Five Star Service – The Wings To Fly

By Five Stars of Manehattan
Special to the New York Life and Manehattan Post magazines
July 13 issues

New York Life Chief Editor’s Note:

We thought we had reached an accommodation with our critics regarding the publication of Five Stars’ articles, but it appears not as many of our subscribers are reporting that banks and online transaction websites are no longer willing to do business with our magazine, under pressure from various groups to sever ties with us as purveyors of pornography and obscenity. This for the simple act of running articles that are less lurid than plenty of things you can get nowadays at a corner newsstand or bookstore.

Rest assured we will fight this effort will all legal means at our disposal—we’re flush with cash and have had plenty of offers from various groups to provide legal assistance—but we have other means to make our displeasure known as well. We agreed to allow ‘equal space’ for opposing viewpoints in exchange for an end to the legal actions against us. We are now rescinding that offer until our opponents abide by the terms of our original agreement.

—Kalido Tema, Chief Editor, New York Life Magazine

Manehattan Post Owner’s Note:

I have to say, my counterparts at the New York Life are a lot more restrained than I am under the circumstances. My vendors have reported attempts to bully them as well, and I regret to say some have given in to veiled threats to stop selling my magazine or face boycotts, even prison time for everything from ‘advertising human comfort horses’ to ‘promoting interspecies indecency’… and even the utterly ridiculous charge of ‘undermining harmony’.

As the aim of this action appears to be to force us to stop running the articles lest we be forced out of business by denying us middleponies to do business with, I offer this ultimatum in return: cease and desist your efforts to silence us… or I will run the articles in our regular issue and make our money the old-fashioned way—hiring teenaged ponies to hawk my magazines on street corners from here to Las Pegasus. And don’t think we’ll have any shortage of volunteers or customers.

Think I’m bluffing? Try me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my favorite Gentleman…

—Hot Topic, Owner and Founder, Manehattan Post Magazine

Dear readers—

Three weeks since my return, I’ve had a chance to catch up with my mail and what’s been going on in my absence. The “accommodation” reached by the two magazines appears precarious at best, and I’ve also gotten a great deal of fan mail and an occasional angry earful from the small mountain of letters that followed the Q&A session.

It appears trouble followed in my wake out west, courtesy of some overzealous media members. Braeburn had to get a restraining order against one persistent reporter, which was promptly ignored until his family and friends banded together to escort her and the entire media circus out of Dodge, where he’d been trying to lay low until media interest blew over.

There was some trouble in Las Pegasus after I left as well. Our Las Pegasus office has been besieged by new clients, which is good, but anonymous threats have been made against our Gentlemen there and several of our large advertising billboards were vandalized by somepony who painted “DECIEVERS” on the front (word to the wisepony—if you’re trying to make a statement, you might start by spelling it right). A little pathetic, but another reminder that there are ponies out there who don’t appreciate gentlemen or those who work with them.

I also didn’t learn this until after I got back, but Aces Up and Double Down are in trouble again. They apparently took exception to some of the more aggressive paparazzi harassing them and their herd, and made an example of a couple, stranding an earth pony photographer on a small cloud high in the air with a short-acting cloudwalking potion, threatening to let her fall if she didn’t promise to leave them alone, and then giving similar treatment to an equally intrusive human reporter by dangling him high above The Street by the ankles, eventually dropping him into the lake at the Buffalogio with the promise of more and worse if he didn’t back off. They ended up spending a week in jail for those incidents and paying a hefty fine.

I can’t say I blame them this time around, and apparently neither did Rising Star, since she paid their bail and hired an attorney for them. The boys were never ones to take things lying down and neither was she, promptly banning the media from her casino resort without prior appointments. For my part, all I can do is once again ask my readers to please leave my past lovers be, not just for them but for their friends, mares and foals. This also means not buying any publication that’s running lies or lurid exposés about them. I accept that I’ll probably always have attention myself at this point, but there’s no need for everypony else to.

Lastly, I’d like to address a common thread I’m seeing in my hate mail. I’d say around seventy percent of what I read was supportive, but of the remainder, the strong majority were written by human women, detailing in exact terms how various men had wronged them in an apparent effort to prove to me that men are NOT better than stallions and unworthy of my respect or defense.

It made for some rather depressing reading at times, to which I’ll simply respond as follows: I know full well there are some bad men out there. I ran into a couple, which I’ll detail in due time. But to those women, what you don’t get is this: you have other options.

