Five Star Service - Discordant Harmony

By Five Stars of Manehattan
Special to the New York Life and Manehattan Post magazines
February 9 issues

New York Life Editor’s Note: following the joint publication of the initial article, our two magazines have received a great deal of mail and comments over the past two weeks, many supportive of our decision to publish these articles but some decidedly not, accusing us of everything of ‘promoting interspecies indecency’ to corrupting the minds of our youth.

After due consideration and discussion among our mutual staffs, we have decided that the articles will continue in their uncensored form. These articles are designed to be thought-provoking and inspire debate, and thus far they have clearly succeeded in that goal. We understand we will likely lose subscriptions over this, and that is the reader’s choice. We remind all who may find these article offensive that you have the choice to not read it, or bring it into your home.

For our human readers, the article is marked adult and if accessed on the internet will be blocked by any competent parental control filter software. For our pony ones, the solution is simple: don’t buy it if you don’t want to read it, and stop complaining if others do.

There’s a human saying I’ve heard once or twice that “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

Ponies have a similar maxim when it comes to dealing with herds. We say ‘three’s comfy, four’s too cramped.’ Over the next year and a half I would learn the truth of that, as with my addition, Burning Heart’s herd now numbered four mares.

In hindsight, the warning signs were there from the start. The night I was invited to join the herd, Autumn Leaf barely touched her dinner, her smiles forced and her words of welcome clipped; she was the last to extend a hoof to me when Burning Heart presented me with his feather. Then when I moved into my new herd’s hotel suite the following week—living at the hotel was far easier and cheaper than trying to keep our own home given the high Manehattan cost of living—I was given my own room, which I later found out had been Autumn Leaf’s office and study. And she was none too happy about giving it up for me.

On the other hoof, Snow Lily was certainly happy to have me—she was a hotel masseuse and we got along quite well. Will’o’Wisp, or “Willow” as I’ll call her, welcomed me warmly as well, though I wasn’t as well-acquainted with her. In her case, being a thestrel, she was somewhat more reclusive and reluctant to be seen in public outside of her occupation… rather ironic given that she was a singer and dancer of some repute, performing at our hotel’s nightly shows.

In fairness, being a thestrel meant she was subject to a great deal of bias and suspicion even before Nightmare Moon’s short-lived resurrection. With their slightly predatory and (some would say) sinister appearance, including darker coats, bat wings, pointed fangs and cat-like eyes that could see in the dark, there were many ponies who believed (and sadly, still do) that thestrels were ‘servants of the night’; harbingers of evil that could not be trusted.

It shames me to say such sentiments only got worse after that night, with many believing (without any evidence at all) that the ‘bad bat ponies’ had aided and abetted Nightmare Moon’s return. There were many nights poor Willow came home crying either from the abuse she’d taken at work or just watching ponies avoid her; she was particularly bothered by mares seeing her and shielding their foals from her, as if they were afraid she would spirit them away or suck their blood as certain popular books and films had suggested…

You know, for a society that’s supposed to be all about harmony and above such petty prejudice, I’m sorry to say we ponies can be as susceptible to it as anyone else. Remind me to go on a rant about the stigma of being a ‘colt-cuddler’ or ‘misborn’ another time.

A Herd in Harmony

This is a herd at its best: when one member is having difficulty, whether mare or stallion, the others step up in support.

And so we all did. It began with Autumn Leaf, who as hotel manager rearranged her best entertainer’s schedule to give her some time off and made sure hotel security was around her at all times. Next came Burning Heart, who spent more time with a wounded Willow, trying to reassure her that she was still part of the herd and he wouldn’t let her go. When he wasn’t available, Snow Lily and I kept our thestrel herdmate company as much as possible, letting her cry on our shoulders, and we all made a show of treating her nicely when going out with her in public, trying to make it clear to all that she was part of our herd and if you disrespected her, you were disrespecting all of us. Given Burning Heart’s status as head chef and the fact that his lead mare was the hotel manager, it even worked… at least within the confines of the hotel.

