Burrowed under the big oak tree beside Fluttershy's cottage, Discord was doing his best to perform two opposing actions. That he was having difficulty with such a usually simple task spoke volumes, he felt, about the current sorry state of his personal affairs.

Why should it be so hard? After all, he was only trying not to listen to Applejack and Fluttershy celebrate their wedding night inside—though technically, he supposed, as soon as Celestia had punted the sun over the horizon six hours ago, they had crossed over from 'celebrating their wedding night' to 'celebrating the morning after their wedding night'—while at the same time keeping his ears peeled—and what a delightfully grotesque image that was!—for the tolling of noon from the Ponyville bell tower.

Things would be so much easier if noon and doom rhymed! Then he could compose some sort of elegiac dirge on the subject of his eventual Twilight-Sparkle-related fate. Because as much as he was looking forward to confronting these feelings for her that were jabbing into him like several pints of swallowed needles, he knew that whatever happened today would kill him—had in fact already killed him, had changed him from the carefree charmer he'd been his whole life into...into—

Into the sort of idiot who would lay huddled like this all night under a tree...

A passing earthworm tickled his nose, and stretching, he sucked it down like spaghetti. Inside the cottage, Applejack cried out her joy yet again joined swiftly by Fluttershy's more modest squeaks, and on the other side of the brook, on the other side of the hills, on the other side of the town, the clock tower began its cheery midday carillon. The voices in his head ratcheted their screaming up several notches, each voice seeming to offer a different remedy, but, well, the vast majority of their answers devolved into the single word Run followed by a surprisingly large variety of punctuation marks.

As he'd been doing with tedious regularity of late, however, he chose to go with the minority report. Unearthing himself, he changed the mud and dirt clinging to him into a suitably funereal black suit, snapped the claws of his lion paw, and hied himself to the front door of the Ponyville Municipal Library—or whatever it was called—just in time for the last of the twelve chimes to sound, echoing through his skull like the waves made by an earth pony dropped from a moderate height into a vat of strawberry pudding.

Ah, the good ol' days...

Refusing to sigh, he reached down, tugged the bottom of the library's front door, and let it roll upward with a flappity-flap-flap like a window shade released too quickly. The place was deserted—it was a library, after all—except for that little purple-and-green wyrm who was always hanging around, a feather duster in his claws.

Unfortunately, not even watching the hatchling jump behind a desk raised Discord's spirits. "Twilight!" the dragon called from where he cowered. "He's here!"

"Excellent!" came that voice, that cheery, horrible, goose-pimpling voice, and Twilight Sparkle trotted in from a side hallway, confidence practically a cloud around her. Oddly, though, the sound of the blood pumping through her veins was so loud, Discord had to fold his ears shut.

He made a hat appear on his head so he could take it off and hold it to his chest. "Good afternoon," he said. "I'm here to view the deceased."

"Oh, you!" Her eyes curled closed, but her heartbeat, already pounding against his senses, kicked up even faster, something that sparked a tiny fire of interest down in the sump pump of his midsection. She seemed almost as nervous, in fact, as he was, her laugh so phony, she should've been arrested for counterfeiting when she asked, "Have you been taking drama lessons from Rarity?"

"One of us has." Seeing her this uncertain made him feel like the two of them were somehow back in their proper adversarial relationship, and for the first time in hours, a little smile bubbled up from his gullet, pulled at his lips, and settled back into his throat. "What exactly have you got planned for us today, Princess Sparkle?"

The various hues she blushed delighted him no end. "Oh, nothing too strenuous— I mean serious! I mean—" She stopped, took a breath, turned to face the wyrm. "Spike, there's something I want to show Discord down in the basement. We shouldn't be more than a few minutes."

The dragon's eyes slitted. "You sure, Twilight?"

"Positive." She trembled ever so slightly and ever so deliciously, and Discord began to believe that he might yet survive this encounter with some portion of himself intact. But then she glanced over her shoulder at him, and her strange, feverish eyes made him reevaluate his position yet again. "It's just down here, Discord." She started for an arched wooden door with a Private sign on it.

Not following her was entirely out of the question at this point despite all the gibbering and moaning from his inner voices. Her tail swayed across her lean but rounded alicorn rump, her magic shimmering like a summer breeze as she pushed the door open and stepped inside, and Discord was more than halfway down the stairs on the other side of the door before it occurred to him that he could've just flashed to the bottom. The motion of her body ahead of him was simply that hypnotic.

He'd been in Twilight's laboratory several times during their impromptu lectures and demonstrations, and the door she was walking toward now he had always thought was a supply closet of some sort. "Will we be needing accessories?" he asked.

The glance she gave him this time he could only call 'sultry,' her horn glowing once more to pull the little door open. "Not the sort you're thinking of," she said, her voice throaty and lightly scolding.

"Thinking? Ha!" He touched his eagle claws to his chest and ducked his head to follow her inside. "I'll have you know I do my utmost to think as little as possible."

