“Care to elaborate on that?” I asked Fluttershy.

“You... uhh... Ehm, you need to let each of us have a turn being your marefriend...”

“... Ha. Good one. I’m not even worth dating one of you girls. Let alone all four.”

“Actually, I rather like her idea.” Rarity piped up.

“No.” I said with determination.

“I like it too! We can each have like a week and you’ll be able to choose after that for sure!” RD exclaimed confidently. She had a look in her eyes as if victory, and I, were already hers.

“Hell no. I refuse.”

“I don’t think you really have a choice here Sharky. We already know you like us too, and we want to do this.” Twilight advanced on me with a grin. I opened my mouth to argue, but I simply grunted and closed it again. Truth was that I really wanted it and my resistance was merely a weak attempt at letting them leave this themselves. I sighed loudly.

“Fine, fine... Who’s first then?”

“Oh, me!” Twilight dashed forward to me. The other girls opened their mouths to argue, but I cut them off.

“Good idea Twi. I live here anyway, so it’d be easy to get your week done first.” I caught some of the other girls glaring daggers at Twilight. “Whoa, whoa. What the hell was that shit?” I seethed. The girls all jumped and seemed very startled by my sudden anger and cussing.

“W-what?” Twilight stammered.

“That glaring. What the hell was that? You’re friends! The best of friends! I won’t stand for you letting me get in the way of your friendship. If that stuff doesn’t stop right away, I’m out of all of this!” The girls seemed to take a few minutes to understand what I had just said. Literally minutes. They sat there with their jaws hanging open trying to understand me.

“O-okay... W-we can do that...” Fluttershy stuttered quietly. At the sound of her voice, the other girls snapped out of their dazes and nodded vigorously.

“Good. Just remember that I won’t allow myself to come in between you girls. If I feel like I’m pulling you apart... I’ll have to leave you all.” The girls were understandably frightened by my threat.

“We understand Sharky...” Twilight muttered. She then turned to the others. “Right girls?” The others all muttered small noises of agreement. I nodded approvingly.

“Good. Now, we’ll start this tomorrow with Twilight. However, before I just hand myself over to you girls for the next four weeks, let’s just have some tea as friends. Then I’m going to go have a nice friendly dinner with my boss. Then I’m coming back to Twilight’s and sleeping over. As a friend. Also, I’ll be finding a new place to stay after these four weeks until this all gets sorted out.”

“What? Why?” Twilight asked with a slight whine in her voice.

“Because it’s not right to live in the same house as somepony you’re romantically interested in until you know you can dedicate yourself to them completely. I’ll be staying with the mare I’m with for the week, but that’s only because I don’t have my own house.”

“Well... that’s cool!” RD exclaimed with a smile. She leaned over and whispered something to the other girls. They all nodded quickly and smiled widely.

“... I will scream if I can’t get the whistle. ... What?” I questioned the girls, indicating the whisper.

“Nothing, nothing dear.” Rarity assured me. “Now come along, the tea will get cold soon.” The girls all trotted away from me. I scratched my head in confusion before deciding I was better off not knowing anyway.

After all, it looked like not knowing things was my specialty.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the next half hour, the girls were certainly putting on a show for their kindness to each other. They were overly polite, gave way too many compliments, and hugged each other way too much. At least they weren’t fighting or glaring at each other, so I let the theatrics slide. To be honest, I hadn’t really wanted to have that confrontation anyway. It was nice to simply have tea with friends instead of running around to deal with something. I was really learning to appreciate the little down time I had. We all just talked and laughed, occasionally poking fun at each other, like when they asked me if I wanted any tea with my sugar.

“No, as it is I can still see through it almost...” Was my response. It was nice to just talk and know the truth about how these girls felt. My brain still wasn’t quite registering it, but I was sure it’d catch on eventually. In what felt like no time at all though, I was disturbed again.

*HAAAALLELUJAH* I flipped back in my chair at the table in surprise, sending the table up into the air and causing myself to fall backwards. The chair I was in shattered into splinters and the tea flew off of the table and splattered all over the room. The empty cups continued to fly through the air until hitting walls and shattering.