That brings me to my next point. In theory, all mares in a herd are equal and the stallion gives each equal attention and love. In practice, that’s not the case at all—there is a hierarchy within herds that has to be respected, though it’s more pronounced in some than others. Most stallions tend to have favorites, and most herds have what is informally called a ‘lead mare’, which has authority over the other mares and gets the bulk of a stallion’s attention. We had a particularly bossy one in Autumn Leaf, as I quickly found out she had a tendency to run roughshod over the rest of us to get her way.

The upshot is that as the newest mare, I was entering at the bottom of the herd hierarchy, meaning that despite the impression that first night had left me with, I would basically get whatever attention and affection was left over after he’d gotten to the others. In fairness to Burning Heart, it’s a lot to ask any stallion to service and keep happy a herd of four mares, particularly when we’re all trying to juggle competing work schedules.

The problem was that those work schedules were arranged by our hotel manager lead mare, who I was slowly coming to realize didn’t want me in the herd. She seemed to consider me a threat somehow, even though I had no interest in usurping her as long as I got my share of Burning Heart’s attention.

It was becoming apparent over time she was doing her best to deny me that, however, trying to schedule my shifts so that my time off didn’t coincide with Burning Heart’s. Not wanting to rock the boat or disturb the herd I was so happy to belong to so early on, I kept quiet and accepted it, hoping she would come to trust me and allow me more access to him over time.

It was somewhat better for the others. Snow Lily was the second mare, for lack of a better term, on at least half-decent terms with Autumn Leaf and that meant she got him for a night about once or twice a week or so; and Willow—once the shock of Nightmare Moon’s return had worn off and ponies weren’t quite so suspicious of her—about once every other week.

Great for them, but where did that leave me?

Mare-on-Mare Relationships

Female-to-female relationships are somewhat rare in human society, I’ve gathered from working with Gentlemen, and tend to be a source of much titillation among human males. I guess that’s a luxury you have when your race has equal gender ratios.

But in Equestria, with the female-to-male ratio running at worse than three to one, they’re a given and even expected, both within the herd and outside of it. There simply aren’t enough stallions to go around, so mares, particularly those without a herd, make do. That’s fine if you’re a mare who’s into other mares, like Snow Lily or especially Willow were, but not so good for mares like me, who almost exclusively want stallions.

In the confines of a herd, mares are expected to take care of each other as well as their herd stallions. Fortunately, for as jealous and unapproachable as Autumn Leaf was, Willow and Snow Lily were friendly and outgoing, good herdmates as well as good coworkers, as devoted to each other as they were to Burning Heart. They slept with each other when they weren’t sleeping with him, which made things easier for them.

To be fair, they invited me to join their nightly intimacy sessions and once in a while, if I was feeling particularly randy and wanted company… I would. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it that much at first, remembering how little my two previous attempts at mare-on-mare action in school did for me, but I quickly learned the difference that experience and familiarity makes. To my great surprise, they could get me off, sometimes spectacularly, and I’ll even admit there were times I really enjoyed being double-teamed by those two. Snow Lily’s masseuse magic could be easily turned to something a bit more… sensual, while Willow… well, she could use those fangs and tongue of hers to great effect; it’s an undeniable thrill for an herbivore to feel sharp teeth nibbling against your neck or nethers.

(And to think it was she who suggested pleasuring Burning Heart orally… I don’t think there are many males who would willingly stick their stallionhood into a fanged muzzle!)

Looking back, I don’t think my enjoyment of their efforts was so much the physical act as just the intimacy of it—that they genuinely liked me and their affection showed. And therein lay a very good lesson that I would eventually pass on to my gentlemen trainees—that it’s not the act of rutting so much as the affection and emotion attached to it. That’s the difference between cheap, quickly forgotten sex and an encounter to remember. I reciprocated their affections, even got pretty good at giving oral myself, knowing what my unicorn and thestrel herdmates liked.

Still… for me, it just wasn’t the same as being with a stallion—as being with Burning Heart. I knew what I was; I knew what I liked, and that I ultimately wouldn’t be happy just being with mares.

