Follows A Little Spark: Sc.28&29


                                            >You really enjoy watching Twilight work.

                                            >She’s humming some song that you can’t quite identify – but you know it’s one off your phone – as she assembles one of the two rotors for your crippled pegasi flight aid. After design revisions, it’s more a tiltwing-tiltrotor hybrid, taking advantage of how it’d need to be able to articulate to fold away anyhow. Complicated, but you figure the capability is worth it.

                                            >You’re working on the circuit of relays and stops that lock the wings in a fully extended configuration to enable flight. You think you’ve got it just about figured out, now that the two of you have a properly designed rotor hub to include all the functionality you needed to allow its blades to work like the last section of a pegasi’s wing, if the hub was the end of its limb.

                                            >But you keep getting distracted by the purple cutie building your tech!

                                            >She’s got your soldering iron in one of her claws, a spool of solder in the other, while she holds the parts she’s working on in place with her magic.

                                            >She’s getting good at using them; it gives you hope that your combination of magic and technology could do the world good after all.

                                            >Those concerns, however, feel distant, when you’re watching her.

                                            >It’s something you’d never thought you’d see, here, in the first few months after you’d arrived.

                                            >But Twilight has picked up on everything you’ve taught her, and then some. Her ability to master any skill related to your work astounds you, and her eagerness to employ those skills thrills you.

                                            >How did you get so lucky as to have someone like this interested in you for more than your work?

                                            >Just thinking about it set your heart aflutter.

                                            >You look back to your circuit diagrams, ready to tackle the last section.

                                            >No, wait, hold on. The core section didn’t look like this before.

                                            >You erase and redraw it to be correct.

                                            >By the time you’re done, the rest of the diagram has disappeared.

                                            >While you’re trying to process this, you feel an incessant tugging at your attention.

                                            >No, it’s not wanting to watch Twilight more.

                                            >The tugging turns into a suction.

                                            >Suddenly it’s a physical struggle to keep your focus on the page before you.

                                            >One you lose.

                                            >Violently.

                                            >A cacophonous shriek builds as you feel your mind being ripped out of your body. You look back at Twilight one last time as the world dissolves into static. An eternity is compressed into a handful of seconds as the scene distorts itself into hazy nothingness.

                                            >Then a thunderclap booms, but it’s strangely muted.

                                            >The mostly-assembled rotor, no longer held up by a work stand, falls to gray, dusty ground in slow motion. Twilight’s nowhere to be found, nor is the workbench she was standing near.

                                            >The bench you were drawing on is still present, when you turn back to it, but your plans aren’t.

                                            >The walls and ceiling have been replaced by a pitch black starfield.

                                            >Though it’s not from any angle or image you recognize – and you’ve known a fuckload about the Apollo program since your boyhood aspirations – you realize you’re on the moon.

                                            >In the distance, you can see Luna galloping towards you, though it’s more a bounding prance, considering the environment.

                                            >You let out a breath you’ve been holding, but even as you do, you’re still holding your breath. Somehow you’re breathing and not breathing at the same time.

                                            >Better than asphyxiating in the moon’s nigh-nonexistent atmosphere, you suppose

                                            >Luna’s not slowing down.

                                            >You brace for impact just before she hits you, but she still knocks you off your feet, sending both of you drifting towards the ground.

                                            >She lands on top of you with all her weight, which isn’t nearly enough to hurt you here, while you end up on your back.

                                            >Her head’s out of sight; her neck’s extended along the side of your face, but from her hitching breath you can tell she’s crying, as she scrabbles at the dusty ground around you.

                                            >You push her up off you as you sit up.

                                            “Hey now, stop that. Please stop that? I don’t know what’s going on.”

                                            >She looks at you with tear-filled eyes. “We are sorry, we-” she takes a deep breath, which doesn’t help much- “we planned not to bother thee, but…”

                                            >Luna sits back as you stand up and dust yourself off.

                                            “It’s fine. No, really. I’m just surprised. I’m guessing this is a nightmare of yours?”

                                            >”Yes. Being back here.” She shakes her head. “And we are back here often, Anon, in our own dreams.”

                                            “You can’t just end it?”

                                            >”We are asleep ourselves, right now, so without our full talent. We have some control, but cannot stop it, or change the fundament.”

