space and finish it off cleanly which is really the kindest thing…” Gilda gulped, and trailed off. “Ironic, really.”
Applejack’s heart was hammering. “Why is that, Gilda?”
“Well, she gave me a look and took another big bite of pony leg. The pony jerks but it—she—is just staring with this expression I didn’t see again until you started getting extra kinky on me, that stunned thing. I watched her die, right then. I don’t know how I knew, but I could tell. And then my Mom’s completely covered in magical fire so I can’t even see her, and she has time for one squawk and that’s it, she’s dead too. There’s bones, charred bones. There wasn’t even a shadow or anything to warn us. My Mom wasn’t the only good hunter. I look up, and your Princess Celestia is right there staring at me, just staring. I realize my mouth is full of pony flesh and there’s pony blood trickling down my chin. And I wait to die, too.”
After a pause, Applejack said, “It’s okay if you don’t wanna tell th’ whole thing…”
“No, I told this much,” said Gilda, “it’s just hard. She looks at me, and I’m just totally fucked, I’m prey now, right? And then she says this: ‘Please forgive me. I’m so terribly sorry,’ and it’s like she’s apologizing to me. To me, and I’m just a chick, all right? But she’s not so sorry that she left the pony! It lights up and floats up into the air, and away she goes, and I’m sitting there in the deep woods next to my Mom’s charred bones and some puddles of pony blood. I don’t even remember getting home. I do remember my Dad’s face when he saw me, though.”
Applejack’s mind was reeling. “How could you ever have ended up trying to be a pony, going to a pegasus flight camp, all that stuff? I cain’t rightly believe all this stuff! Sweet… well, you ain’t foolin, are ya? She ain’t so sweet about some things. Dang!”
“Don’t get me wrong, I respect that,” said Gilda. “You’ve only heard one side of it. My Dad’s the other side. Griffins have been divided over ponies as prey for generations, and my Mom and Dad never agreed. He was all torn up to lose her to your Princess but he’d been getting in bigger and bigger fights with Mom about whether I was going to be taught to hunt big or little game, and when Mom was killed going for big game he put his paw down and he took over my training. And he wasn’t just teaching me to stalk, either. He was teaching the bigger stuff, and eventually I learned.”
“What’s th’ bigger stuff?” said Applejack.
Gilda fixed her with a level gaze. “Ponies are people. Delicious as they are, they make societies like we do, and you gotta draw the line somewhere, and ponies aren’t game, they’re people. It helps that you’ve got pegasi. Almost no griffins want to hunt pegasi, we find it disturbing because their wings are so similar to ours—it’s mega creepy, dude.”
“Maybe I can see where this is going…”
“Oh yeah,” nodded Gilda. “My Dad was real strict about ponies being people—he died of natural causes, not by Princess Celestia, just so you know—and eventually I came around. I joined him. When it was time to go away to school, the pegasus flight camp was my idea, because I liked how radical that would be, and probably no other griffin would have gone along with it, but my Dad said yes. I’ve always wondered if your Princess pulled some strings… if she heard about it, and remembered me. Maybe I’ll never know.”
“She likes it when we learn,” said Applejack. “Maybe she did.”
“I loved pissing off the big-game griffins,” said Gilda. “It was like I got to rebel against all of society, with my Dad. I went into the Junior Speedsters flight camp ready to enjoy all the new experiences, even the bullshit ones like their little songs and chants. They had to change a couple of the songs and try to hide it—lines like ‘help evade the griffin plague’, all the kids knew what the real lines were supposed to be but they weren’t allowed to say ‘em. It was hard at first because I was trying to open myself up to new experiences and pony friends, but they were this herd that I was definitely not part of. And then I meet Rainbow Dash.”
Applejack chuckled. “Yeah. Huh! New experiences…”
“Dash… ahah. Heh…”
“Say no more. Ah kin guess where this story’s headin’!”
“Oh yeah. New experiences! Let’s just say, we bonded? She was just as rebellious, just as much of an outsider what with being a runt and Rainbow Crash and all that stuff, and I soon found out she was clumsy because she was hitting puberty like a hungry griffin hitting small game. I was too, so I got pretty worked up, and things started happening really fast. The things that pony can do with just a hoof and a tongue!”
Applejack nodded. “Yep! That’s my Dashie all over.”
“After that, I was all ponied out,” said Gilda. “No turning back. I became the biggest pony-head ever. And you know what? I’m glad your Princess protects you guys. The thing is, I still don’t want to see her, or that long flowing mane and tail, or hear that smarmy ‘sorry’ crap. Ponies can kick ass. That goes for you, too, Applejack. Other griffins, they just don’t know what you can do to a pussy with that thing of yours. Holy crap, I love it. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re just some lame wimpy pony because you’re a freakin’ stud horse in the sack!”
Applejack’s face fell. “Uh, thanks?”
“Sorry. I guess all of this is a lot to take in?”
Applejack stared for a moment, and then began to grin. Gilda hid her face in her talon.
“Don’t even say it…”
“Ah reckon I don’t have to, now,” grinned Applejack.
“You about ready to head home? I gotta clean up around here. I was, uh, doing private griffin stuff and I lost track of time and rushed out to get you. I gotta clean up.”
“Shucks, I’ll help you, sugarcube,” said Applejack.
“No!” squawked Gilda. “I’ll pick up after myself, okay? Don’t… just don’t. Are we good here? Maybe you’re needed back at the farm?”
Applejack made a sour face. “More’n likely.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Apple Bloom jumped up and down, as if she was trying to reach Applejack even before she was returned to solid ground. Her cries were so frantic that Applejack opened her eyes while still in mid-air to see what was happening.
“Big Macintosh din’t come back for dinner and we’re afraid he’s run away again an’ Rainbow Dash couldn’t find him and she’s gone to git you so she can look harder an’ Granny Smith went up to her room and shut th’ door!”
“Maaah!” cried Northern Spy, standing beside Apple Bloom, looking alarmed at the sight of her Mom returning in the talons of a big griffin.
Applejack’s hooves hit the ground hard. She braced herself, and looked down at the two upset fillies. She looked to the Sweet Apple Acres farmhouse, and Granny back in her room sulking. And she looked across the fields, to the west, to far Appleloosa.
Applejack sighed.
“Well, shit…”
“Applejack?”
Rainbow Dash trotted to the bed. The rumpled bedsheets told her Applejack and Gilda had fucked, and she sniffed, picking up the scents of passion, nodding her head approvingly.
And… something else?
“Applejack?”
Rainbow Dash flew over to the bathroom. No dice. No ponies or griffins either. Where the hell had they gone?
And again, that hint of something else, something terribly wrong.
Rainbow trotted to the kitchen… and slowed down. The hint was clearer. Something bad had happened. Sweet Celestia, something bad had happened to Applejack and Gilda! What could it possibly have been? Her senses began sounding alarms. She hesitantly approached the kitchen, and every step of the way, the warnings got louder.
Rainbow Dash entered her own kitchen, and stopped in her tracks. She stared, aghast. No, it hadn’t been something bad happening to Applejack and Gilda, but all the same…
One brown bunny foot lay on her countertop, dripping blood from its severed end. The toes splayed out, twisted first with agony and then the rigor of death.
Oh, thought Dash, frozen. Yeah. Right. I forgot.
Griffins don’t eat hay.