Increasingly, that was all I was getting, though. As the months wore on and I found myself going three, four, even five weeks between ruttings, I was starting to get moody. And even when I did have Burning Heart, it was generally only for an hour or two, not all night. I simply wasn’t getting to spend that quality time with him I so craved after that first night at the hotel.

Don’t get me wrong—what we did was certainly enjoyable, and he tried his hardest to please me, but ultimately he just left me only wanting even more—I was being serviced without being satisfied. When I asked for more, Burning Heart wanted to oblige me, but Autumn Leaf said no, claiming that I was just trying to monopolize him and that the ‘herd and hotel hierarchy’ must be respected.

Never mind the fact that she was the one spending just about every night and all her free time with him…

You know… it’s funny, really. For as much as we were coming to dislike each other, in many ways Autumn Leaf and I were very much alike. We were both Earth Ponies, both city girls, She wasn’t into mares any more than I was (or actually even less—she wouldn’t spend ANY time with Willow or Snow Lily), and she was also jealous when Burning Heart was with the others.

But regardless of Autumn’s abuse of her lead mare position, the strain of his expanded herd was starting to tell on Burning Heart; he was having to take various potions to have enough energy for work and his mares. I’ve heard our gentlemen refer to our booster potions as ‘Magical Viagra’, which I’m told is a drug taken by human males to fulfill the same purpose. I don’t know about Viagra, but the side effects of booster overuse are legion, and now nearly eight months after I had joined the herd, Burning Heart was starting to show signs of them—fatigue, sleeplessness, and… well, the human term for the condition is ‘priapism’, and as much as some stallions like to let it all hang out, it was starting to embarrass him and cause problems at work. Increasingly, he just wasn’t the stallion he was that first night and his ruttings became… less passionate. More perfunctory.

We all suggested he take some time off and perhaps arrange a vacation, but he kept making excuses, claiming he either couldn’t leave the restaurant until the tourist season was over (which it never really was in Manehattan) or that he was fine and we shouldn’t worry ourselves. Despite such assurances, more and more nights he came home exhausted and in need of rest. Yet somehow, Autumn leaf was always there to take care of him and insisted on doing it herself, claiming our ‘unreasonable demands’ were just adding to his stress...

Yet somehow, her ‘taking care of him’ always seemed to end with her screaming his name.

It was becoming abundantly clear to all of us that Autumn was trying to keep our herd stallion to herself. Willow and Snow Lily were content enough with each other and seemed to think that Burning Heart would eventually deal with his overbearing lead mare sooner or later. But as things got worse and worse and ALL our time with Burning Heart got progressively more limited, I finally decided to confront Autumn Leaf over what she’d been doing…

On the day Discord returned.

A Herd in Disharmony

It had been a rough night shift at the concierge desk, and things were only getting worse as the morning wore on.

Some of it was the usual Friday night stuff like dealing with a drunken ass (I mean that literally—he was an Ass) and difficult room service requests, but much of it was decidedly not—we were having reports of strange occurrences and malfunctions, everything from a showerhead that spouted lemonade to a hot tub that had somehow iced over—and as my shift progressed, I was in an increasingly foul mood; a far cry from my usual easygoing self.

It wasn’t just me, either—ponies had been acting increasingly odd, even out-of-character as the night had gone on. Two of our restaurant regulars, a unicorn mare couple that were usually very nice and hopelessly in love with each other, ended up arguing and getting into a fight over a stallion; their magic duel had destroyed half the bar’s tables and temporarily turned the bartender into a cactus. Then as dawn broke, I noticed some pink clouds outside that guests said were raining chocolate milk. Figuring it was some prank or publicity stunt pulled by the Manehattan weather patrol, I gave it little mind.

It only went downhill from there. Ever more bizarre occurrences happened as the morning wore on, yet none of it mattered to me or even so much as struck me as strange. Fish from the aquarium swam through the air of the lobby around me, but I didn’t care. A pair of foal twins came by to check out while pushing their pacifier-sucking parents around in a stroller, but I didn’t blink.