                                            >She rears back and throws her forelegs over your shoulders, and wraps her wings around you.

                                            >”And we are tired of facing it alone.”

                                            >You return her hug, and start rocking her side to side slowly when her sobbing resumes.

                                            >Up on her hind legs like this, she’s a bit taller than you, despite being only about five feet on all fours.

                                            >She’s actually the perfect height to be hugging a pony like this, you realize. Twilight can’t hug you around your neck unless you’re crouching or kneeling – though she has plenty of room when you’re that low – and Celestia’s weight with height-enabled leverage would knock you over; even the palace’s smaller rooms are so much taller than normal because her horn would lodge in the ceiling of a usual eight or nine foot clearance of a typical domestic floorplan if she reared back.

                                            >Thinking on Celestia…

                                            “Why don’t you bring your sister?”

                                            >Luna pulls her head up and back, and looks down at you with wide eyes. “Never! Thou canst never tell her. She knoweth our time was spent in suffering, and knoweth we still have nightmares of it, but if she learneth what it was truly like, her guilt would be unimaginable.”

                                            >You reach up to pull her neck back over your shoulder, and stroke a hand through her mane.

                                            >Unlike Celestia’s warm mist, Luna’s feels like a slightly chilly void or lower-pressure area, with a faintly blowing wind. You can even feel the stars; they nip at your skin like pellets of sleet as you pass your hand through them.

                                            >She must be reading your thoughts, because halfway through your fourth stroke, her mane flashes to her normal blue hair.

                                            “I know you told me you were here, but I never really comprehended it until now, looking on it myself.”

                                            >”A thousand years, Anon, even if my perception was… distorted.” She drops out of your arms back onto all fours. “Awhile ago, we sat with thee through one of thy nightmares, and made it pleasant.” Her wide eyes are pleading you, frantically looking across your features. “Please, canst thou do the same for us?

                                            >You stroke some errant part of her mane away from her damp cheek and shining eyes.

                                            “If you’re already sleeping, it’s morning, so I doubt I have much time. But I’ll do what I can.”

                                            >Pulling back, the two of you look around the area. Luna spots the rotor that was dragged through from your dream, in your transfer’s wake.

                                            >”What is that?”

                                            >You walk over to it, and Luna follows you.

                                            “This is part of the system Twilight and I are building to give pegasi the ability to fly again, if something happens to their wings.”

                                            >You reach it and crouch beside it, propping it up so it’s oriented vertically. It suffered no damage from its gentle fall.

                                            “These three blades here spin, like three thin wings. The whole thing works a little like a big fan, you could say. We’re going to have one on each side of what you could consider prosthetic wings. They’ll generate enough thrust to get the pegasus off the ground and, once they’re tilted in the right direction, on their way.”

                                            >Luna tilts her head as she examines it. She seems a lot more composed now; either her anxiety has run its course, or she’s managed to tuck it away for now. “It looketh most peculiar. We cannot pretend to understand how it worketh, but we trust thy talent.”

                                            >You manipulate the blades where they attach to the hub, manually pulling the locking pins on two of them and folding them back along either side of the third.

                                            “And this is the system we devised so the pegasus can still gesture and communicate normally. These two folded blades can be positioned at any point along this range of travel, and the entire assembly can still rotate at the hub. Along with each blade’s ability to tilt, this means these three blades can replicate the behavior of a pegasi’s first three primaries on each wing, which Twilight told me is the core of their wing body language.”

                                            >Luna extends her own wings, and executes a series of involved patterns by arranging and angling her own primary feathers. “Pegasi in this age knoweth not many of the old signs. This displeases us, though we admit to amusement that we now know more than they about their own secret language of yore, we who had so much trouble learning it in our youth when we received wings of our own.”

                                            “They used to talk through sign language?”

                                            >”Not exclusively, but they possessed many different gestures to relate meanings or attitudes more subtle than speech alloweth. They were very extroverted and socially colorful. While those traits remaineth today, they lost much of their old nuance. Pegasi nowadays are so forward and bold.” Luna shakes her head. “We miss it, to be truthful. It earned them a stubborn place among unicorn-dominated Canterlot society. One pegasus alone couldn’t do much in the face of a unicorn, but two or more together would make a terrifying rhetorical challenge for even the hardiest nobles, as they could communicate privately with each other even while speaking to you.”