"Not me." Twilight stood facing away from him, her horn the only light source in the room, dark purple shadows dancing over the bare walls, floor, and ceiling of a space a good deal larger than the average closet. "I'm always thinking." Her horn flared, the door slamming shut behind Discord as all the room's surfaces took on a soft glow the color of plum jelly. "This spell, for instance: I used to think about it a lot when I was in school." She turned slowly, and her nervousness seemed to puff away like lavender steam, her expression hungry and excitingly disturbing. "It slows down time for us."

"Indeed?" Reaching out with his senses, he poked at the chronometric stresses sizzling around the edges of her spell. "What's the ratio of internal time to external time?"

She licked her lips, her eyes never leaving his. "For every ten minutes that pass in here, only a second ticks by outside." Even her giggle seemed less innocent than it had mere moments ago. "I used to dream of having a study room like this, but I never had the strength to manage it till after my coronation." She stepped toward him. "But the part that makes it so special is that we're completely isolated. Nothing can get in, nothing can get out, and only we two will ever know what happens in here. For as long as I'm powering this spell, this room is the entirety of the universe for us." She took another step. "So I'll ask you, Discord: what do you want? Right here and right now, what do you want?"

He couldn't stop a smirk. "What if I want to punch a hole through this bubble of yours and escape?"

Her fierce smile took him almost completely by surprise. "You're welcome to try. But I know the real you, Discord. You're made entirely of wants and desires, wants and desires you've been curbing these past few months because you think that's what friendship means. And it does mean that—not putting our own wants and desires above those of our friends. But you're a spirit of chaos, a spirit of the id, a spirit of the wild collective unconscious of all ponies everywhere. And bottling yourself up this completely is as bad for you as it is for us. So here in this room, I'm asking you as a friend." She was so close to him now, he could feel the puff of her panting. "What do you want?"

Staring down at her, Discord told himself he wasn't shaking. "You really want to know?" he heard something that almost sounded like his voice ask.

The change that came over her smile was subtle but profound, her whole expression radiantly beautiful and maddeningly self-righteous at the same time. "I do, yes."

"Very well." Breathing in, he wrapped air around all the uncertainty that had been festering in his chest since he'd fallen into Fluttershy's tender trap those several months ago, pointed his snout upward, and blew every bit if it out, a burst of white-hot magic swirling the air, slamming into the ceiling, and spattering over every inch of the walls and floor, coating the inside of Twilight's spell and making the whole room glow with the silver of a full moon at midnight. "First, I don't want us to be interrupted. So this should make our time extension more on the order of two hours inside for every second that passes outside."

Twilight's jaw had dropped, her ears perked and quivering. "Your magic...against mine—" Her eyes rolled shut, her wings unfurling with a ka-fwoomp. "Oh, the differential dispersal, it...it's everything I'd imagined it would be!"

"And second—" Looking at her, so open and shining and perfect, he let himself collapse over her like a mudslide, wrapped her in his coils, made the floor as soft and deep as an overstuffed cushion, rolled around so his face and hers were inches apart—

And had to gasp as every voice in his head cut off, silence inside him for the first time in his entire existence. Except he could hear a voice from in front of him, Twilight Sparkle's voice from her ecstatic face. "Yes," she was saying. "Whatever you want, just...yes, yes, yes..." Staring into her wide eyes almost made his magic sputter to a stop, almost sent him screeching and leaping and clawing at the walls to find a way out.

Because trust shone there brighter than any diamond. "Go on," she murmured, nestling into his chest. "Tell me what you want. Or better yet: show me."

And in the aching hollow of his skull, Discord suddenly and shockingly knew exactly what he wanted. "I want hooked barbs on the tips of my talons." He reached up with his eagle claws and rested them against the side of her neck. "And I want to plunge those hooked barbs through your hide and deep, deep, deep into your muscles." He gently stroked his claws along her neck, her breathing getting a bit quick and raspy. "I want to snag those hooks around the vertebrae of your spine just here—" He brought his lion paw up to the rich softness of her mane, combed its claws through it till they touched the skin above the base of her skull. "—at the medulla oblongata," he said.

She gave a little moan, her body shuddering, and Discord didn't even try to stop his own breath from speeding up. "I then want to send volleys of electrical energy surging down your spine and up into your brain." He had both sets of claws caressing her neck now, running them through her hair and dancing over her hide. "I want to flood your system with pleasure and pain, Twilight Sparkle, make you scream with joy and anguish simultaneously, and utterly destroy your ability to tell the one from the other."

"Oh," she said, the sound short and clipped and exquisite.

He bent forward, whispering directly into her ear. "And then, I want to dig my teeth into your scalp." Leaning further, he pressed his lips to her forehead just below her horn. "I want to tear the flesh away, crack open your skull, and gorge myself on the succulent meat inside." He kissed a soft trail up to the base of her horn, then stretched out his tongue to give its sweet curls a long, slow lick from bottom to tip.