Nor did I bat an eye when an earth pony member of the maintenance staff that was long rumored to be a colt-cuddler showed me that his contract had been changed to allow him to tuck whatever staff mare he wanted. So I dutifully moved my tail aside for him, letting him repeatedly rut me while I continued to assist guests, barely aware of his weight or the presence of his organ inside me, taking my marehood and muzzle in turn.

I reacted to these occurrences as if… well, they were not so much normal as simply unimportant. Even as said stallion came one last time in my muzzle and then moved on to the mares at the front desk, all I could think of was Autumn Leaf—that she was working me into the ground deliberately, and I had bucking well had enough!

Leaving my post at the concierge, I swallowed his seed (it tasted oddly like vanilla cream), licking my muzzle clean and putting my uniform vest back to rights—standards of appearance had to be maintained, after all—and trotted over to the nearby flower shop, which seemed strangely overgrown with vines and tendrils coming out of the floral arrangements. Stepping over a couple that seemed to slither after me, I asked a slightly prudish and conservatively attired florist friend named Morning Glow if she could hold down the fort until I got back. Somewhat breathlessly, she assured me she could from where she was being dangled upside-down and undressed by the vines, several wrapping around her as she spoke and beginning to move rhythmically against her, one finding and plugging her muzzle. Ignoring her muffled cries of pleasure as I crossed the lobby to the elevators, I found two rival stallion sports stars whom I knew hated each other openly rutting in the atrium while nopony paid them any mind; I just stepped over them myself…

In hindsight, an omen.

I arrived at the elevators only to find that they were letting ponies in one lift and then instead of taking them to their chosen floor, discharging them from the next elevator over. Making a mental note to tell the maintenance staff stallion after he had finished mating all the mares at the front desk (I glanced back to see he was slowly working his way down the line of them), I decided it would probably be faster to take the stairs. Opening the door, I found the stairs had turned into a slide, but that was fine with me—I simply stepped into the stairwell and slid on my hooves, letting gravity pull me up to the fifth floor. As I passed a few other ponies along the way, including an earth pony family flying by flapping their ears and tail, I noted they seemed to have paler coats than normal.

Yes, the entire world was going mad around me as Discord’s corrupting influence spread, and a slight change in fur color was all I noticed. My focus was entirely on Autumn Leaf at this point, and by Celestia and Luna, I would not be denied her.

Reaching my floor, I stalked down to our suite, moving aside briefly to allow a long-limbed herd of rabbits to pass, getting around a pond of fruit punch taking up half the corridor by walking on the wall, hoping my hoofprints wouldn’t be too noticeable.

Finally arriving at my destination, I found the door to our suite now on the floor (or was I walking on the wall again? I forget…) so I opened it with a kick and jumped through to find gravity reversed; everypony and on furniture now on the ceiling and nopony acting as if anything was wrong… except for the fact that I was there.

Autumn looked surprised to see me as I entered and hopped down to the ceiling. “What are YOU doing here? You’re not off shift until noon, remember?” she reminded me, her orange coat two shades lighter than usual.

I glared at her, trying not to be distracted by her strangely alluring flanks, their pale colors somehow drawing my attention to them. “I left Morning Glow in charge; there’s nopony at the flower shop this time of day anyway.”

The corners of Autumn’s muzzle crooked up as she turned to face me. “Dereliction of duty is a firing offense, Five Stars,” she said mildly.

“Kiss my flank, Autumn!” I snorted, a blush entering my cheeks as I had to fight off a strangely compelling image of her doing just that, laying her lips on each star of my cutie mark in turn… “So is violating labor laws, but that never stopped you!” I retorted as I approached her, hearing the ceiling tiles crunch underhoof. “You’ve had me working sixty hour weeks for a month! Never mind the long hours you’re keeping with him,” I briefly turned my glare on a surprised Burning Heart, who was cooking lunch for everypony. “I’m a part of this herd but you refuse to treat me like it!”

