“How long until they get here?” Moon asked as she swept the hallway with her magic while cleaning the dishes.

I glanced at my watch. “Ten minutes,” I answered as I finished vacuuming the couch. The two of us had spent the last half hour cleaning the apartment to get ready for some guests that were on their way over.

“Okay, the kitchen and bedroom are spotless,” Moon told me as she put away the broom and dustpan.

“Great. The living room and bathroom have been taken care of, too,” I said, emptying the vacuum into the trash can. With all the last minute cleaning done, I leaned against the kitchen counter in relief while Moon struck a nervous pose in front of me.

“How do I look?”

“Like Nightmare Moon.”

The mare’s pupils shrank as she lit up her horn. “Shit!” she exclaimed. I chuckled as she donned her unicorn disguise. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“Usually I wouldn’t have to. You’ve done a good job of hiding your identity so far.”

“I guess I’m just nervous…” the mare admitted.

I shrugged. “I don’t blame you. In fact, I’m a little nervous, too. We’ll just have to make the best of it.”

All of a sudden, my phone rang, and I answered it nervously. “Hello?” I said, trying to mask my anxiousness. “…Yeah, I’m in Apartment 6. …Okay. Bye.”

“I’m guessing that was them,” Nightshade said as I hung up the phone.

I nodded. “Yeah. They just reached the building and should be here any second now.” Just then, we heard several knocks on the door, our heads swiveling to look at it. “Well, here we go.”

I walked up to the door with Nightshade stepping back into the hallway nervously, and I opened the door to see two mares waiting in the hallway.

“Jade! Ms. Opal!” I exclaimed with an excited tone that was somewhat forced.

“Hi, Noah! Good to see you again!” the young mare greeted as I let her and her grandmother inside, allowing them to get comfortable.

“How’ve you been, Ms. Opal?” I asked.

“It’s adorable how you insist on calling me that,” she chuckled. “Like I keep saying, dearie, just ‘Opal’ is fine.”

I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I keep forgetting.” I looked back at Jade, who had gotten comfy on one of the living room chairs. The last time I saw her, it was before Moon had used her healing spell, when the pegasus was still bedridden at the hospital. When Moon told me that she had fully healed Jade, I was in disbelief at first, but then I had gotten an excited phone call from Jade several hours later. Seeing her now, up and around with a smile on her face, it was almost surreal when I compared it to her thinly veiled suffering not a few days ago.

“Oh, and who is this?” Opal asked as she saw Nightshade.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” the unicorn said as she stepped out of the hallway. “My name is Nightshade. I’m Noah’s roommate.”

“Aww, such a polite young mare!” the elderly pony smiled.

“Grandma, when are you gonna stop talking to grown ponies like they’re foals?” Jade sighed.

“Oh, no. It’s quite alright,” Nightshade interjected, waving her arms in front of her. “I don’t mind.”

Jade then gave Nightshade a curious look. “Have we… met before?”

The unicorn and I gave each other surprised looks. I knew that she didn’t remember the accident, but she didn’t remember seeing Nightshade, either? Well, it was for the best that she didn’t remember her, anyway.

Nightshade looked at Jade “I don’t… think so...” she answered.

“Oh, well forget about it then,” the pegasus shrugged as Nightshade and I sat on the couch with Jade and Opal seated in two separate chairs. “So, Noah, are you and Nightshade an item or what?”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” the unicorn quickly denied. “We’re just roommates.”

“Yeah. We both wanted to live off-campus and decided that living together would be easier on us financially.”

“I wish I had thought of that during my school days,” Opal joked. “Then again, college wasn’t as expensive back then as it is now.”

Jade, Nightshade, and I nodded in agreement, two of us knowing firsthand how expensive college was, and one of us just going with the others.

“So how long before you head back to school, Jade?” I asked.

“Well, I submitted an application to get transferred to online classes for the rest of the quarter, and I planned on spending the summer down here in Florida, so I’ll be here for a while. When I told Topaz, she was really excited, and she can’t wait to see me in June!”

“Well, in that case…” Nightshade interjected before hesitating for a moment. “Would you like to go see Mary’s Comet with us?”

Jade tilted her head in curiosity. “Is that the thing that they’ve been talking about on the news?”

“Yeah. Noah and I were gonna drive to the beach and see it with some friends of ours, and we were even gonna stay there overnight. I’m sure our friends won’t mind as long as you bring your own tent.”

“That sounds cool, but I don’t think I have a tent.”-

“I have one that you can use, Jade,” said Opal. “I haven’t used it in a while, but it’s still in good shape.”