A squeak, and she shifted, lowered her head so he could reach more of her horn, started moving her lips thrillingly along the line where the gray feathers of his neck met the course brown fur of his chest.

Closing his eyes, no longer caring about anything else— "I want to savor the scent and the taste of you," he said, and he finally proceeded to do exactly what he'd said, sliding her horn into his mouth and wrapping his tongue around it. Lilac, peppermint, rosebuds, the breeze off the ocean on a lazy blue afternoon: all these paled in comparison to her flavor and aroma, and Discord indulged himself, let himself have exactly what he wanted for the first time in what felt like centuries.

Her groan filled his emptiness, and she seemed to become softer in his coils, seemed to spread out in his grip like butter. Her hindquarters began rubbing where his tail curled between her legs, and a soft, wet crinkle tickled his ears, the air in the room suddenly damp and musky. "Please," she panted. "Inside me. Just—" Her words dissolved into a growl, and she began rubbing harder.

Without even a thought, he tightened the curl of his tail to meet her body more closely, filled the space where her lacinia had pulled open, pushed even further to brush the lips of her vagina, then further still till one of his ridges slid—

Her whole body spasmed, her front hoofs slamming into his shoulders and her head wrenching upward, pulling her horn from his mouth. "Yes!" she shouted.

So he worked his tail some more, watched her spine arch, her gaze losing focus, her front legs trembling as they held her upright. Stretching his neck again, he reached to touch his lips to hers, and she was suddenly wrapping her front legs around his neck, her mouth pressing his hot and hard.

That seemed to short-circuit his brain for some amount of time. He was sure, however, that her hips kept bucking and his tail kept tickling, because when she started spasming again, her back arching even further to break her lips away and bringing him out of the wonderful haze and closer to something like full consciousness, he was a little shocked to find that he now had two complete tail ridges rammed up inside her.

Judging by her yipping and jiggling, though, Twilight didn't seem to mind, and when her eyes shot open, she gave a stream of cries much like those he'd been trying not to listen to all night in his spot under the tree beside Fluttershy's house: "Yes! Oh, Discord, yes, yes, yes!" Blue waves of light flooded from her—was she actually emitting charged particles at a speed faster than light was currently traveling through the enchanted air??—the muscles clenching and unclenching all along her flanks and belly with a fluttering motion that he found equally as fascinating as the radiation bursting from her.

Then her legs gave way, collapsing her to sprawl again across his chest, and the look of her, the smell of her, the way her power slowed to a flow as creamily smooth as a river of custard through the aethersphere around her, it was like nothing Discord had ever seen: exhausted but happy, spent but satisfied, disheveled but relaxed. He was almost afraid to move, like she was a soap bubble that had settled atop him, and anything too jarring would cause her to pop.

Although if the dampness against his tail was any indication, she'd already popped in certain ways. Not, he noted again, that she seemed to be complaining about it...

Several seconds of deep breathing, and she made a sighing, gurgling sort of noise; pulling herself forward, she smiled, and Discord heard a definite pop as she separated herself from his tail ridges. With a giggle, she raised her head, folded her front legs over his chest, and rested her chin on them. "Gorging on the succulent meat inside?" she asked.

"Well?" He flexed himself, let the tip of a tail ridge brush her hindquarters again. "Didn't I?"

Her eyes rolled shut with a sigh. "Point taken," she said, then she blinked and focused on him again. "The weird thing, though? What you were saying you wanted to do to me? Very similar to what I want to do to you."

This perked his ears. "Really?"

Nodding, she reached up and rested a hoof against the side of his neck. "Ever since Applejack and Fluttershy came to me about Fluttershy's condition, I've been studying the mechanics of how genitalia are wired into the central nervous system. And with your basal ganglia being as fluid as the rest of your physical self—"

Light began to waver around her horn, warmth springing up from the spot where her hoof was touching, and Discord felt his brain shift inside his skull as she went on: "—I feel almost certain—" Her whole body took on the glow of her horn, and flexing her wings, she rose through his coils, either one or both of them suddenly as insubstantial as mist. "—that I can create—" The warmth was slithering down along his insides, Discord uncurling himself, watching the invisible sensation transform various parts of his interior. "—the proper neurological—" The warmth slid all the way down to a spot between his legs, and something began to stir there. "—and somatic components," Twilight Sparkle finished.

Jaw dropping, Discord stared, a pony-like lacinia suddenly pulling open in the formerly solid skin of his abdomen to unveil a growing, throbbing, pink and red—

"Like that," Twilight's breathy voice said, and she settled on her stomach along the length of his tail, her eyes fixed on that impossible jutting piece of flesh. "And if my calculations are correct—" She leaned forward licking her lips. "—the way I've configured your nervous system should allow you to experience a very pleasant sensation when I do this." And her mouth closed over the tip of his new penis.