“Five Stars, please…” Willow tried to intervene, putting a wing over me; it dimly registered that instead of her usual bat-wings, they looked more like that of a moth and she had two feathery antennae on her head. “I know you’re angry, but this isn’t…”

I shook her off and I put my hoof down as the corn on the cob Burning Heart was roasting suddenly exploded into popcorn and began to fill the kitchen. “She’s damned right I’m angry, Autumn. It isn’t fair that he gets you and I don’t!” I exclaimed. Wait, WHAT? I blinked. That definitely wasn’t what I meant to say, yet somehow it didn’t seem wrong to me…

Though surprised as my words registered, Autumn Leaf got in my face, peering over her glasses to give me her most intimidating stare. “You don’t know your place, Five Stars!”

“Oh really? And where’s that? Under you?” I suggested with a sneer, not understanding why the thought of being under her was making me feel so giddy. “Where do you get off running our lives? What gives YOU the right to decide how things go in this herd?” I asked her, suddenly aware of… how very beautiful she was. Her long neck… her amber eyes... her beautiful orange coat (though it seemed to be fading to an even paler color as I watched)… her leaf-and-ledger cutie mark… such luscious earth pony lips…

“Get off?” she repeated, her eyes going unfocused as if she was thinking of an entirely different meaning of the phrase. She hesitated before she spoke again like something was distracting her; as I watched her eyes flickered all over me, as if appraising me. But whatever she was thinking, she tore her eyes away and gave me a very sly grin. “The same right that lets me decide when you work, what time you get with Burning Heart, and even your continued employment at the Shemareaton,” she said sweetly. “I’m both your manager and your lead mare. And I can’t say I’m too inclined to continue your employment when you show such disrespectful attitude to your superiors…” she turned away disdainfully yet suggestively flagged her tail at me, displaying her wet and dripping marehood as if in offering.

My own wasn’t doing much better at that point; it was all I could do not to blush at the thoughts going through my head as I stared fixedly at Autumn’s swollen slit bare inches from my nose, my muzzle starting to water. I shook my head to clear it, trying to focus back to the matter at hoof. “I’m sorry. You get Burning Heart every other night, I get him maybe every other month. HOW IS THAT FAIR?” I demanded to know, but then I wondered… so what if I didn’t get him? Why was I so upset about that? I mean, I wasn’t interested in him so much as…

She threw me a contemptuous look over her shoulder, her tail flicking my nose, distracting me from the mesmerizing sight of her winking marehood. “You can be with Willow and Snow Lily as much as you like,” she suggested, turning back to face me, her cheeks flushed and licking her lips repeatedly.

“But I don’t want them, I want…” I protested, my voice trailing off as day turned to night… and back to day again. “I want…” I tried again, but some part of me wouldn’t let me say the word that was trying to leave my lips.

“Girls, please…” Snow Lily tried to separate us with her magic, but all that happened was that flowers burst out of her strangely limp horn like a magician’s trick wand.

I barely heard her, now aware of little else but Autumn Leaf. As I spoke, I was starting to feel very warm. “I want…” I could hold it back no longer. “You…” I told her in a husky whisper, watching her eyes widen as she realized the feeling was only too mutual.

Time seemed to stand still as we continued to stare at each other, despite the sun rising and setting several more times. Loathing gave way fully to longing. Detestment to desire. With that, we leaned in closer, closer…

And then we began to kiss.

Our supposedly-reformed god of chaos has a very twisted sense of humor and irony. Me and Autumn hated one another and weren’t into other mares, so in our corrupted forms… we loved mares and wanted nothing except each other. As our coat colors turned almost completely pale, our shallow kissing soon turned into more passionate, quickly moving on to making out and then graduating to full-blown oral sex. In under a minute we had torn off each other's uniforms and were doing the swirl (or what humans refer to as a ‘69’) on the floor rug… which was now lying on the ceiling, alternately working on each other’s teats (hers gave hot chocolate while mine gave eggnog???), marehood, and cutie mark. We stayed that way for several minutes and orgasms before shifting positions to press our nethers together, getting off that way a few times. Then in another role-reversal, I went on top of her, grinding my slit into her muzzle while she lapped at me hungrily, dripping wet and frantically pleasuring herself with a hoof.