If a man treats you badly, you can find another one, a better one. With so many men to choose from, there’s plenty of fish in the sea for you, to borrow another human idiom I’ve heard Gentlemen use. For a mare in a herd, however… that’s far more difficult. With so few stallions and so much competition for them, it’s often very difficult for a mare to find a new stallion, to the point that they’ll often remain in a bad herd situation… as I did more than once. I was very lucky to get as many chances at new herds as I did, and yet… the quality of my herds and herd stallions only seemed to go down with each new attempt. An experience I’m sure other mares have shared as well.

Apologies if it sounds like I’m rambling, but in all honesty, I’m feeling a little guilty right now over what’s happened with Braeburn and the boys. I know I helped bring this upon them, and there’s not much I can do to help them except write my next article and hope that the next lover I write about will take pressure off the previous ones.

Fortunately, that lover is somepony who’s quite used to celebrity and can handle the attention. An old friend I ran into very unexpectedly towards the end of my stay in Las Pegasus, playing in a celebrity poker tournament. He was as shocked—and delighted—to see me as I was him, and we caught up over dinner the last night before I left.

I actually wasn’t going to tell our story (at least not without taking great pains to hide his identity), but he’s all but insisting I do so, reminding me how important it was for both of us. He’s also given me his permission to use his real name—not much point in hiding it given all the pictures snapped of us and later appearing in the tabloids when we hugged and kissed!

The Road Back

The night of my dreamtime rescue marked a turning point for me… for which I thank you again, dear Princess of the Night.

As my sleep improved, so did my mood and progress. The flashbacks and panic attacks became fewer and further between—not unlike the ‘phases’ that potion brought on when I was being weaned off it, I later thought—and my therapy sessions got much more productive; I didn’t need the anti-anxiety treatments as often. Helping Hoof and I talked about the induced fears of intimacy and feelings of betrayal I had, slowly working through them over the next few months.

As time went on, things continued to get better and I finally felt well enough to start working again, though I still shied away from dating or anything physical. I joined the staff of a new inn that had just opened up on the Baltimare waterfront, a place that seemed low-stress and needed an experienced concierge to help get it off the ground. With my previous work record and Rising Star’s reference in hoof, I got the job easily, though I was very relieved when they didn’t ask me about the circumstances of my leaving Las Pegasus, or Manehattan before that.

Finally, somewhere around early summer, more than nine months after my abortive Las Pegasus honeymoon and following six months of counseling, my therapist pronounced me ‘fit to fornicate’ again—an interesting turn of phrase, I’ll admit—but advised me to take it very slow and easy; find somepony who would be okay with a slow pace and to not go looking for a new herd right away. “Not until you decide that’s what you really want,” she warned me. “Your first job is to ease back into intimacy, and find a partner who’ll go that speed.”

As luck would have it, I already knew where I might find one.

There was a young colt I knew, a sky-blue pegasus with a cloud-colored mane and green eyes who worked as a courier and came by the inn once or twice a week to deliver messages and packages to guests. He was significantly younger than me, nineteen and still trying to figure out what to do with himself; I’d spoken to him a couple times when he was delivering packages to us and found him polite and more than a little bashful—which, needless to say, are not traits you normally associate with a pegasus! Most are brash and assertive, the product of a competition-based culture and upbringing steeped in warrior tradition.

Deciding I was more or less ready and it was time to take my first step into the dating world again, I finally got up the nerve to ask him out. To my surprise he visibly froze at the question, becoming quite tense. I was so startled by his reaction I froze as well, uncertain what I’d said or done wrong. He hemmed and hawed like he wasn’t sure how to reply; I had to assure him I wouldn’t take offense if he said no.

He didn’t say yea or neigh right away, asking for some time to think about it. Though confused, I told him to take all the time he wanted, and that the offer remained open if he ever decided to accept. Well, it took some waiting, and no little patience—something I don’t normally have when I’m interested in a male—but a few weeks later he finally came back and said yes. I think my aversion to intimacy actually worked in my favor this time, as I didn’t push or press him. He wasn’t ready, after all, and neither was I for many weeks more. Instead… as my therapist advised, we eased in to things very slowly, starting by seeing each other for very casual lunch and dinner dates around once a week, occasionally watching a film or taking a walk down by the waterfront.