                                            “For our deaf, back home, we had entire languages that could be spoken with hand gestures alone. I don’t know any of the signs, but I always respected those who learned it.”

                                            >”Thou speaketh of many accommodations for thy crippled.”

                                            “Well, we preferred to call them disabled, or similar terms. But yeah, we tried to take care of those who couldn’t take care of themselves. We’d train dogs specifically for certain tasks. Ramps and specially modified vehicles for the wheelchair-bound. Different interface schemes for the colorblind. Special social programs for the disabled. Stuff like that.”

                                            >”It is admirable.”

                                            “Now you see why I’d like to bring a piece of it here. My work can do that. It’s how I can repay the kindness all of you have shown me.”

                                            >Luna extends her head up – she can just barely make it – to brush your cheek with her snout, reversing your earlier gesture. “Thou art noble of soul, Anon.”

                                            >You reach up to hold her head against yours. “That means a lot, coming from someone with so firm a belief in nobility as you.”

                                            >You look around at the vast blankness.

                                            “Hey, since this is your dream – a pony’s dream – and you said you can read thoughts, can you pull stuff from my mind? Make it part of the space?”

                                            >”We can try.”

                                            “Alright. I’m about to remember something I’ve seen. I’d like you to try to stick it over there. I want to show it to you.”

                                            >Closing your eyes, you recall your many memories of moon landing exhibits from different museums you’ve visited. You fix many angles and perspectives of the Apollo lunar module in your mind.

                                            >”We have it.”

                                            >When you open your eyes again, there’s a perfect copy of a lunar module, life-sized, sitting about a hundred yards away.

                                            >”Now canst thou tell us what it is?”

                                            “Yeah, sure. Follow me.”

                                            >The two of you make your way over to its golden base.

                                            >You have some fun mimicking the leaps of the Apollo astronauts, but realize you can go much faster and further with each bound, not weighed down with gear and suits as they were.

                                            >The fact you can feel accurate lunar gravity, thanks to Luna’s experience with it, blows your mind.

                                            >This is literally a childhood dream come true.

                                            >When you arrive, you take position in front of it, one hand grabbing the ladder.

                                            “This, my moon-bound mare, is what we came here in.”

                                            >From her widening eyes and angling of her ears, you can tell her interest has gone from negligible to maximum in a fraction of a second.

                                            “Not just this, strictly speaking, but this is what we rode down to the surface. There was another part that would circle it high above, that carried all this here, and would carry this top half-”

                                            >You jump up – the low gravity helping your altitude – to slap the side of the ascent module

                                            “-back home to Earth. The base would stay behind.”

                                            >She sits down in the dust, staring up at it.

                                            >You walk over and crouch next to her, wrapping an arm around her neck, then turn your gaze towards it as well.

                                            >She absentmindedly extends her wing to wrap around you.

                                            >”Is this… Is this what human technology meaneth? Doth this represent the pinnacle of thy craft?”

                                            “Luna, these things hadn’t been used in almost half a century, when I left. This is old tech, from my perspective. Not ancient, but before my time. If I can get ponies making vacuum tubes, we could start building some of the systems that my people used when the Apollo program started. After you guys study and develop your own technology enough, at least. The computer that’s actually in there was the first computer to use silicon-based integrated circuits, which is something you guys might take awhile to get ahold of.”

                                            >You pat your pockets.

                                            >Looks like your phone didn’t make it into this dream.

                                            “The little device I carry around in my pocket most of the time is so many orders of magnitude more powerful than the computer in there it blows my mind. We’ve come a long way.”

                                            >You shake your head.

                                            “But not a long enough way to come back.”

                                            >She walks over to the lander, then rears back to put her forehooves on the first rung of the ladder, and cranes her neck around to look back at you. “Anon, we cannot say we have cared much for thy science, beyond the fact thou doest it, and what thou canst achieve with it. But this…” She looks back up the ladder, towards the entrance hatch. “This hath meaning for us. We still understand not why thy kind wanted to come to this dreadful place, but to see the proof of it warms our heart.”

                                            >You walk over to her and pat her on the lower back, earning you a swish of her tail.

                                            “Here, let me show you inside.”

                                            >You jump onto the ladder and climb, getting to the module’s entrance hatch. When you grasp the handle, you find it works and feels exactly like a doorknob.