The entire world was going mad as Discord’s influence reached its peak, and it was no different in our suite, where Burning Heart was ignoring us, uncooking dinner in our upside-down kitchen using the fire coming out of the icebox, Willow was flying around a ceiling-chandelier-turned-floor lamp like a moth, and the normally outgoing and mare-friendly Snow Lily was watching the heated mare-on-mare action before her with a bored and sullen expression, her limp horn draped over her face. And me and Autumn…?

We ate each other out with abandon as the chocolate milk fountained out of our suite’s magical fire suppression system like a lawn sprinkler. Her marehood was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted, her tongue in my own twat (to borrow another human term) the most incredible sensation I’d ever known. We came over and over and we couldn’t stop, each orgasm only leaving us hungry for more while the rest of Equestria went insane around us. Stallions? Who needed them? The others? What did they matter? We had each other. We were meant for each other.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew what was happening; that none of this was right or real. Somewhere deep inside I was still myself. But that true me was so deeply buried I didn’t care, my entire world now limited to Autumn Leaf… her scent… her taste… the feel of her teeth and tongue pleasuring me, driving me to ever-higher heights of ecstasy. All I could think was that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my muzzle buried in that delicious slit… and hers in mine; the mere thought of it giving me my biggest climax yet.

Then abruptly… it stopped.

That must have been the moment that the Elements of Harmony turned Discord back to stone, because suddenly everything returned to normal. Our coat colors reverted to their usual vibrant hues as gravity in our apartment went right-side up again and the furniture fell back into place with a loud crash. The sprinklers shut off; the icebox was cold and the stove was hot again. All was as it was, except for the kitchen half-buried in popcorn and the fact that we were all now covered in chocolate milk…

And Autumn and I in each other’s love juices, still staring each other’s femininity in the face.

As reason returned, we disentangled awkwardly and staggered back from each other, utterly aghast, slipping repeatedly on the milk-slickened floor. Lily and Willow could barely contain their laughter as the scene finally registered; even Burning Heart was blushing at the sight of Autumn and I intimately intertwined, his stallionhood fully erect… though I didn’t know if it was from watching us or just the ongoing side effects from the booster.

With that, we both ran for the bathroom. Autumn got there first and claimed the toilet, throwing up violently and I was right behind her, taking the tub instead, barely able to stand as I realized what we’d just done… the mere idea of it causing me to empty my stomach over and over again.

It was several minutes before either of us could speak. “I-I’ll give you a raise, l-lay off your schedule and let you have Burning Heart once a week if you swear… t-to never tell anypony about this…” she told me in a weak voice, still huddled over the toilet having dry heaves.

I was doing little better from where I was slumped over the bathtub. “D-deal,” I eagerly agreed as I rinsed out my muzzle with the last trickle of chocolate milk from the shower, certain I would never, ever get the taste of her out of my mouth.

I kept up my end of the bargain. So did Autumn Leaf… for a month or so before she began to renege, but at least I got a few more decent nights with Burning Heart out of it. Even if she hadn’t, though… the writing was on the wall. We couldn’t even look each other in the eye after that; it was painful and awkward for us just to be in the same room (to be fair, we weren’t the only ones—scenes like that had played out all over the hotel; that maintenance stallion fled town before any of the staff mares could find him).

The difference was… as hotel manager she could do something about it, and I soon noticed that she wasn’t just fixing my work schedule so I wouldn’t have time off that coincided with Burning Heart. No, she was now actively trying to make my work situation intolerable, giving me odd hours, difficult shifts, unpaid overtime, and shall we say… some less-than-stellar personal reviews to the hotel higher-ups, trying to force me to leave without actually firing me. I tried to tough it out for a while, not wanting to give up on my first herd and a stallion I still wanted to be with, but in the end it was simply too much.