“... Fuck...” I murmured to myself. “That was fucking hilarious!”

*HAAAALLELUJAH*

“I get it!” I yelled at my phone as I pulled it out. “Luna needs to give this thing a damn ringer volume button...” Sure enough, Luna was calling. I hit the answer button right as the girls started recovering from the shock of what had just happened.

“Sharky! W-we hope We didn’t disturb you.” Luna talked quickly with a small stutter. Almost as if she were nervous.

“‘We’ Didn’t disturb anything. Geez Luna, you should know better by now.”

“S-sorry... Of course I meant to say ‘I’. I’m just quite uneasy about tonight’s arrangements...”

“Why would you be nervous?”

“It’s just been so long since anything like this has occurred... Everything had to be perfect! At the same time though, nopony could be wary of my plans, lest our secret be discovered.”

“Okay, well did it work out?”

“I believe so...”

“Then don’t worry! Just teleport me there when it’s time and we can have that dinner.” Luna turned her head a little and gave me a confused squint.

“Tis already time! If anything, I am a bit late...” I returned her confused look and turned to the nearest window. Sure enough, it was already getting pretty dark. I guessed I had been here much longer than I thought.

“Wow, well then I guess I should get over there... You know, after I h--” The flash of black light enveloped me before I could even finish talking.

--------------------------------------------------------------

“--elp clean up.” I finished. I was suddenly standing in the middle of the castle gardens, next to the turtle-shaped rose bush Luna and I always had our lessons at. Next to our bush there was a large cushy blanket spread out on the ground. Luna was sitting on it next to a large wicker picnic basket.

“Clean up? Clean up what?” Luna questioned curiously. I sighed.

“Doesn’t matter now I suppose. Well, how are you Luna?”

“I am well, and thou?”

“Doing better now that I’m with you.” I answered with a smile. At least I knew Luna wasn’t hiding emotions from me because of some stupid contest. Her mouth curled into a small smile and her eyes lowered to the ground. Her face appeared to be slightly red, but that easily could have been the light from the sunset.

“How kind...” She giggled a little. I took a seat on the blanket to her left and leaned on her. She was one of the few things in this world tall enough for me to lean on. Even then, I was slightly taller than her.

“I hope you don’t mind if I sit close. You’re just really soft.” It was true. From the first day I’d met her, when I wrestled her, I had never met another pony with a softer coat. I had been more afraid to approach her before, but now that we were friends I didn’t think she would mind.

“Hee hee, of course I don’t mind.” Luna assured happily. Her head tilted towards me until her chin came to a rest on my shoulder. Her horn rested behind my head and her forehead was pressed against my neck. Strangely enough, even though we were so close, her magic wasn’t hurting me. Now that she was calm it seemed content to swirl around me and not try to force an entry.I could feel it everywhere though, almost like being wrapped in a Luna blanket. Our pose was surprisingly intimate, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“This is a really pretty sunset, huh?” I gestured to the view of in the distance. Far off in the west, there was a bright red light fading from view. There were no clouds to obscure the light, so it radiated out from the horizon. It cast vibrant hues of light wherever it touched, and vastly contrasted with the dark shadows it made when it hit and object it couldn’t pass. It looked like a painting.

“Beautiful. My sister really can make a scene when she wishes.”

“Her work huh? She’s got talent.”

“Well, one acquires a taste for making beauty out of a task when you perform it for thousands of years.”

“Fair point. Well, as pretty as this is, I can’t help but be distracted by thinking about dinner. What are we having?” Luna levitated the lid of the box open without moving her head from my shoulder. The active use of her magic forced some of it to try and flow into me. I flinched, but didn’t complain.

“I had the chefs prepare some light fare for us. I would have had something much more extravagant done, but I’m trying to keep anypony from becoming suspicious. As it were I had to tell them I was particularly famished tonight in order to keep them from thinking somepony would be dining with me.”

“Huh, well good on you for thinking this all through. What does everypony think you’re doing right now?”