                                            >That’s not right, but you’ve never actually opened a hatch like this one before, so Luna wouldn’t have any reference to replicate it.

                                            >Dreams can’t be entirely accurate, after all.

                                            >When you swing the hatch open, you find inside is just an empty shell.

                                            >You frown and close the hatch.

                                            “Uh, interior. Hey, I’m gonna recall a bunch of stuff again, what the inside of this thing looks like. Can you stuff it all in?”

                                            >”We will do our best.”

                                            >You close your eyes again and remember back to all the exhibits, schematics, diagrams, models, and even a virtual reality environment you’ve messed with before. You try to make a mental map of everything together.

                                            “We think we have done it?”

                                            >You smile at the question in her voice as you open your eyes and open the hatch again.

                                            >The interior is indeed present, though mostly just in basic shapes. Still, those shapes are all the right sizes and in the right places, so it’s good enough.

                                            >You wave Luna up the ladder behind you and duck inside the small hatch.

                                            >It’s very cramped inside, and you have to stand and contour your back to one side of the interior for Luna to crawl inside herself. She closes the hatch behind her with magic.

                                            >It sounds like a regular door too, and you have to stifle a chuckle at the absurdity.

                                            >”How many humans traveled in this vehicle? There is little space.”

                                            “Just two. A third would be in the other part in orbit.”

                                            >She looks out one of the triangular main windows, conveniently enough at just the right height for her, then tilts her head upward to look through the small docking window in the ceiling over the commander’s station.

                                            >Something’s bothering you about the lighting; it’s far too bright in here.

                                            >Ah, that’d be the exhibit lighting, coming from sources that you don’t think would exist in the real article.

                                            “Hey, uh, can you turn off the ambient light in here? It’s not, er, accurate.”

                                            >Luna blinks at you, but then nods.

                                            >The interior is plunged into darkness, illumination now only provided by the controls, which unlike most of the interior, are rendered in loving detail.

                                            >”Skies above.”

                                            “Yeah this is more like it. At least, I think.”

                                            >Luna stares at the many controls. “What is all this for?”

                                            “That’s how we piloted this thing. I can’t really explain it all to you, as much as I studied it.”

                                            >You sit down with your back to the step up to the rear half of the compartment, your feet against the hatch.

                                            “C’mon, sit for a bit. Relax, as best you can in here.”

                                            >She looks to the floor, then at your legs. “There is little room.”

                                            >You shrug, then pat your thighs.

                                            >She hesitates before settling herself over your legs, then sprawls out across the lower floor section of the control stations.

                                            “Not so bad, was it?”

                                            >You reach out and scratch around one of her ears.

                                            >She leans into it even as she laughs and smiles in embarrassment. “Only for thy invitation.”

                                            “Hey, last time we shared a dream, you climbed into bed with me.”

                                            >She snorts and ducks away from your hand.

                                            >“Anon, thou art rude, with such insinuation.”

                                            >You reach out with both hands this time, getting both her ears and scratching around them more aggressively. She ducks her head down, but not far enough to escape, and fails to suppress a soft nickering.

                                            “Just speaking the truth. And don’t try to say you didn’t like it.”

                                            >When she tosses her head again, you decide to give her ears a break, and go back to stroking the mane she never reverted to its starry form.

                                            >You two spend a good deal of time in silence, with one of your hands idly playing with her head and neck as she leans into its ministrations, and the other on her side, feeling her chest move with her breathing. You study the controls and try to remember what they all do, while she looks this way and that, studying the interior.

                                            >Suddenly, she stops leaning into your hand.

                                            >”Anon?”

                                            >Is that a note of panic?

                                            >”Anon, what’s-”

                                            >You feel her breathing pick up its pace, then she gathers her legs under her and stands.

                                            >“Anon, what’s wrong?”

                                            >You look at her, but your head movement feels like it overshoots its mark.

                                            >Everything suddenly feels so sluggish.

                                            >Indistinct.

                                            >Very, very far away.

                                            >You can’t really focus on her face, despite it being only about a foot and a half away from you, but you think you see tears in her eyes.

                                            >”Anon please leavest not us now!”

                                            >But everything’s going white.

                                            >And then you open your open eyes.

                                            >The white is daylight. You’re in your room again, staring at white ceiling.