It wasn’t the work situation that that ultimately drove me away, though. It was that in the end, I decided that I simply couldn’t exist as an also-mare, competing for the few scraps of Burning Heart’s affection in a four-mare herd that Autumn Leaf would allow me. There was also the fact that the situation between us was causing additional stress and tension within the herd, and the last thing I wanted to do was give Autumn an excuse to break everypony up and claim Burning Heart solely for herself. No, I knew I was the bottom mare and the odd pony out in this arrangement. And as much as I didn’t want to give Autumn the satisfaction of seeing me go, it was only fair that as the last in, I would be the first one out.

Thus, not long before Hearth’s Warming Eve, three months after Discord’s return and almost eighteen months to the day after joining the herd… I made my decision to leave it. I tearfully returned Burning Heart’s feather, tendered my resignation from the Shemareaton, packed my few things, cashed out my bits from the bank and boarded a train to leave Manehattan that very night, wanting to get as far away from the pain of a failed herd as possible.

As I left the apartment suite for the last time, Burning Heart somewhat awkwardly hugged me and gave me his regrets, admitting that perhaps he hadn’t done enough for me. I replied somewhat snippily that the problem was that regrets were all I was getting from him and point-blank told him to start standing up to Autumn Leaf and stop letting her run roughshod over his herd. He didn’t reply, but I did catch a bit of a guilty look in his eyes. I didn’t see Autumn Leaf, nor did I wish to… but I did make sure to post a memo to the entire hotel staff explaining in lurid detail what had happened between us the day Discord returned. Just wish I could have seen her face when she found out…

Willow and Snow Lily saw me off that icy evening. Tears were shed and hugs and well-wishes exchanged; we promised to keep in touch. As the train departed the station and my first herd receded from view, I finally broke down completely.

I’m not too proud to say I cried myself to sleep.

Discord’s intervention aside, the story I just told is not an unusual one. It has happened to many mares over the years, and in many herds.

Despite how we’re taught that herds are a tool of harmony and the proper pony way of family, herds can be decidedly discordant at times… with or without a god of chaos influencing things. With so many individual ponies within them, there are ultimately and inevitably clashing egos and personalities, personal differences that simply can’t be reconciled, and all too often it just takes one possessive or selfish pony, usually the herd stallion or lead mare, to make it intolerable for the others. And yet for all that, my first herd still could have worked, if Burning Heart had been just a little more assertive or Autumn Leaf a little less… perhaps bitchy is the human word appropriate here.

But it was not to be. I later learned that Burning Heart’s herd broke up entirely over Autumn Leaf’s tyranny; I was just the first to go. Snow Lily and Willow left next but stayed together, I’m happy to say; we kept our promise to stay in touch and have corresponded regularly over the years. As thestrels have slowly gained acceptance (mostly thanks to the growing popularity of Princess Luna), the pair eventually joined another herd and are happy; as I write this I know Snow Lily is expecting her second foal and Willow just had her first.

Needless to say, congratulations to both of you. That’s certainly proof a herd can work, but is by no means proof it always does or is right for everypony. For far too many it simply doesn’t; for far too many a herd provides neither support nor satisfaction, sexual or otherwise. Not that I was going to stop trying at that point, thinking if I could just apply the lessons I’d learned going forward, my next herd was sure to be better.

As for Burning Heart… I lost touch with him; never heard from or saw him again after that night. I’d like to think he did eventually come to his senses and cast off Autumn Leaf, but regardless, I bare him no ill will—for all his mistakes and unintentional neglect, he remains to this day my favorite male out of all my herds. He genuinely wanted to be a good stallion and do right by his mares; he was also one of only two stallions I’ve ever known who took real pride in being able to give his mares pleasure. I can only hope he learned from that debacle… as I did.

But even as my thoughts were sad and brooding that snowy night, I turned my sights ahead. I had a three-day journey ahead of me. My destination was a resort city on the other side of the continent, a place I hoped to make a fresh start…

A desert oasis of glitter and decadence known only as Las Pegasus.

Sorry this was later than I wanted it to be. Comments welcome and encouraged!