For all that Discord exploded on a fairly regular basis, bursting into fire or blue smoke or clouds of mustard-scented powder as he saw fit, the explosion that took place inside him then was like nothing he'd ever experienced before. Pure liquid pleasure roared up through him from the wet warmth of Twilight's lips, slammed his head back against the floor, and sent a shower of purple and gold superheated steam blasting from his snout.

"Wow," Twilight said, but that was as far as he let her get; swirling around her, he summoned up a gramophone, tango music slinking from it, snapped up a rose to clench between his teeth, and began dancing her slowly backwards, miniature luscious explosions ringing through his skull from where his penis nestled contentedly against her stomach. "Discord? What are you—?"

"Tell me, Twilight Sparkle," he said around the rose; a thought caused a large plush sofa to spring up behind her, and he eased her back onto its cushions. "What do you want, hmmm? In our little sealed bubble of time and space." The rose shattered into silver glints of light as he gritted his teeth, the sensation of his penis sliding along to the edge of her lacinia making him shake with every slam of his heart. "Giving me this bit of genitalia, what exactly do you want?"

"Well,..." She blinked up at him, her front legs tucked against her chest, her wings spread out huge and majestic on the sofa behind her. "I was kind of hoping we could have sex." Her horn flickered, and he felt warmth grip his penis and guide it further down, everything about her somehow both excited and vulnerable.

"Cara mia!" he growled, and he let his magic slide into the warm dampness of her, heard her giggle and gasp at the same time. Her magic moved again, positioned him at what he knew were the lips of her vagina, and without another thought, he pushed himself forward.

How he didn't shatter the way the rose had, he had no idea. Twilight squeezed him in every possible way: her front and rear legs, he could've sworn, had changed to a dozen or more tentacles wrapping around him; her body welcomed him in like a lock who had at long last found its key; and her magic enveloped him as completely as the oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere. Slowly at first, he pushed and pulled, testing her physically and magically, the incredible electricity of their contact wanting him to slam his full strength against the bonds she'd closed around him.

But no. Digging his claws into her flowing mane, he forced himself to go just a little harder with each push, just a little faster with each pull; he wouldn't give in, wouldn't take the chance of harming this glorious creature who was even now grabbing his head and crushing their lips together, taking every inch of his body, every joule of his power, taking it all and seeming to drink it in, seeming to want even more.

So he gave her more, every one of his inner voices bursting into joyful song at being able to give and give and give without fear, at the fantastic sensations she was giving back to him, at the mounting spiral of resonance that bounced, that slammed, that crashed back and forth between them. Lost in auroras of ecstasy, Discord no longer knew where he ended and she began, their magic whirling and combining, spinning from breeze to gust to cyclone.

Sweeping them up, the hurricane of their coupling raged without a drop of violence, without a speck of hesitation, and they screamed and laughed and stormed together, cresting around each other until every atom, every photon, every particle and wave of their collective being spasmed and burst, showering matter and energy in previously unknown forms and states all over the interior of their own private universe.

And it just kept going, his orgasm triggering hers and hers feeding back to create his, a looping of cause and effect that made him shriek like the happiest teakettle in the world. Things inside him that he'd never known existed went sprouting and spouting for the timeless time between one clock tick and the next, and for that eternal instant Discord knew equilibrium, knew peace and quiet and calm of a sort he'd never even imagined he could experience.

Then he noticed that he was breathing again, noticed gravity, noticed the warm wonderful creature lying in his embrace. "Cara mia," he whispered, and a giggle answered him. He dragged his eyes open to see her beside him, her own eyes half-closed, the sofa cushions looking like they'd been through both a fire and a flood. "So beautiful," he said.

She gave a throaty moan and shifted, icepick-sharp jolts of pleasure slicing through Discord from where he remained buried within her. "That was...phenomenal," she murmured.

"Two more things, however, princess." Several of his inner voices raised a sleepy protest, but Discord continued: "I want you never to tell me how you rigged me up with this penis, and I want you to take it away from me before we leave here today."

The smooth bliss on her face wrinkled. "You...you didn't like it?"

"I loved it." Discord touched his lion paw to her cheek. "But sexuality is like the aroma of bad cheese: once it forces its way into a situation, it drives out every other scent, plops itself down at center stage, and demands that all attention be paid to it. Sexuality is as subtle as an axe to the forehead, and I'll have nothing to do with it." He waved his eagle claws at the ceiling. "Out there, that is. In here, well, as you said, in here, it's only you and me, and I don't think we could truly manage to harm one another even if we put some effort into it."

"Really?" The smile that curled over that little pony snout of hers was a bit more prideful than thoughtful. "You don't think you could harm me? Have I become that powerful?" She stroked a hoof slowly along his side. "Or is there maybe some other reason?"

