Melody jumped forth from her carriage and cantered up to two monumentally large gates. Unlocking them, she motioned for her new servant to follow her onto the grounds. Seamus didn't move a muscle from where he stood by the ox-drawn carriage. The Lady looked so angry a vein pulsed in her temple. The young colt hesitated, and then decided it wasn't worth being punished later, especially with how he had been treated so far. He set off with her, the mare's strides confident and sure, while his were unsteady and he would wince as his bruises ached from the ropes he'd been bound with.

The pathway was narrow and led up to a staircase framed by two massive statues of mares in armor holding spears that vaguely resembled fishhooks. The statues looked ready to impale Seamus as he trotted up the unreasonably large stairs, looking tiny in comparison to the building he was walking up to. The double doors themselves were huge enough to fit a dragon through them, let alone the stained-glass windows beside them. Melody strode up to the door and knocked three times at a far smaller door in the left hoof side of the larger door. It was opened immediately by a mare in armor reminiscent to what the statues wore.

The guard gave a smile and moved aside for Melody as she strode in. The overhead lights turned on slowly as she walked, adding a theatrical and slightly dramatic flair to her entrance. Seamus quickly followed behind, trying to keep pace with her long legged strides.

"Behold the south-wing of my palace! I call it the entrance wing because it's closest to the visitor's gateway." She talked as she walked.

All the guards looked after Seamus with curious stares and the occasional angry look of jealousy. Another staircase was climbed before she began to talk again. This hallway ran the entire length of the palace and all down it were suits of armor fit to ponies past. The occasional painting of Melody's ancestors would also appear on the gold trimmed walls. The carpet was red with more golden trim and bore not even a hair to sweep.

"Way down there is the North wing were you and I will be. That turn up there, you may not be able to see it well, is the West wing, guard's quarters and the east is the servant's quarters. Fairly simple, isn't it? I designed the entire castle myself." She boasted.

He nodded to placate her and continued to take in the extravagant, high-class decoration. It was a long trek down the hallway and soon Seamus' legs were even more sore than they already were, making him even more exhausted. Eventually they made it to the exact center of the palace. A vaulted ceiling and two guards met them at the junction. One of the mares was tall and had a somber, long face. The other had an attractive, yet mocking and contemptuous complexion with a normal body set.

As The Lady walked up to them, the two nodded to her and only then did they look at the young alicorn.

"Could you two watch him for me, I need to check to see if his tower is ready." The Lady asked.

The two nodded. The fair-faced mare had a grin on her face. Melody walked off down the Northern corridor and the smirking mare turned to him.

"Now that's a piece right there, huh." She said to the guard beside her, who caught on.

The two smiled at him, making him even more uncomfortable.

"What I'd give to borrow that for a night." The shorter continued. "It'd be a night, wouldn't it?"

The guard next to her snorted in agreement and stamped a hoof. Seamus began to back away from the two. The shorter began to circle around him and the taller leered at him with a knowing smile.

"It's too bad Melody has him." The taller sighed, still smiling. "Unless she gets bored with him. Then maybe she'll pass him our way, huh?"

Seamus realized that they weren't talking to him; they were only addressing each other. To these mares he was a toy, something to be used, and then passed to another.

"I gotta say, wouldn't mind a month of bathroom duty for a piece of that." The shorter chuckled.

He shuddered at how they were circling him, no matter which he looked at, at least one was behind him at all times. He could feel the shorter behind him, staring at his flanks with hungry, starving, lustful green eyes. He tried to turn to position his sides to each one, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't break their direct line of sight to his ass.

"Smooth coat, with supple skin, but I know that just underneath that is firm muscle." The taller mused, still eyeing his flanks. "What I wouldn't give… say… Melody shouldn't be back for another half-hour." The mare looked at her partner, who returned the malevolent glance.

"Oh no." Seamus whispered under his breath, terror making his voice shake.

The shorter began to move closer. He backed up and ran into the other.

"Aww… poor kid's scared shitless." The taller said from behind him. "Just hold still, we might be gentle." She grabbed his wings.

He let out a terrified yelp and broke free of the mare's grip. He ran to the left but found only a solid gold-trimmed wall.

"Didn't anypony teach this runt to listen?" The shorter growled in irritation. "I think we might need to show him how."

The shorter grabbed him and viciously twisted his wing. He squealed in pain. She gave a darkly amused laugh, allowing the taller to run her hooves down his sides slowly, tracing them over his hips.

"Mmmm…" she purred. "His coat is soft."

He couldn't move without popping his wing out of its socket, so he stood there, helplessly pinned against the wall. He closed his eyes and bit his lip.

"When's the last time you had some?" The shorter asked the other guard.

"What is going on here?" A voice came from behind them.