                                            >Fuck.

                                            >You dress as quickly as you can.

                                            >It’s not night, unlike the last time you needed to make this quick cross-palace excursion to Luna’s side, and you have appearances to maintain during the day.

                                            >You do have to cross the outdoors, since you’ve moved out to the new place.

                                            >Squinting against daylight, you nod and greet ponies you pass as politely as you can. Your fast jog raises some eyebrows.

                                            >You stop yourself when you reach the hallway that wraps around the throne room. No, you’re not going to the bureaucratic wing this time. Royal quarters are towards the back of the palace, up several floors, then down a short hall to the front.

                                            >You almost pass out by the time you’ve sprinted up enough flights of stairs to get to the right floor, and have to stop to catch your breath.

                                            >Just a little further.

                                            >Two of Luna’s guards stand outside her door, the only ones you know to stand watch in daylight besides the one that Luna’s attached to your workshop.

                                            >You reach them, but are too out of breath to articulate your need.

                                            >You end up pointing to your temple and closing your eyes instead.

                                            “She, uh, she wants me-”

                                            >Breathe, damnit.

                                            “Was in a dream, but woke up. I think she needs my help.”

                                            >Her two guards look at each other, but one shrugs her wings and steps aside. The other opens the door for you. “Only doing this because it’s you, Anon,” he says.

                                            >Luna’s suite is fairly spartan, for royalty, so you have no trouble navigating it for her bed, and sit down on its side.

                                            >Even asleep, she doesn’t look happy. Every once in awhile you can hear a quiet whinny or whimper from her.

                                            >She’d waited until you woke up, when she visited you during your nightmare. But she also said you dropped out of it, so you assume you were just sleeping normally.

                                            >She’s obviously still stuck in hers.

                                            >Maybe she’s still looking for you.

                                            >Hesitantly, you reach a hand out, and rest it on one of her shoulders.

                                            >Her whole body jerks around it, and she snaps out at our arm, which you pull away just in time.

                                            “Hey, hey calm down, it’s me!”

                                            >She freezes, then slumps back onto the bed. “Oh. Sorry,” she croaks out.

                                            “Nah, it’s fine. You looked miserable.”

                                            >She groans, then curls up towards where you sit.

                                            “Hell, you still look miserable.”

                                            >”Hate waking up.”

                                            “Fitting, for a princess of dreams. Still, I think you hated being where you were, too.”

                                            >She nods, which is pretty awkward when the side of her face is still pressed into the bedding.

                                            >You notice that her mane’s normal hair even in the real world. Did changing it in the dream change it here, too?

                                            “Sorry, I kinda woke up.”

                                            >”We knew.”

                                            “You sounded like you still might have been looking for me.”

                                            >”We were alone again.”

                                            “Well, now I’m here.”

                                            >She’s quiet for a long time before finally responding, “Thou hast much to do.”

                                            “I can stick around until you’re asleep again.”

                                            >This earns you the slightest of smiles.

                                            >And that’s enough to make it worth it.


                                            * * *


                                            >After Celestia closes the door to the private reading room, she turns to you instead of her usual seat.

                                            >”You know, Anon, the first time we came here together, you offered me a massage.” She grins at you. “I’ve decided I could use your touch after all, even if not the most stallionine.”

                                            >That grin always means trouble for you of some sort, even if just a bit of teasing.

                                            >You don’t really mind.

                                            >Truth be told, you’ve come to anticipate it, and enjoy that anticipation.

                                            >Hardly a dull day around Celestia.

                                            >You wait for the joshing follow-up, but she simply walks to the middle room, turns her rear to you, and lowers herself to the floor, legs neatly tucked beneath her.

                                            >When you don’t move, she looks back at you expectantly.

                                            “Well shit, I didn’t think you were serious.”

                                            >She flashes a more genuine smile, then once again lays her head on the floor away from you. “It’s been a long day.”

                                            >There was something of an incident in the great hall earlier, a big fracas between two groups who had evidently arrived to ask for Celestia’s help on opposing sides of some policy dispute out in stars-know-where.

                                            >Celestia not only managed to stop the fighting, but imply the perfect solution in her rebuke to them.

                                            >You have no idea how she thinks these solutions up.

                                            >Over a thousand years of fighting social battles will make a top tier rhetorical soldier of anyone, you assumed.