“As far as anypony knows, I’m simply enjoying a private picnic in the gardens. There are strict orders for nopony to disturb me, so we have a few hours of time to ourselves.”

“What about your sister? Does she know?”

“Well... she knows I’m having a meal with a knight. I don’t believe she knew who, but she likely does now.”

“What? How would she know?”

“Sharky, you have magic from two other worlds inside you. Raw, unusable magic, but magic nonetheless. Celestia and I could sense you coming from a mile away if needed.”

“Oh... can everypony sense me?”

“Not just anypony. You seem to only have basic planetary magic, so it’s not very noticeable unless you’re as powerful as my sister and I.”

“Good, good. I was worried that freaked out unicorns everywhere I went there for a moment.... Wait, weren’t we talking about food? I got lost.” Luna let out a small laugh.

“Art thou that hungry? Well, here.” Luna levitated a small paper-wrapped bundle to me, causing me to flinch again. My discomfort must have been obvious, because this time Luna noticed it. “Hmm? What ails you?” The bundle fell into my lap and her levitation spell dissipated. I relaxed again.

“Well, as long as we were talking about magic, let me explain. Because of the low magic level of my planet, my body absorbed and currently holds some raw planetary magic from this world. It isn’t capable of doing anything on it’s own, but it mirrors the magic in any organism near me. Your magic is so powerful that it not only tries to copy, but I’m forced to take in more magic. It’s like putting too much air in a balloon. It just hurts a little sometimes.” I finished unwrapping the package to reveal what looked like a few fruits and vegetables. None of which I could identify.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Luna slid away from me and walked around to the other side of the blanket. With the sudden loss of her support, I fell sideways and laid down on the blanket. “I never wished to cause you pain! Is this better?”

“It was fine before.” My voice was half-muffled because my head had sunk into the cushiony blanket slightly. “It only hurts when you use magic, and to be honest I’ve felt worse.”

“Oh... then... do you mind if I still cuddle with you?” I was slightly thrown off when she used the word ‘cuddle’; I had thought cuddling would involve a little more contact and feeling. I guess she didn’t think the same.

“That wasn’t even really cuddling... but yeah, come back over.” Luna timidly trotted back to me as I sat up. She sat down again and we leaned on each other, and soon after she nestled head against my neck again. I picked up one of the strange fruit-looking things I had unwrapped. It looked like an apple with a totally rounded top instead of the depression that typically held the stem. It was a black mostly, but it changed to a smoky gray towards the bottom of the fruit. “... What the heck is this?”

“It’s an imported fruit straight from the land of Zebraca. It is called a Moon Tomato.”

“Interesting... I’mma bite it.” I bit into the side of the strange thing, and instantly regretted it. It was hard as a rock. “Ow!” I suddenly started rocking side to side slightly as Luna started laughing.

“Y-you c-can’t eat it yet!” Luna laughed. “T-there’s a reason it’s called the Moon Tomato!”

“You could have said something earlier...” I mumbled. I looked at the tomato curiously, and as the sun went down, the gray at the bottom started to spread towards the top. I set that one down for later and picked up another fruit. This one was a oval shaped red fruit with a pink spiral design wrapped around it from top to bottom. The pink stripe was connected to a thin pink stem the poked out of the top of the fruit.

“Oooh, they gave me a Party Peach! That’s one of my favorite foods! Pull on the stem.” I grabbed the slim pink stem in between two fingers and gave it a gentle tug. With a sound similar to a noise maker, the entire spiral popped off of the fruit and the red peel slid off without it’s support. All that was left was the light red flesh of the fruit.

“Can I bite this one?” Luna nodded and I sank my teeth into the side of it. The fruit had the same texture as a cake, but it tasted like bubble gum. It was really sweet, and actually kind of pleasant to eat. Just that bite made me feel a little like dancing. After realizing it made me feel like dancing, I realized it most likely wasn’t a good idea to eat any more and gave the rest to Luna. She happily accepted it and devoured it down to the small green core in seconds.