Rolling his eyes, he swore that he would never acknowledge the truth: that she'd killed him, just as he'd thought she would; that he'd gone willingly every step of the way; that he would follow her now panting like a dog to the end of either his unnatural life or hers. "Don't be gauche," he told her with as much of a whine as he could muster while the vast majority of his body still hummed in the contentment of afterglow.

"Sorry." She sighed. "But all right. I'll never tell you how to make yourself a penis, and I'll remove the spell when we're done." She slid herself along him then, a movement that made a small display of fireworks pop from his horns. "Still, we don't have to be done just yet, do we?"

The smile he gave her, he was fairly certain, was the most genuine he'd ever produced. "You're just the nicest doom ever, aren't you?"

In the week after the wedding, Fluttershy was sure she'd spent more time airborne than in the entire year before it. She just couldn't keep her hoofs on the ground, had to leap up and twirl around in the sky every time she thought about, well, about everything.

Burr coming back into her life, for one: he and Big Mac had really hit it off, and when the Apples' cousin Tangelo had shown up for the wedding, the three had become inseparable. Burr had even stayed over a couple extra days afterwards to visit with the Apples and Oranges and help clean up, and he'd just smiled when Fluttershy had wondered if the Manehattan Weather Bureau might be mad at him for missing work: "My boss gave me a full two weeks off with pay even though I just asked for five days after he found out I was coming to your wedding. He kept talking about the importance of family."

She'd nuzzled him then, and when she'd stepped back, the tears shining in his eyes had made them start in hers as well. "I'm sorry," Burr had said the same way he'd been saying the whole week-and-a-half. "Mom and Dad can do whatever they're going to do, but I...I'm tired of being as grouchy and awful as them all the time."

He'd changed his tickets so he could travel back to Manehattan with Tangelo and a bunch of the other Orange cousins, and now walking along the road from town out to Sweet Apple Acres, Fluttershy did another little jump and spin remembering how happy her brother had looked as they'd all waved good-bye at the train station on Wednesday.

And even remembering the scary thing she'd done the next day didn't make her want to cower the way the mere thought of it had for most of her life: she'd walked right into Ponyville General and made an appointment with Nurse Redheart for her first ever actual physical examination.

She'd done it all on her own, too, something that had astonished her while she was doing it and had seemed to astonish Applejack just as much when Fluttershy had told her. Applejack had hugged her and kissed her and had promised to go and be there with her the whole time, and when they'd told Twilight, she'd volunteered to go with them, too, so she could give a presentation to the doctors about her findings concerning Fluttershy's condition.

That she had such wonderful friends made Fluttershy dance through the air some more, and knowing that she was part of a family now, that she had ponies who both wanted and needed her to be strong and healthy, it was the best feeling she'd ever had in her life, every part of her singing and laughing.

But her happiness was so much deeper now, a seriousness to it that somehow made the singing and laughing even better. She was Applejack's wife—or Applejack was her wife: for all that she really, really liked it that Applejack had taken to introducing her as 'the missus,' Fluttershy still hadn't quite figured out what word she wanted to use for Applejack—and that connection made all the difference.

Just thinking Applejack's name, though, was too small for her right then, so she said it out loud just to feel it move through her mouth and over her tongue: "Applejack." She landed in the grass beside the road, felt the earth solid and warm and wonderful beneath her hoofs, and said it again: "Applejack." Lifting her nose, she took a big, big whiff of the air, sweet with the breeze washing from the trees of the Acres just ahead and said, "Applejack," a third time.

An oh-so-familiar chuckle caressed her ears, and blinking, she forced herself to focus on the here and now, the most gorgeous scent in the world pulling her attention to the fence alongside the road. A certain cider-colored earth pony leaned there, full saddlebags easily balanced across her strong back, one front hoof pushing her hat brim up to reveal her green, grinning eyes. "Careful what you wish for, honeycomb. Might just be you get it."

Every part of Fluttershy squealed with delight, and she swooped over to throw her front legs around Applejack's neck. "And it's not even my birthday!" she found herself saying though she wasn't sure it made sense.

Applejack's laugh rustled Fluttershy's mane. "Ev'ry day's somepony's birthday," she said, but by then Fluttershy had backed up enough to press her lips to her beloved's, and that kind of stopped either of them from talking for a long, luscious stretch of time, the just-past-noon sunlight seeming to wrap Fluttershy in its embrace like she was a leaf drifting lazily through a blue summer sky.

But then Applejack was stepping away, puffing out a breath, a little flush about her cheeks. "Reckon we shouldn't oughtta get carried away just yet." She nodded to her saddlebags. "I'd hate for this ol' picnic lunch to go to waste."

Fluttershy leaned closer, pretending to sniff the saddlebags. "Mmmmm," she said, letting her nose touch a little further along Applejack's flanks each time she took a whiff. "Something smells ever so delicious."

"Whoa, there, Nelly." Flexing herself in a way that made Fluttershy gasp, Applejack easily leaped up and over the fence into the field on the other side. "Surely you ain't saying you want dessert afore you've even sampled the main course, are you?"