It wasn’t instant—nothing we did was—but he gradually opened up to me. He said he wanted to race and see the world, following ‘in the wingbeats’ of his grandfather, a famous pegasus racer, and that his greatest dream was to win the Equestrian 500, a grueling five hundred mile marathon around Equestria. He even showed me a pair of brown pleather flight goggles given to him by his grandfather, and at my suggestion he started wearing them on his courier runs for inspiration, practicing high-speed passes through streets and alleyways while making deliveries. The more I saw him, the more I liked him. He was earnest and hardworking, full of hopes and dreams…

He was also painfully shy and awkward; having this tendency to stammer and berate himself quite loudly whenever he thought he’d done something wrong. Nothing wrong with a little self-deprecation, but he took it to new heights, and his reactions to me—to an interested mare—weren’t like a normal colt at all.

At first, I wondered if his reluctance might be due to the fact he was a colt-cuddler, but as time went by and I saw him more often, I realized that definitely wasn’t the case—not with all those furtive looks he was giving me, or the fact that he almost seemed to be hiding from me at times… which I finally figured out was because he was having some trouble restraining his wings around me, which kept trying to stiffen. Suffice it to say, he was interested in me, but didn’t know how to express it for the longest time. Months, even.

Regardless, our interest was mutual, which I found surprising whenever I thought about it. He wasn’t my age or even really my type, which to that point had tended to go towards stronger and more assertive males, yet he sparked something in me. I don’t know if it was maternal instinct or simply a mare’s innate desire to take care of a stallion, but more and more, I wanted to help him break out of his shell…

And more and more, I realized there was only one way I could do it.

To Heal Another…

Things finally came to a head one warm evening in late August. We’d just met for dinner—my treat—and were taking our customary walk by waterfront with few other ponies around, just chatting. He’d finally confided in me a week before the reason he constantly berated himself—his younger sister was in a deep coma in Canterlot Hospital, caused by a long fall she’d sustained after trying to emulate a feat of her big brother, climbing to high altitude and then going into a speed dive.

It had been a near-fatal mistake as she’d climbed higher than her young lungs could manage, passing out and nearly plummeting to her death. She’d woken up at a lower altitude, but her immature wings were unable to arrest her descent in time and she suffered severe injuries on impact, putting her in a deep coma she might never come out of. He was out working at the time but held himself responsible since she’d been injured trying to emulate him, further compounded by the fact they were orphans and he’d promised their passed parents at their graveside that he’d look after his younger sister.

So he was basically berating himself to both mask his sorrow and punish himself over the belief that he’d failed in his duty as a big brother. It was far too much guilt and grief for any one pony to take, especially one so young, and put my own issues in perspective. In fact, mine outright paled in comparison.

In return, I told him I understood well the pain of losing parents, and that I didn’t think they—or his sister—would hold him responsible for what happened. “You weren’t there because you were out working, trying to earn the money to support you both. So how could you have stopped it?” I told him as he broke down completely, crying for his lost parents and sister; looking back, I honestly think that was the first time he truly allowed himself to grieve. “It’s all right. Ssshhh…” I told him as he sobbed on my shoulder, later walking him home. He lived in a small apartment which still had his sister’s room… nothing had been moved from it; it looked like he had left it the way it was in hope of her eventual return.

Not wanting to leave him alone in that state, I ended up staying the night with him, holding him in bed and doing what I could to ease his pain; my heart went out to him even as some part of me acknowledged that that was the first time since my honeymoon that I’d shared a bed with a stallion. He did finally sleep, but appeared to be in the throes of nightmares, so I held him close and sang the same song that was sung to me, giving him a kiss on the cheek when I finished.

It was a good feeling as I felt his restlessness cease. Not just for helping him, but for the reminder that there was no requirement to have sex when I slept with somepony…

That there were other, equally powerful forms of intimacy than purely physical.

… is to Heal Oneself

In hindsight, that night marked a breakthrough for us as a couple. His greatest secret revealed and his grief expressed, he finally opened up to me fully, asking to see me more and more often. In fact, that August night was the third time we’d seen each other that week.

Dusk found us sitting together alone at the end of a long pier, quietly watching the moonrise when I took a chance and rested my head on his shoulder, carefully gauging my own reaction as well as his. He was a little startled and uncertain, while myself… I looked for but found no fear or tension within me. I inhaled softly, smelled his masculine scent and felt his powerful body and for the first time… felt my urges truly begin to stir in his presence. As usual, my new coltfriend (by then I was starting to think of him that way) wasn’t sure what to do at first, but finally took a deep breath and returned the gesture, resting his head on top of mine.