Seamus' head was pressed to the wall, so he couldn't see who was speaking.

"Well? I asked you two a question!" The voice barked.

They released him and he turned around to look at whoever was speaking. He didn't know for sure, but judging by the golden armor and large helmet, the white mare in front of him was the guard captain. He looked at her gratefully.

"We were just showing him the wall panel." The shorter snickered and the taller nodded.

"Go clean the latrine, or I'll have you both assigned to field monitors for a month." The captain commanded; the two walked off, casting hateful, yet longing and desperate glances back at him.

"Thanks." Seamus said gratefully.

"Shut up, whelp." The captain spat. "Wait until The Lady comes back or I'll finish what they started."

His thankfulness faded immediately to dread and even more fear. A long wait ensued were he did very little but scuff his hoof and look at the floor. Finally, Melody returned and sighed.

"The room isn't done, so I can show you the West wing while we put the last touches on it."

He paled.

It was a long tour and all the guards looked at him in an extremely jealous, covetous hate or a total disinterest. One actually said hello like a civilized mare, but soon after she yelled at him to only speak when spoken to. Soon his depression was deepened when a guard smiled at him, but when he smiled back she looked disgusted and it turned out that she was smiling past him at Melody.

At long last the tour was over and they walked back to the junction in the center of the palace. Melody smiled and began to spout praises at her own sense of decoration for the Northern wing. The color scheme changed from the warm golden and red to a colder, darker pallet. Soon all the colors were a shade of blue or silver. On occasion Seamus would see a splash of dark purple or a gray, but the sparse lighting and the darker colors made everything seem chill and distant.

The two arrived at a massive doorway at the end of the hallway and she opened it with a careless flick of magic.

"My room is on the right and yours is on the left. Go look at it, I think you'll like the view."

He was immediately suspicious of her. Everything she'd done so far had been to break him to her will. He would learn that any suspicion around this mare is always a well-founded suspicion. There was another set of doors, one leading left and the other right. He opened the one she had claimed was his and groaned at the thought of exercising his sore legs, but began to climb a winding stair.

Soon the staircase curved and he realized he was climbing a tower. As a winged creature, he loved scenic views and heights, so he climbed slightly faster at the thought of fresh air. Soon, though, he began to tire and slow down from his long trek through the mile-long corridors and his entire day of walking. After nearly stopping to rest twice, he saw a huge steel trap-door in the ceiling overhead. As he approached it he saw at least seven steel rods built into the wall next to it. By the looks of the latches, he concluded they were actually locks to the door.

He pushed it open and collapsed onto hard blue-silver tiled floor, panting and lungs burning from the exercise. Only after he'd recovered did he look up at the room. His eyes widened in the expense Melody paid to make this turret suite. There was a balcony surrounding the entire tower and the pointed roof of the turret was supported by massive marble pillars with runes emblazoned upon their surface. He looked at the blue tiles he lay upon to find the silver tiles made huge runes that actually heated the room, even though it was open to the elements from all angles.

A warm summer breeze brushed Seamus' long black mane back and he closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh alpine air. He walked outside to see the pine forest for miles and a cliff directly in front of him, dropping down into a seemingly bottomless chasm. The tower was thousands of hooves in the air and a thought suddenly occurred to him. He could fly. Smiling, he ran towards the edge of the rail-less balcony.

He was deflected back, sending a jarring thud reverberating through his skull and making his ears ring. Cursing, he went back under the roofing to look at the room's interior. In a ring around the center of the suite was a dip in the floor about as tall as him. Replacing the surrounding tile in the wrap-around lounge area was thick red carpet and a couch also stretched the entire circumference of the area. Stepping down a smaller set of stairs, he looked in amazement at the huge flight of stairs leading up to an 18x25 canopy bed in the center of the area. It was set to where he could view the entire 360 degrees of sky by merely turning his head.

He climbed the steps to the landing were the insensibly large bed was set. It was as tall as him so he surmounted the frame with a well-timed leap. Once he as on the bed it seemed even larger, the sheets seemed to cover acres to him and even his full wingspan only covered one-fourth the massive headboard. He felt the soft silken sheets and all the events of the day rushed back to him.

Tired beyond any sense of weariness he'd ever felt so far, Seamus collapsed on the pillows and began to sleep….

Until the thoughts of the two guards wormed its way into his head. He bit his lip and shook his head in annoyance. He tried to think of anything else besides those two. But the sensation of the mare twisting his wing and demanding he hold still while the other ran her hooves over his back and hips lingered still. He lay there for hours wrestling with the thought, it was a fearful memory that made him feel helpless and violated. Eventually some dark, festering part of him awoke and began to tell him he'd wanted it and that he should have let them.