Seeing Applejack demonstrate her smooth strength made Fluttershy tremble in the best possible way, and she didn't even try to keep her voice from trembling as well. "Oh, but now I want it more than ever..."

That got another gorgeous chuckle out of Applejack, and she leaned through the crosspieces of the fence to plant a tiny kiss on Fluttershy's cheek. "Come on over, then. I got a special surprise picnic spot all picked out."

A few flaps of her wings brought Fluttershy to Applejack's side, but again, she could barely keep her hoofs on the ground as they made their way up the hill into the south orchard. "I'm sorry," she said after the fourth or fifth time she'd taken flight, her face burning. "I want to walk with you, Applejack, but, I mean, I'm walking with you!" Her chest got all fluttery again. "Thinking about you makes my heart turn into a hummingbird, and I...I have to...to..." She let the words trail off, unable to think of any that might not sound stupid.

"Honeycomb?" Applejack's voice trickled across Fluttershy as soft as the treetop shadows. "Seeing you fly is more beautiful than sunup and sundown put together, and knowing it's me makes you spread those glorious wings, I can't even start telling you how happy and proud I get hearing it."

Well, there was no way she could stay out of the sky after that, and even though she knew that the show she gave Applejack as they wound their way deeper into the orchards wasn't anywhere as fine as the shows Rainbow Dash could put on just by flying from one side of town to the other, she also knew that Applejack would never look at Rainbow with that same fire in her eyes. And every time she swooped down so they could kiss, the fire seemed to pour right out of Applejack and into her, inspiring Fluttershy to try aerial maneuvers she never would've considered on her own.

How long they went on, Fluttershy had no idea. But when Applejack finally called up to her, "Reckon we're here, honeycomb," Fluttershy found herself just the tiniest bit out of breath. All she had to do, though, was prance over to Applejack and get some more of her kisses. Yes, they also left her short of breath, but she always felt so much stronger afterwards.

Then Applejack was tossing a red and white checked blanket into the shade of a particularly gnarled-looking apple tree. It sat in a little dell, too, Fluttershy noticed, gentle wooded hills sloping up on both sides and behind them, a lovely view of the full south orchard ahead, row after row after row of perfect apple trees as far as the eye could see. Fluttershy helped Applejack unpack the cups and plates, the jugs and jars, the wax paper packages and the little wooden bowls, and the aromas rising from everything made her realize just how hungry she was. All that exercise she'd been getting, she guessed...

Then Applejack was settling into the grass, Fluttershy sliding in to cuddle with her there, and they got started. Unwrapping a sandwich, Fluttershy asked how Applejack's morning had gone, and Applejack told her about preparing the seeds for next year's planting; slicing the pie, Applejack asked how Fluttershy's morning had gone, and Fluttershy told her about her weekly rounds settling disputes among the various squirrel tribes who'd started moving into the Everfree Forest now that the Tree of Harmony was back to full strength and was beginning to soften some of the forest's more dangerous edges.

The food was perfect, but the company was even better, and when they'd made their leisurely way through the salads and the sandwiches and the chips and the dessert, Fluttershy just wanted to curl up against Applejack's warm, solid side and drift into a nap. Applejack's thoughts seemed to be heading in that direction, too: she gave Fluttershy's nose a kiss, stood, stretched in a way that roused certain parts of Fluttershy partially from their sleepiness, then settled again, but this time on her back against the trunk of the big old tree. "Got room right here, honeycomb," she said, patting the grass.

In a flash, Fluttershy crossed the space between them and was nestling into Applejack's side. Moving her head, she found Applejack's lips, and the kiss they shared both stirred Fluttershy and relaxed her, her whole body tingling lazily as she tucked herself closer, Applejack's front leg curling around her shoulders. "Lemme ask you something," Applejack said, and a strange sort of excitement seemed to wriggle around behind her words.

"Anything." Fluttershy bent her neck so she could look up at her beloved—and that was the word, she decided; instead of 'husband' or 'wife,' she was going to call Applejack 'my beloved' from now on.

That excitement glowed stronger in her beloved's eyes, and Applejack gestured with the hoof Fluttershy wasn't resting against. "Take a look around and tell me what'cha see."

"Ummm..." Fluttershy blinked at the apple trees rising up the little hills on their left and right, at the other apple trees growing outside their little dell. "Your orchards?"

"Nope." Applejack touched her hoof to Fluttershy's nose. "Our orchards."

Fluttershy could only blink some more, Applejack giving a crisp nod. "Went down to city hall yesterday and made sure ev'rything's all nice and legal. This place belongs to you and you belong to it now, my beautiful, wunnerful Fluttershy, same as it is with me: always and forever."

The breath caught in Fluttershy's throat, and she could barely manage to squeak out an, "Oh," the grass underneath her suddenly feeling different.