We stayed that way for several minutes before I made another move, grasping his hoof in my own. He allowed me to, but I could feel him shaking a bit as we did so. “Hey… you okay?” I asked him.

“Y-yeah…” he finally managed but I realized he was lying; I could feel him trembling against me like he was trying mightily to hold something back. I felt something on his flank pushing against me and realized what it was—his wings were trying to pop up again; he was having a harder and harder time restraining them around them. I could taste his arousal in the air around us, feel him shift uncomfortably against me as he tried to hold in his wings… and a certain other anatomical feature a little further lower and back.

With that, I overrode my remaining misgivings and took the plunge, sensing the time was finally right… for both of us. “Hey…”

“Y-yes?”

“Do you… want me?” I asked the fateful question.

His eyes went wide and wings answered for him, going instantly erect in the moonlight. He pulled back from me, mortified. “S-sorry… STOP APOLOGIZING YOU IDIOT!” He shouted at himself like he usually did. “THIS IS NO WAY TO TREAT A—!”

I called his name and put a hoof against his mouth, shushing him. “You’re not doing anything wrong. I’m a mare, you’re a stallion, and what you’re experiencing is exactly what you should feel for a mare you like,” I told him gently. “So if you want me... you can have me,” I felt my own legs going weak at the suggestion, as fear clawed at me but to my surprise and relief… found no real purchase on my psyche or soul. I simply stood there before him, in offering, feeling an odd calm descend over me.

“I-I…” he stammered but his wings answered for him, popping up into a full-on wingboner as his eyes roved all over me. He turned away, presenting a slightly comical scene as he simultaneously tried to hide his face, aroused wings, and rigid shaft all at the same time. Any other time in my life, a stallion acting this way towards me might have been off-putting, but here, his antics were utterly endearing—this poor, painfully shy colt who simply didn’t know what to do or how to properly express his interest.

He needed help. My help, I realized, and I resolved right then and there I would give it to him. Sometimes we need to help others in order to help ourselves, I remembered my therapist saying, and I think it was only then I truly understood what she meant—that by helping him, I’d be helping myself as well. “Hey… it’s okay…” I walked up to him and gently turned his head to face mine, let him see my eyes—see the warmth and compassion in them; that I would not force or reject him.

“B-but…” despite my reassuring tone he still looked ready to bolt, but he couldn’t fly off with his wings in that state, or easily gallop off with a rock-hard stallionhood either.

“Ssshhh…” I cooed to him softly. “It’s all right. It’s your first time, and you’re afraid. It’s normal,” I assured him, my own fears ebbing as I spoke just from the simple fact that he needed me to be strong and take the lead here (and Cayenne, if you’re reading this, I’d like you to know that much of what I did here, I learned from you—I treated him with the same deference and gentleness you treated me my first time!) “We won’t do anything you’re not ready to,” I assured him, sensing I was saying it as much to myself as to him.

“Th-thanks…” he managed, still looking shaky, his eyes darting all over; I could tell how badly he wanted to do something with me, even if he still couldn’t figure out what it was or how to go about it. “Wh-what do I do?” he finally asked, his voice equal parts shaky and husky.

What indeed?

First Contact

I began by simply inviting him explore my body to his heart’s content, there in the moonlight. It was an offer he accepted with both eagerness and trepidation as I felt him nose and inspect me from every angle, and finally—with no little prodding and my explicit and repeated permission—he began to touch me with hoof, wing and muzzle, starting at my neck. I could feel him shaking as he drew his stiffened wingtip along it, drinking in its feminine curve as he touched a mare for the very first time. He started when I asked him if he liked it, drawing back immediately; I had to assure him repeatedly it was okay.

And it was okay, I realized to some surprise. I wasn’t recoiling from his touch; I wasn’t having flashbacks or anxiety attacks like I had before. It was only later I realized why—it was because I had to be strong and sure for him; if I panicked here he’d be gravely wounded and the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt this tender young colt. In other words, I didn’t care about myself so much as making sure he got the best first time possible—much like Cayenne had once done for me. I just knew that if he enjoyed it, I would too.