                                            >But now this warrior of words wanted you to work over her body.

                                            “All due respect, but why me? I’m sure there’s some masseuse in Canterlot somewhere you could ask.”

                                            >”I want to see if what my student says about your hands and fingers is true. She claims you can work wonders with them.” She turns back to you again, this time wearing that feral grin. “I don’t know what you did to her to convince her of that, but I’ll settle for a massage.”

                                            >You’re rolling that slanderous innuendo around in your head as you kneel by her side.

                                            >It doesn’t help that Celestia’s universally attractive, despite being one of this world’s cruel pranks upon your psyche of small sapient horses.

                                            >She’s one of the few beings you’ve seen here who exists on your scale, for one, so your options have already been extremely narrow. Twilight’s won you over with sheer force of faculties and will alone.

                                            >Her body is of a nearly unique slender build, one shared by her sister and only a few other ponies you’ve seen, all unicorns. Some older unicorn phenotype, washed out with genetic stock from the other tribes? Or was it the other way around, with the extant unicorn families demonstrating it having alicorn ancestry?

                                            >All you know is that her shape touched some deep language of beauty, with her perfect curves between contrasting fullness and apparent fragility. This, coupled with her reserved composure that obliterated some of the unfeminine mannerisms of most mares, inviting you to dream of how she might otherwise carry herself, well…

                                            >It prompted thoughts you were too embarrassed to admit to anypony.

                                            >But, in Equestria, who would disagree? You’re pretty sure those mares who displayed her body type are the peak of sex appeal, at least in Canterlot.

                                            >Eternal youth, wisdom, AND beauty. Alicorns had it made.

                                            >But as you lay a hand on her back – something you’ve done so rarely, despite how physically familiar you’ve become with her sister and student – you’re reminded that afore-thought fullness owes itself to muscle, and that apparent fragility is only skin-deep. Celestia’s a powerful mare in more than just charisma and magical ability.

                                            >With your hands grabbing her lower back, it really doesn’t help your state of mind any.

                                            >What would the other two think? You’ve already all but committed to Twilight, and Luna’s finding her way into your heart even through your mental objections from your prior culture’s monogamous leanings. ‘Sorry gals, I really want to fuck your sister/teacher. No hard feelings! Jus primae noctis? Oh it’s an ancient Earth custom, the ruler gets to bang your new spouse. Stallions are the fairer sex here, right? Just the way it is on this bitch of a world.’

                                            >Celestia might have it all, but you’re too terrified of breaking their hearts to let yourself even think of doing anything about it.

                                            >So here she is asking you to.

                                            >As you get started, you find yourself having some difficulty getting through how taut her muscles are. Her whole back is hard as a rock.

                                            >What kind of tension is this poor mare under?

                                            >Besides running a nation, at least.

                                            >Honestly, that’s probably enough.

                                            >Celestia has a way of moving her body in minute ways to guide your hands exactly where they need to be, as you work your way up her spine.

                                            >It’s not just your hands doing work; her whole body is relaxing as you make your way forward.

                                            >Was your touch part of the tension, and she’s acclimating? Or was she just that bad off, and her body’s relaxation is some sort of feedback or cascading effect from your work?

                                            >Whatever it is, she’s practically putty in your hands now.

                                            >She never once vocalizes any pleasure, not even that nickering you’ve deciphered means satisfaction, but from her big sighs to her increasingly-frequent stretching, you can tell you’re having an effect.

                                            >Damn, maybe you should have been a masseuse this whole time. Something about mighty mares melting to manual ministrations makes your mind meander merrily.

                                            >But your current line of work is the only reason you’re doing any good.

                                            >A body is a finely engineered system. Your actions build off an ingrained understanding of mechanical stress, loading, tension, and likely arrangements of connections between two points on a frame.

                                            >Besides, your work has been honing your manual dexterity lately, so that’s a big part of it.

                                            >You run into a problem, however, when you reach her wings.

                                            >From her side, you can’t reach the same angles on both simultaneously, and more involved work would require you to awkwardly reach around the closer one.

                                            >When you stand to move behind her, she doesn’t twitch a muscle.

                                            >You crouch at her rear, the warm mists of her flowing tail provoking an illusion of dampness about your ankles.