“Delicious!” She sighed happily as she tossed the pit to the side. She started to sway against me a little as if moving to an internal beat. I shook my head with a small smile on my face as I reached down for another fruit. Instead, I ended up grabbing a bottle. I lifted it up to see that it was a bottle with a thick bottom and a gradually thinning neck. It was sealed with a cork and the liquid inside was a very dark purple.

“What’s this?” I swirled the bottle around a bit, sloshing the contents. Luna lifted her head slightly off of my neck and peered at it.

“Ah! Tis but a bit of spirits for later in the evening, should you wish to partake.”

“Wine then. Sure, I guess I’ll try some. It’ll be nice to try some alcohol... Well, I guess I already have... Wait, can this actually get me drunk? Normal pony alcohol can’t.”

“Well, I have a very similar problem, so this particular type of wine is made for my sister and I. I believe it will work on you as well.”

“Sweet. I’ve always wondered what being drunk was like, but never wanted to drink back on my old world. I think it could be fun though.”

“It can be quite enjoyable... during it. The hangovers are not particularly fun.”

“That’s future Sharky’s problem.” Luna smiled at me.

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing I brought two bottles!” Luna levitated a second bottle out of the basket. I did my best not to flinch this time. I managed to force a grin through the pain as she popped the cork out of the bottle and levitated two glasses out of the basket. I could feel a small trickle of blood run down my forehead as a small horn started actually forcing itself out of my head rather than growing normally. I quickly wiped it away to keep Luna from noticing.

“That’s great Luna! ... Please stop levitating them...” Luna’s aura suddenly vanished from the cups while they were still in mid air. I managed to catch one and the other fell to the blanket harmlessly. The bottle she kept levitating until she set it down gently on the blanket.

“Sorry! Sorry! I had forgotten for a moment...”

“It’s fine. Well, let’s see what this drunk fun everyone always seems to have is about.” I lifted the bottle and filled both of the cups. Luna levitated one with a nervous glance at me. I didn’t react this time. “How’s about a toast before I take my first drink of real alcohol?”

“Good idea!”

“Hmm... To good times and great company.” I offered as I raised my glass toward Luna. She smiled as she tapped her glass against mine.

“I could not have put it better myself.” We both put the glasses up to our lips and threw our heads back. At first, the taste was strong and I didn’t like it at all. As I drank though, it started to taste better. It also started to get warmer outside for some reason. Which was odd since it was turning into night and should have been getting colder. Around my fifth or sixth glass, Luna started getting softer and much more... touchy. She had reached on foreleg around my waist in a sort of half hug.

“You know, it has been quite some time since I have drank...” Luna mused slowly. Her words weren’t slurred, but she was talking a bit slow. “You know... earlier you said this wasn’t even really cuddling... Could you show me what’s real cuddling?”

“Uhh...” I knew there must’ve been something odd about her request, but for some strange reason I couldn’t think of it. I shrugged and decided it couldn’t have been a big deal if I couldn’t remember it. I downed the rest of my glass and set it down on the blanket.

“Well, real cuddling is much more cuddly... er.” I struggled to explain. I knew the right words for it, but they wouldn’t come to my brain. “I’ll just show ya.” I edged slightly away from Luna before turning her so that we faced each other. Her eyes sparkled a lot. I could see the reflection of a shooting star pass in her eyes. It was very... pretty. I mustered up a bit of strength and lifted her slightly off the ground. She gasped.

“O-oh my...” She giggled. I sat her down in the middle of my lap, making her much taller than me. Her hindlegs were each on one of my hips. She was kind of heavy on my legs, but it didn’t matter and I couldn’t really feel it anyway. I wrapped my arms around her middle and leaned my head into her chest. She draped her forelegs on my shoulders and placed her cheek on the top of my head.

“This was one of my favorite cuddles...” I explained. “Nice and close...”

“This is rather enjoyable...” Luna agreed. I could hear some liquid pouring nearby and Luna soon levitated me another glass. “Here, have another drink... It’d be a shame if I had to waste this...”

“Yes, quite a shame.” I agreed as I took another swig of wine. It looked like it was going to be a pretty good night.