He continued his explorations, moving onto my flank. His touch was tentative but tender, weak but worshipful… I was something he’d never experienced before, and he almost seemed afraid that I wasn’t real—that this wasn’t really happening. He seemed a little frustrated by the fact I didn’t have wings and he simply didn’t know where my erogenous zones were as an earth pony—he knew where they were on a pegasus since he was one, but was completely bewildered by my wingless body.

Well, for those humans who are curious and as I told him… earth pony mares are generally sensitive on our neck and belly, our nethers (of course), our hooves, and some of us really go for being grasped by the hips—which is something only humans seem to be able to do well. The poor colt, however just didn’t know what to do; all he knew were what he’d seen in magazines or movies—which, I say once again, are a bad place to get lovemaking tips from. I had to gently guide him along, never pushing, letting him explore at his own pace.

Slowly, he started getting more into it; his increasingly aroused wings provided ample evidence of it as his feathers stood out ever more stiffly. Taking a chance, I asked him if he would like me to touch them. “O-only if you’d… l-like to…” he managed in a tone that managed to be equal parts fearful and husky, and said he very much wanted me to. I obliged him, putting the skills I’d originally learned with Cayenne to good use. I nibbled at the sensitive leading edge and then moved on to preening his feathers gently with my teeth—not something I usually enjoyed doing (flecks of feathers in the teeth aren’t much fun), but for him, and out of a desire to give him the best first time I could, I overrode my distaste.

He went weak-kneed as I continued my efforts, giving little gasps and whinnies as I went. “Enjoying yourself?” I asked as I moved closer to his flank. His only answer was a whimpering moan and the steady dripping of his shaft beneath his belly—my little colt was coming out to play! Finally, I reached the junction of his wings and shoulders and attacked his flight muscles directly. He bucked hard at the contact, and then something happened that I’ve never seen before or since; something that outright scared me when it happened—he cried out and CAME! Just from THAT! He climaxed from my wing stimulation alone, and it was quite a sight to behold as his wings splayed hard and then clamped down hard on his sides—on my head. His shaft, which I’d never even touched, spurted hard all over his belly and the wooden deck as he collapsed on his side, in a visible daze.

Then he started to cry. “S-sorry…” He said over and over for not being able to last, but I hardly held that against him—he’d been so keyed up for so long over me that… well, the human term is “blue balls”, and given his coat color, it doubly applied to him.

The Mane Event

I laid down beside him and held him gently for the next five minutes, cradling his head under mine, telling him it was fine as he cried himself out. He was crying for two reasons, as it turned out. The first was simply out of sheer gratitude over what I’d done for him—he’d finally known sexual release after years of pent up urges and frustration, which now poured out of him uncontrollably—and the second was an absolutely adorable but very welcome sentiment that he’d come so quickly he hadn’t been able to satisfy me!

He was terrified that having come prematurely meant he was a bad lover and I would leave him for it, leave him with just the barest taste of a lady’s love on his tongue, never to know it again. No amount of reassurance would convince him differently, and five minutes later, I decided it was time to take this colt by the reins. I silenced his fears with a kiss—our first—and pulled back long enough to see his dazed expression. I smiled reassuringly before I reached into kiss him again. He let me take the lead and I did so, gradually deepening our kissing as I sensed his comfort level would allow it, until finally our tongues met and we began to explore each other’s muzzle in earnest. When we finally broke it and pulled back, he was looking at me in wonder and sheer worship as he awaited what I would do next…

It was a question I was considering myself. I thought about performing oral on him, but quickly decided against it—the last thing he needed was kinkiness right now. I likewise decided against stroking him manually with my hoof, since there was a chance that could bring him to climax again, which he seemed to think made him somehow less of a stallion.

We could work on that later, but for now, I decided, it was time to give him what he wanted and let him become the stallion he so badly wanted to be. He was ready and I was too, no misgivings remained as I stood up and faced away from him, giving the universal signal of an interested mare—flagging my tail at him, displaying myself to him fully. He stood there spellbound for a moment, seemingly trying desperately to hold himself back. He's almost there, I sensed, and I knew exactly what button to push. “You want me? Take me,” I invited him in my huskiest voice, winking my marehood at him for emphasis. He stood rigid for a moment more, his wings and organ painfully erect, his fears fighting a losing war with his desires… until finally, with a second wink of my marehood and sudden trickle of liquid down my leg, he all but tackled me.