Applejack kissed the spot where she'd touched Fluttershy's nose a moment before. "Got about three other things you might wanna know, too, honeycomb, though one of 'em I reckon you know already. And that's that we gots the best buncha friends any ponies has ever had. Y'know why?"

Still stunned, Fluttershy shook her head.

"'Cause Rainbow, Twilight, ol' Discord, and even that Angel of yours—" Applejack's low chuckle gently rippled through Fluttershy. "'Bout the only thing that bunny 'n' me agrees on is that nopony in the world's good enough for you."

"Oh, now, Applejack," Fluttershy couldn't keep from saying. "Angel is very fond of you."

"Reckon he must be." Applejack waved her hoof again. "Him and Discord spent all day yesterday going 'round to all the critters what lives in this parta of the farm, see, either in the trees, on the ground, or under the ground, and Twilight and Rainbow are flying the perimeter to make sure nothing with wings comes blundering in."

"I see." But since she actually didn't see, Fluttershy quickly added, "Ummm, could you maybe tell me why they did all that?"

"That's the second-to-last thing you oughtta know." Applejack's smile made the air around Fluttershy heat up, she was sure, about another three degrees. "For a good half mile in any which direction you wanna look—north, south, east, west, up, down, and any sideways combination of all them—there's only two sapient critters in this whole little slice of Equestria." She touched Fluttershy's chest. "You." And she moved the hoof to touch her own chest. "And me."

The fine hairs at the base of Fluttershy's mane bristled. "We're...completely alone?"

Applejack nodded, something almost electrical sizzling in her eyes.

Fluttershy swallowed. "And...and what's the last thing I ought to know?"

Shifting sensuously against her, Applejack kissed Fluttershy's forehead. "I'm just exactly at the right place in my cycle for us to get me in a family way."

A whole week of planning, a whole week of plotting, a whole week of driving herself crazy to get ev'rything set up, and now, leaning back against ol' Ironsides, 'bout the last harvestable tree from great-grandad's original orchard, AJ saw it all come to fruition in the slight widening of her honeycomb's eyes. "Oh, my," Fluttershy said, the sweet waver in her voice making Applejack shiver.

And as much as AJ just wanted to roll over on top of the pegasus and coax her sweet little wiggler out of hiding, she'd had such a powerful vision of what this moment oughtta be like that she held herself in place and nodded. "Out here with our trees around us and with that sky up overhead. 'Cause you are the sky, honeycomb."

Taking a breath, Applejack felt like her heart was trying to bust right outta her ribcage. "You're the sheer, endless blue and the soft, gentle breeze," she whispered, touching a hoof to Fluttershy's surprised face. "You gots all the sun and the moon and the stars inside you, and you show 'em to me ev'ry time you turn a smile my way."

Hardly even having to think about it, she lifted Fluttershy as easy as she reckoned it'd be lifting a cloud, set her on top so they was lying together chest to chest and belly to belly, that dream-soft pink mane cascading down into Applejack's face. "You're the rain that falls and makes my whole life blossom and bloom. You're the silent touch of snow when I needs cooling down and the springtime's evening breeze when I needs heating up." She sank her hoofs into that mane, stretched her neck up, and gave Fluttershy a long, deep kiss.

Fluttershy made a little cooing noise way in the back of her throat, and she returned the kiss so fervently, Applejack kinda forgot where she was in the script she'd memorized, the words she'd thought out so carefully this past week. But then Fluttershy was pulling away, tucking her head into the hollow under AJ's chin. "Oh, Applejack! You always say and do the most wonderful things!"

Another few breaths, and Applejack recovered the ability to speak. "You're the answer to a question I didn't even know I was asking," she said, getting back on track, "and the joy I didn't even know I was missing." Seeing Fluttershy's ear right in front of her, AJ had to break off and do a little nibbling, something that always made Fluttershy gasp. She squirmed, too, and AJ could feel that glorious bulge between those glorious legs, Fluttershy's wiggler starting to strain, she hoped, against the confines of her lacinia.

"I love you, Fluttershy," she said, her voice husky, "and I want you to love me right here and right now under these trees and this sky." She had to grit her teeth and clench her eyes at the muscle spasms starting along her stomach, her own lacinia on the verge of crinkling open. "Put that sky inside me and let me—" The idea of it pushed ev'ry button Applejack had, and her lacinia sprang out of the way in eager anticipation. "Lemme make foals out of it!" she more growled than said.

The stillness across her chest made Applejack crack her eyelids and peer up, Fluttershy staring back with wide, wide eyes. For a brief, horrible instant, AJ froze, too, thinking she'd got a mite carried away, a mite too flowery. But then, Fluttershy gave a humming sort of a sigh, and her wings—

Sweet Mother of Mercy, her wings unfolded and spread, spread, spread, overshadowing Applejack in a way that got her breath going all quick and raspy. "Oh, my beloved," Fluttershy said—at least, it was her voice, but AJ coulda swore the words were drifting down over her like the big, slow, warm raindrops of a summer sun shower. "Maybe I'm the sky to you, but you, you're the earth to me."