                                            >You reach out and place your hands around her waist again, about where you started, and look up the length of her body in line with her spine, taking in how it’s changed with your work and her relaxation, how her long and slender neck extends forward like that, how her prodigious wingspan is fully spread across the floor…

                                            >Skies above.

                                            >You’re even thinking pony oaths, now.

                                            >You carefully step to either side of her waist, then drop onto your knees, your butt over the small of her back.

                                            >The mood takes a welcome hit when, in some part of the back of your mind, you’re losing your shit at the fact this looks like a ridiculous caricature of riding a horse.

                                            >Smiling and shaking your head, you reach out and grab the base of her wings, and start kneading them.

                                            >This earns you a shudder from her, and she pulls her legs out from underneath her, extending them forward and back in a cat-like full-body stretch beneath you.

                                            “You, uh, you okay, down there?”

                                            >”It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been touched by a stallion like this.”

                                            >So you aren’t the only victim to these thoughts.

                                            >She picks up on your hesitation to resume, lifting her head off the floor to look at you. “Don’t worry, you’re not arousing me.”

                                            “Ah, right, suppressed sex drive and other alicorn nonsense.”

                                            >She drops her head back to the floor once you reluctantly resume. “Besides, this feels almost as good.” She laughs when you freeze again. “I didn’t say stop.”

                                            >You shake your head and get back to work on her wings.

                                            “Why has it been so long? I imagine you can get any stallion that you wanted.”

                                            >”’That I wanted’ being the key part of that. I didn’t want any.”

                                            “Er, are you a, uh, confirmed… bachelorette?”

                                            >”Please, I appreciate the finer things in life.”

                                            >This must be some sort of joke that doesn’t translate well, because she’s wearing that goofy smile again.

                                            >When it falls flat, she sighs and shakes her head. “No, I just felt it wouldn’t be right to take any when my sister was… away. As long as she was lonely, I should be too. Besides, there are very few stallions who I ever thought I could love as an equal.”

                                            “You said it’s been a long time, not never. Tell me about a stallion who you thought you could?”

                                            >She’s silent for a time, not even giggling when you flinch back from a face-full of her feathers you give yourself while manipulating her right wing to feel down its length.

                                            >”He was often quiet, when around me,” she begins with a soft voice. “Always lost in himself and whatever held his attention at that moment, never paying much attention to the outside world. Introspective I guess, though he rarely thought highly of what he found in there. He was humble, and deeply thoughtful of others in a uniquely thoughtless way.”

                                            “He sounds like he was a scatterbrain.”

                                            >She chuckles. “You could say that. I think he’d argue that he was intensely focused, instead, just focused on many different things. He’d take too much on and not know what to do with it, then feel overwhelmed.”

                                            “I think I know the type.”

                                            >She turns her head to give you a curious sidelong glance, before dropping back down and resuming. “But he knew the meaning – if not the value – of his companionship to me, and was always by my side when I expected it. When I needed it, not that I think he ever knew I did. He had a way of underestimating his value, so he’d never see what others saw in him. It was honestly infuriating. As all ponies have our special talents, he thought he was his special talent, and no more.”

                                            “Did you ever tell him your feelings?”

                                            >She shakes her head, dragging it across the carpet without lifting it.

                                            “Why not?”

                                            >”He was a little strange. Not conventionally attractive, nowhere near an ideal stallion in comportment. He had little patience for palace life and would rather be left to his own devices than participate in courtly affairs. Even if that was everything I wanted for myself, in my heart longing to be free of the throne, what would my ponies say? The image of my office bound me, even when he tempted me with freedom from it, and even if I indulged his whimsy to those ends once in awhile."

                                            “I guess that makes sense, yeah.”

                                            >She grimaces at this, then continues. “Besides, he was destined for others, more suited to what he did, his interests, his feelings and his way of living. I thought I’d be content just watching from afar, making sure he was happy. But, looking back, I’m not sure why I thought that.”

                                            >One of her ears angles for the door, then she picks her head up and looks at it. “Oh, this should be interesting.”

                                            “What?”

                                            >As soon as the question’s out of your mouth, the door opens.

                                            >You freeze.

                                            >Luna’s standing there, eyes half closed, wearing a good pony approximation of Resting Bitch Face.

                                            >”G’affurnoon”

                                            >She walks – it’s more a finely controlled stumbling, if anything – across the room in front of you two, then comes to a halt in no place in particular.