There’s a good colt! I couldn’t help but think, bracing myself as he mounted me. He fumbled with the right position for a moment, trying to find my entrance. I found myself wishing I was a unicorn so I could guide him into me properly… a thought that lasted barely a second before he his frantic thrusts found their mark and drove the head of shaft into me. “Ah!” we both cried out as he stopped briefly as if to regather his wits and make sure I was okay with it; I answered by pushing back against him, forcing another inch of him inside me and eliciting a ragged breath. “Th-that’s…” he couldn’t find the words for how good it felt, so he simply expressed his pleasure and desire for more as any good stallion would—by thrusting, pushing himself ever deeper into me.

And myself?

I don’t know how to describe how I felt, except maybe released… and even that doesn’t even begin to do it justice. I sensed I was finally freeing myself from the horrors of my past, and I savored it. Savored the feeling of finally letting go, of healing myself…

Of finally feeling whole and truly living again.

It was powerful. It was wonderful. It was an ordeal finally ending, and had the fireworks to suit the occasion. Still, I had little time or inclination to consider the implications as his thrusts got stronger and quicker and it soon became clear he wasn’t going to last much longer. “F-Five Stars…!” He called out in a ragged voice. “I c-can’t… I’m g-gonna…” I sensed his body tense and heard his sharp intake of breath.

“Do it!” I told him though my own squeezed-shut eyes and gritted teeth, savoring every inch of his organ inside me. “It’s all right. Just let go! Take me! Give it all to me!” I implored him, the knowledge that I was to be his first mare, that I was teaching him to be a stallion pushing me the rest of the way over the edge. Already there himself, he needed no further encouragement than that, slamming his hips forward for the last time and emptying his long-suffering apples into me as I rode him to my first climax in nearly a year, screaming his name into the deepening night and milking his no-longer-virgin shaft for every drop it held.

That was just the opening round in what turned out to be a wonderful night. When we’d finally recovered enough, we went to his place and picked up right where we left off. He had the potency of youth and was ready to go again frequently while I seemed to be trying to make up for a yearlong drought all at once, each round leaving me wanting even more.

And he obliged me quite happily. Each time he gained in confidence a little more, each time I let him take just a little more of the lead until finally, he was riding me with gusto, servicing me with everything he could muster. It wasn’t just simple rutting, either—he was a quick study and figured out even without my prompting the right way to nip, to nuzzle, and to kiss, learned where all my sensitive spots were just by watching my reactions… and he hit them all over and over again, bringing me to a climax repeatedly.

We slept in deep the next morning, curled up in a tangle of legs and bodies, the sheets tangled and sweaty but both of us beyond caring. When I finally woke up sometime after noon snuggled together with my new coltfriend, all I could think was…

I’m BACK, baby!

That was just the start for us. We maintained our relationship off and on for the next couple years, using each other as a refuge when things were going badly (as they would all too frequently), leaning on each other when we needed to. And yet… there was no thought on either of our parts of deepening it, trying to form a herd. I was six years older than him, and I could tell he was not the type to settle down, certainly not so soon in his life. He was a restless spirit who needed to fly and find himself, and finally he had the wings to do so.

And find himself he did. With me there to support and cheer him, he began to race on weekends, slowly making his name through local events, later graduating to the Manehattan regional racing circuit and finally making the national and international racing leagues. It took him a few years and some false starts, but he eventually got there… and is still there now, considered an elite racer on his way to being one of the all-time greats.

I like to think I played a role in that. In my mind, what I did for that colt is something Gentlemen have done for many a mare—helped them to break out of their shell, show them what they can have and what they can be. There are even a couple Gentlemen I know who seem to specialize in this sort of thing, who gravitate to wounded mares and attempt to heal them, and they’re all the more special to me for it. I said before that I might consider settling down with a man? Well, two Gentlemen in particular would be prime candidates for that reason.

For as down as I am on stallions sometimes, there’s no denying that they too need love and careful nurturing before they can fully realize their potential and promise. Despite our lopsided mare-to-stallion ratio, there’s too many who never do.

But this one did. Remember also how I said that I’ve only ever known two stallions who put a mare’s pleasure before their own? Well… Cayenne was the first; this young colt was the second. From what I heard in Las Pegasus, I daresay Aces Up and Double Down now fit the bill as well, but… that was more in reaction to what happened to me.

The job of a Gentleman is not just to treat and fete; it’s to hold and help, not just to service and sate, but to caress and comfort, to lend a sympathetic shoulder and ear. In telling this story, I’ve been reminded of that simple fact… and that no matter how badly wounded you are, there is hope; you can heal.