Through the haze of lust and wonder that trembled around her, Applejack saw Fluttershy lean down like Equestria's friendliest thunderhead, and her kiss might as well have been a lightning strike, the way it sent jolts of high-voltage pleasure rocketing through AJ. "Even back when I hardly knew what the earth was," Fluttershy was going on breathlessly, "I wanted her steadiness, her sureness, her strength. And when Dashie knocked me right down onto the earth before she did her first Rainboom, the earth saved my life, gave me my life, really, my home, my job, my cutie mark. And you, Applejack. The earth gave me you."

Another electrical kiss, but this time Applejack got herself to move, wrapped as many legs as she had around Fluttershy, held her tight and gave the kiss back with as much steadiness, surety, and strength as she could muster. Fluttershy groaned, and AJ felt her honeycomb's body flex, felt her lacinia burst open, felt the pressure of Fluttershy's wiggler swelling to hardness against her stomach.

"You, you, you," Fluttershy whispered, kisses pulling at Applejack's lips between each word. "And after that, Applejack, you gave me—" Fluttershy shifted above her, a spot of fiery heat touching either side of her vulva. "You gave me everything!"

She plunged in, then, and Applejack snapped her head back, squashed her hat against ol' Ironsides' rough bark, her whole body opening in welcome, muscles tightening and relaxing like her ev'ry fiber was embracing Fluttershy and drawing her in deeper. AJ couldn't hardly manage a breath, didn't want the air in her lungs to take up any of the room that Fluttershy was filling, didn't want the sensation of Fluttershy sinking down into her ever, ever, ever to end—

Until Fluttershy drew back, Applejack gasping at the bliss that shuddered through her. "Oh, AJ, yes!" Fluttershy squeaked, and when she thrust herself back in, AJ arching her back to meet her, Fluttershy's wings flapped down, wrapped Applejack in downy softness, sent whispering, giggling tickles crackling over AJ's whole body, and overloaded her senses, an explosion that made her sure she was soaring on wings herself, Fluttershy right there with her, the both of them spinning through the sky.

Again and again and again, she and Fluttershy rose and fell, clenched and released, hoofs and lips and manes and tails and wings and ev'rything all entangled and alive, sailing on zephyrs of joy. She felt big as the whole world, small as the wispiest cloud, riding and being ridden, whirling and being whirled, Fluttershy covering her like the sky covers the ground, kisses and yipping cries raining down to set Applejack quivering like an earthquake. Her own cries got louder each time her and her honeycomb came crashing together, and when her first orgasm hit, she coulda swore that the sound she made was exactly that of an avalanche sweeping down a snowy mountainside.

Again and again and again, her body blossoming with ecstasy like ev'ry tree in ev'ry orchard across the whole face of Equestria bursting into flowers all at once, and still Fluttershy pumped her higher and higher, higher and higher beyond anything AJ'd ever even imagined. And when her honeycomb squealed and thrust that one last time, thunder flooded Applejack, roared around her peaks and valleys, ev'ry inch of her inner landscape howling in elation. Echoing and reechoing, the storm bore her away, Fluttershy beside and between and all through her, their love at that moment hotter'n any lava and sweeter'n any apple.

She came back to herself slowly same as she always did afterwards, felt Fluttershy tucked along her left side, their hind legs still sorta tangled together. She didn't wanna untangle 'em, though, didn't want anything for the next good long while 'cept to lie just like she was, her honeycomb breathing soft breaths against her neck, her lacinia smoothing shut, her whole self full of Fluttershy's sweet nectar.

The tiniest little twitch deep inside her made her blink, an impossible feeling of something latching on, nestling in, and taking root. Holding her breath, absolutely certain that she couldn't be feeling what she thought she was feeling—

Except that, lying there under the oldest tree in the Acres with the love of her life curled against her and the sky and the earth smiling their slow, gentle smiles, Applejack knew. Sweet Mother of Mercy, she knew.

Her heart soaring, she lolled her head over to look at Fluttershy resting on her shoulder. "Honeycomb?" she asked.

Fluttershy stirred, opened those beautiful eyes. "Hmmmm?"

Applejack reached out, took Fluttershy's hoof, and guided it to rest on her belly, dainty yellow touching rough orange.

A few seconds, and Fluttershy's eyes opened wider, her gaze shuttling back and forth between her hoof and AJ's face. AJ smiled and nodded, and Fluttershy threw her front legs around Applejack's barrel, pressed her face into her neck. Wrapping her own legs into a gentle hug, AJ rubbed Fluttershy's back, and the two held each other on into the afternoon.

Author's Notes:

Oh, and the music Discord and Twilight make love to?

"Hora Cero" by Astor Piazzolla and his New Tango Sextet

Mike