“In that case, when are you guys going?” the young pegasus asked with a smile.

As Nightshade told Jade and Opal about our plans, I looked at her with an amazed look. I could understand wanting to heal Jade because of how guilty she felt, but I didn’t think she’d want to invite her to see Mary’s Comet with us. Did she still feel guilty for what she put Jade through? As I looked at Nightshade, I saw some slight discomfort in her face, like she was forcing herself to extend this invitation.

I couldn’t help but wonder why she was going this far.

It was late in the afternoon, and Klaus, Maud, Nightshade and I drove to the beach to get ready to see the comet. We picked a nice, secluded spot by the sand for us to set up our tents, and we wanted to get that done before we did anything else.

“Hey, Maud! Could you help us out with this?” I called out as Nightshade and I struggled to get our tent up.

The mare looked over at us as she finished pitching her own tent. “Sure. I’ll be right over.” As Maud helped us out, I glanced over at Klaus, who was having a worse time than Nightshade and me.

“Come on, just… for one second… good. Now I just need to… SON OF A BITCH!”

“You okay over there?” I asked, trying my hardest to stifle an incoming laugh.

“Does this look ‘okay’?” he asked back, gesturing his arms towards the jumbled mess that was supposed to be his tent. “This stupid thing won’t stay up!”

“You never were very good at this kind of stuff, Klausie,” a voice said out of nowhere. Klaus’s feathers ruffled a little as he looked up into the sky. The rest of us looked up and saw another griffon flying down toward us. She looked strikingly similar to Klaus, more so than his brother, Reggie. The only difference between her and Klaus (besides her boobs) was that she had black hair tied back in a ponytail.

“Griffons can have hair?” I whispered, leaning over to Nightshade.

“Some can, yeah,” she whispered back.

“You’re a smart kid, but sometimes you can be a little inept,” the older griffon said to her little brother. “No offense, of course.”

“You have this bad habit of saying ‘no offense’ right before you say something offensive,” Klaus grumbled.

“So, are you gonna introduce me to your friends, or what?”

The younger griffon let out a frustrated sigh. “Guys this is my oldest sister, Griselda. Griselda, these are my friends, Noah, Nightshade, and Maud.”

“Nice meeting you guys,” Griselda said with a nod.

“You too,” I replied.

“So can you help me with this tent, Zelda?” Klaus asked, receiving a smirk from his big sister.

“Of course, little bro,” she told him, ruffling the feathers on his head. “You’d be totally lost otherwise!”

“I already regret asking for your help.”

“Tough titty! I’ve already accepted!” Griselda said with a toothy grin.

“I like you,” Maud deadpanned.

Just then, we heard someone calling out to us, or rather, Nightshade and me. “Noah! Nightshade!” the voice yelled, and the two of us turned to see Jade approaching us with two bags.

“Oh! Hey, Jade!” I called, waving at her as she waved back.

“So this is the mare you were talking about?” Maud asked.

“Yeah,” I answered as the mare in question reached us. “This is Golden Jade. She’s an old girlfriend of mine.”

“Hm… Not a lot of guys can say that they’re on amicable terms with their exes,” the earth mare commented.

“You’re telling me,” Klaus grunted, still struggling to put up his tent even with his sister’s help.

Nightshade and I resisted the urge to laugh.

After setting up our tents, Klaus went into the woods to find some firewood. Unfortunately, when we all drew straws, the two of us got the shortest ones.

“You think that maybe the girls sabotaged us?” the griffon asked as he tore off some branches from high up while I picked up some sizeable pieces of wood from the ground.

“Didn’t think of it ‘til now, but now that you mentioned it, it’s a possibility, knowing them, especially Nightshade and Jade.”

“So both your exes are tricksters. Way to pick ‘em, Ashburn.”

I shot him a look. “At least my exes don’t hate my guts, Stormcloud.”

There was a long pause before I heard “shut up.”

Once we had gotten what we thought was enough firewood, Klaus and I began to head back to the beach. We had wandered pretty far into the woods, so it was going to be quite the walk.

“So…” Klaus began, unsure of where to start. “You and Nightshade… You’re still ‘just friends’?”

“Mm-hm,” I answered without putting much thought into it.

“In that case, doesn’t that make it a little uncomfortable living with her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, isn’t there a weird vibe in the air when you’re at home in the same room?”

My first instinct was to answer “no,” but then I thought about it. Since Moon came back, there was a bit of hesitancy in me. Whenever she’d touch me, a cold shiver would run through me for a split second. While it did happen a lot less often lately, there were times where it would come back.