                                            >”I see you’re up early, sister. You have good timing; Anon and I were just discussing matters of love.”

                                            >Luna slowly turns to face you two.

                                            >You’re still frozen, straddling Celestia’s back, hands buried in the larger feathers around her shoulders.

                                            >”Twilight’s right, his hands are divine. You should let them crawl all over you too sometime.”

                                            >This more explicit than usual innuendo finally stirs Luna out of her sleep inertia. She takes a step back, eyes opening fully.

                                            “I swear I didn’t do anything like that.”

                                            >You finally take your hands off Celestia’s back, to hold them up in a placating gesture.

                                            >”Anon, we… er…”

                                            “I’m dead serious. She’s fucking with you. I promise.”

                                            >Luna’s apparently still trying to process what she’s looking at, judging by how she’s blinking.

                                            >You stand up and step to the left away from Celestia, who rolls onto her right side after. She’s looking between you and Luna with that damnable grin again.

                                            >”Anon, if thou desirest her…”

                                            >”Oh I’m sure he does, but he’s far too pure of heart to act on it. Despite my not so subtle test, his innocence remains intact. Sister, you have yourself a keeper. And I mean it about those hands; why don’t you feel for yourself?”

                                            >”I need to get a reference for the meeting this evening, for-”

                                            >”Nonsense. Let the stallion pamper you.”

                                            >You shrug, then gesture to the open floor to your left.

                                            >After some hemming and hawing, Luna drops her head and slowly walks over, turning in place and dropping to the floor in the same manner her sister initially did.

                                            >You crouch next to her, wrapping your arm around her neck to hold the opposite side of her head and pull it against yours. Your fingers play with the base of her ear on that side.

                                            “Evening, sleepyhead.”

                                            >”Mrmph.”

                                            >Her ear next to your face flicks at your temple.

                                            >You laugh as you get yourself in the same position you’d just left over Celestia.

                                            >Luna’s smaller size means you have access to everything, from your position over her waist.

                                            >You get to work, applying what you learned from your work across Celestia’s body.

                                            >It doesn’t take long for Luna to be almost totally limp, only upright thanks to your thighs on either side of her body. She sways a little every time you need to use a more vigorous motion.

                                            >Unlike Celestia’s silence, she’s a bit more vocal.

                                            >Her nickering, you realize, has what you guess is a more intentionally voiced component; it has a unique timbre that Twilight’s doesn’t, something that you could mistake for some different kind of sound. You’ve never heard another pony mask it that way, and Celestia doesn’t do it at all. Was it considered uncouth for royalty to admit to pleasure in such a base way? Or some old taboo from their original time?

                                            >When did you pick up so much about pony reactions?

                                            >Probably since you’ve been surrounding yourself with three of their finest specimens to study.

                                            >Jeeze, now you’re thinking like Twilight.

                                            >”Cadance is coming in a few days,” Celestia says, watching you work over her sister. “I know you two haven’t spoken in some time. I think you have a lot to catch up on.”

                                            >Luna doesn’t respond.

                                            >She’s stopped reacting to your motions, too.

                                            >Celestia eyes you, the slightly tosses her head towards her sister’s

                                            >You lean over her back to listen to her breathing.

                                            >It’s the deep, even breathing of sleep.

                                            “Well shit. I knocked her out again.”

                                            >Celestia gets to her hooves, then makes her way to the two of you and kneels again. “She always took too long to get up.” She looks up at you then, with a twinkle in her eyes. “She looks so comfortable. Why don’t we join her?”

                                            >You stand as Celestia snuggles up to her sister’s side. It wakes Luna up, but she just mumbles something unintelligible, then lays her head over Celestia’s back.

                                            >There’s just enough room in the tangle of legs and wings for you to get comfy yourself, if you sit and sort of recline back onto them.

                                            >It takes some shifting on your and Celestia’s part – Luna doesn’t move a single muscle – but you find a way to arrange yourself comfortably.

                                            >Once you do, you’re covered by a pair of wings, one dark blue and one white.

                                            >Who knew living blankets are the best blankets?

                                            >You fish your phone out of your pocket – careful not to jab Luna with your elbow – and set an alarm for the evening’s meeting.

                                            >Maybe there’s something to be said for naps after all.