He nearly bit his tongue off trying to permanently erase that train of thought. He hated it and everything about the thought of being so easily bullied into something so intimate with mares he didn't know and would probably never be allowed to know. Soon that part of him began to sow all sorts of awful ideas in his mind; like that maybe they treated him better here than they had in his actual home.

In his home he was ignored mostly, but at school it was terrible. He was ostracized from the rest of his age by maturity and his intelligence, most either were annoyed by him, just disliked him because it seemed everypony else did or were jealous of him. Those who were annoyed by him felt that way because of his slight accent, the way he spoke or both. The ponies that were jealous hazed him because he either looked better or that he was an alicorn, which they deceived him into thinking was something to be shunned. A freak of nature with both wings and a horn.

He was even excluded socially from his own gender because of how feminine he was. With a slight, sleek and long legged build he challenged the conception of what a colt should be. He rarely spoke to another male and even if he did it was a short sentence that was usually a question. Those males who spoke to him more than a sentence at a time noticed his intelligent vocabulary and his fanciful descriptions that made him seem even farther from an ideal male.

Males in the northern culture were to be strong and listen to what both their wives and, above all, their master, told them. To be obedient, not question and to take interest only in practical, worldly and useful skills. Some would challenge that some arts are useful, but the students around Seamus did not have the intuition nor the patience to see that. In their narrow minds he broke the norms of what they were born into and they judged him as strange because he didn't conform to their expectations.

So was it better to be mostly ignored and only have attention paid to you at certain times, or to be shunned by all your fellows and only be ignored some of the time? Seamus was quickly losing the argument with his own logic. The answer was obvious. The answer was that it was better to be ignored than to be hated.

And the endless insults that the students would call him! Awful things that made him want to just die somewhere out of the way to spare someone the hassle of burying his body. So was he treated better here? They valued him a bit, at least. At least he held some form of identity unlike his days of being a ghost at school. At least they liked him for something!

Even with those making him feel better, he knew that it was only material like and that the moment that they found a more handsome colt they would move to him and leave him to be miserable and lost. But another thing set him apart from all others. He was an alicorn; one was only born once every three-thousand years or so. That meant he would be eternally treasured and would always hold value. Those made him feel slightly better.

But then the truth crashed on him and the hard reality set in. That feeling he'd felt on stage, that he was merely and exotic animal to either be used for diverting entertainment or simply treated as a novelty possession, was nothing but the truth. He was nothing but a diverting game to these mares, a simple toy with simple needs that they could use however and whenever they pleased. He wasn't a pony; he was a possession of Melody's and was no more important than the crown jewel on Celestia's tiara. There were many like it, but that jewel was hers and that made it special, otherwise it's just another pretty trinket to be worn about, owned, and put away when not in use.

He wasn't important and he didn't matter to these mares, they didn't care about him, they cared about his body and his appearance, no less and most certainly no more than that.

Seamus concluded the tale of his first days with tears running down his face again.

"The worst part was," He hiccupped. "Was that I went to bed thinking I should have let them do what they wanted."

Fluttershy was shocked by the story and looked at him in a totally different light now. He wasn't only sensitive and docile, but he had been through things foals his age should never have to worry about happening to them. This young colt had been violated and had his emotions duped into thinking that the near-rape had been perfectly okay.

She stretched out a hoof to put on his shoulder. At first he looked at it like her hoof was a venomous pit viper, but then he did something Fluttershy didn't expect. He lunged at her and wrapped his hooves around her neck, sobbing like a foal into her chest. She was shocked at how much he trusted her. No more words passed between them, he just lay there with his face buried in her warm, soft coat, enjoying a moment of well deserved peace.

Soon, though, Fluttershy began to feel something else. A feeling she usually reserved for the animals she tended to, but this was far brighter and far more passionate a feeling. The emotion warmed her inside and made a silent blush rush to her cheeks. He didn't notice, he was too tired and the steady rising and falling of her chest was lulling him to sleep. Not even three minutes after, he was comfortably using her neck as a pillow and he had the some innocent, content smile on his face he only ever had when he was asleep.

He was so unspeakably, indescribably beautiful. Fluttershy had an idea, an intrusive, insensitive idea that she would usually discard and forget. But her love blinded her. She made a slight chirping sound, a sound pegasi mares make only to their foals. He stiffened under her, but relaxed again. She smiled and made it again. This time he instinctually nuzzled under her hooves and laid his head against the nape of her neck. Fluttershy smiled and kissed his horn.

With her arms around him, she lay there. Whenever his mane would drift down into his face, she'd brush it back and if he ever began to wake up, she'd comfort him.

She let her head rest on a pillow.

"Goodnight, Sea." She whispered lovingly.

Next Chapter: The Pony of His Dreams Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 54 Minutes