By now, it seems I can’t have an article without beginning or ending with a letter, and this time is no exception. I imagine most Equestrian readers can guess the name of my mystery lover now, and for my human ones, you just have to open to the sports page of an Equestrian newspaper to read his exploits. So without further ado…

Hey, Five Stars.

It was great to see you again in Las Pegasus, and I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend more time together. Our lives have taken us apart but I still look back on you very fondly, recalling our many encounters over the years.

As I remember our time together, I guess what strikes me is the unlikeliness of it all. We had little in common, just two birds that passed in the sky, and yet… there we were. You had your own traumas while I was, as humans say, a basket case back then, a guilt-wracked wreck of a pony having no confidence and some serious self-esteem issues.

But you were exactly what I needed to overcome them—you were kind, you were patient, you genuinely wanted to help me… and not just help yourself to a fragile colt that would have been all too easy to take advantage of… and all too easily hurt. On a related note, I’ve read your articles and notice you’re often quite down on stallions, mostly for taking mares for granted and not reciprocating attention.

Well, take it from me—there are mares like that too and I’ve encountered a few too many of them along the way. For some mares, it seems, once they realize you’re willing to put out to pleasure them, they don’t try as hard back. They get it in their head they’re entitled to be rutted on their own terms, and forget about their partner. Because of that, I sympathize with you completely when you say that the herd doesn’t work with you; it didn’t for me either—my two attempts at being a herd stallion ended badly, as I’m sure you read in the tabloids. One in particular I’m still paying for to this day.

Like you, I needed something more than pony society or herds could offer me, and like you, I finally found exactly what I needed not with my own kind but with a different race entirely, discovering a soulmate in the arms and wings of a sky griffon eagless named Lenora Arielle (no point in hiding her name since our relationship by now is all over the tabloids anyway!) Our meeting was pure chance, just crossing paths on our respective courier routes, but now we’re as passionate lovers in bed as we are fierce competitors in the air—to be honest our pre-rutting sparring ‘rounds’ usually consist of races and aerial duels!

I guess the one thing I would say to you and all your readers is be careful not to stereotype—what holds for a group may not hold for an individual. I’ve always tried to treat my ladies well, like you taught me, but one of the more bitter lessons I had to learn was that just because you do so doesn’t mean they’ll do so back. I’ve had a few human lovers by now too, and find that a rather mixed bag—some are absolutely wonderful, some decidedly not.

For us, we were never meant to be more than occasional lovers, and I’m fine with that as I’m sure you are. It was exactly what we both needed back then; trying to turn it into anything more would have spoiled what we had. Reading about what happened to you now, I do wish I could have been there for you a little earlier but Celestia knows I wasn’t ready for anything until you came along.

When all is said and done, it’s no exaggeration to say that you gave me my wings, Five Stars. You turned a fearful colt into a stallion; gave him the ability to realize his potential and the drive to pursue his dreams. And if this—through your Gentlemen now—is what you continue to do for other ponies, then all I can say is… carry on!

It was wonderful to see you again, and I’ll make a point to swing by Manehattan next race season to visit. Might even like to meet some of your Gentlemen. And please let your readers know that thanks to human medicine, my sister has finally come out of her coma! She’s got a long road back, but rest assured her big brother will be there for her every step of the way… just as you were there for me.

With warm thoughts and great gratitude,

—Cruise Control

PS: It was good to finally meet you after I’ve heard so much about you, Five Stars. Not much I would say that hasn’t been said already, except… thanks for breaking him in for me!

—Lenora Arielle

You’re very welcome, Lenora. And thanks, Cruise. You don’t know how much it warms my heart to hear you say all that. You taught me a few things as well, you know—that I could still live and love, that I enjoyed the role of teacher… and that I was at my best when helping other ponies. All things that would eventually carry over into my job with Gentlemen.

Looking back, one additional lesson was stark from my time with you—that I didn’t need a herd to be happy. But it would take a couple more failures before that finally began to sink in.

A new chapter and as promised, the appearance of a certain crossover character from a certain other work I'm heavily involved with. Thanks to Permanent Temporary for the once-over. Hope you like! Also... forgive another plug, but the deadtree version of my new book is now available! If you like my stuff, give this a try--it's adult anthropomorphic fiction, and I like to think quite good. Available in Paperback and Kindle.