“There is, sometimes,” I admitted, “but I’m not the only one that feels that way.”

“What do you mean?” Klaus asked me.

“It’s true that I sometimes feel a little uncomfortable when I’m close to Nightshade, I can tell that she feels uncomfortable, too. Sometimes when she hugs me or whenever she gets close to me, she’d shiver a little, just like me. Knowing that she feels the same way as I do just makes me feel a little bit better.”

Klaus took a moment to take in everything I had said, giving me a smile as a sign of understanding. “Does the thought of getting back together with her ever cross your mind?” he asked.

“I actually try not to think about it,” I answered. “Among other things, I think one of the reasons why our relationship didn’t work out was because we got into it too early. Neither of us were at the point where we felt like we could tell each other everything, and that ended up messing things up between us, so right now I’m just focusing on being her friend first.”

“That’s one way to go about it…” The griffon nodded.

A smirk creeped its way across my face. “Of course, if that doesn’t work out, your sister looks pretty hot. She’s single, right?”

“AGH! Don’t even!” Klaus spat. “You don’t date you’re best friend’s sister! That’s guy code!”

“True, but what if she came onto me? What then?” I asked, keeping up the joke. “Besides, she can make her own decisions. She’s a grown woman.”

“Exactly! Griselda is twelve years older than us!”

“Well, considering that my last girlfriend was older than me by at least a thousand years, that’s not really a dealbreaker,” I thought to myself with a grin. “I guess my time dating Moon has desensitized me.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” I shrugged.

“You are five seconds away from catching rocks with your face, Noah!”

“Dude, relax,” I said with a calm chuckle. “I’m just messing with you. I don’t have the hots for your sister, although I would if it wasn’t for one thing.”

“And what’s that?” Klaus asked with a stern look.

“She looks too much like you,” I laughed.

“What’s that’s supposed to mean!?”

“It’s nothing against you,” I disclaimed. “It’s just that if she and I did end up dating, I’d keep seeing your face in place of hers if she ever tried to kiss me.”

The griffon grunted. “If that’s what’s gonna keep you from hitting on my sister, I guess I can’t complain,” he said, but then, I saw a look of discomfort on his face. “So… going back to what you said about you and Nightshade not knowing each other well enough to start a relationship…”

“Yeah…”

He averted his eyes from me for a moment before finally spitting it out. “You think that… Maud and I know each other well enough?”

My head turned to look at him almost immediately. Did he mean what I thought he meant?

“Um… I don’t…” I muttered, feigning ignorance.

“I’m asking if you think a relationship between Maud and me would work out.”

I had to think about it for a moment. “Well, you’ve known each other since the three of us started college, and you get along with her relatively well.”

“You can really say that with a straight face?” he asked.

“You’re still friends with her, though.”

Klaus let out a sigh. “True. I know that we bicker sometimes, especially lately, but I dunno. If it was anypony else, I would’ve stopped hanging out with them, but Maud’s different. I know that whenever she calls me out, it’s not to be mean or anything. She’s just… teasing.”

“Don’t tell me that you’ve been enjoying it,” I said warily.

I saw a blush appear on the griffon’s face. “Not at first.”

“I think I’m learning more about you than I’m comfortable with…”

“Well, that’s your role as my best friend, isn’t it? My bullshit is your bullshit.”

I gave him a look. “Don’t start quoting Kevin Hart on me, Klaus.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t help it.”

At this point, the two of us finally got close to the beach, but as we did, we began to hear splashing sounds accompanied by laughter.

“No they didn’t,” we growled as we rushed out of the woods to see all four girls in the shallow water, lazing about while Klaus and I did all the work!

“THE FUCK!?” the griffon yelled, forcefully throwing the firewood he had collected to the ground. “YOU GUYS WERE JUST DOING NOTHING THIS WHOLE TIME!?”

Griselda, who was almost fully submerged, save for her eyes, proceeded to roll them, a swarm of bubbles forming as she let out an underwater sigh. “Quit being so dramatic, Klausie,” she said as she stood up, giving me a good view of her two-piece swimsuit. I tried not to stare at the black bikini gracing her greyish-white fur as she pointed towards the tents. “We already set up a fire pit and the only thing left is to set up the telescope.”

“Which only Noah knows how to do,” Maud added.

“Exactly, so calm your tits, boys.” Griselda finished with her hands on her hips.

“Besides, we drew straws, so it’s not like you guys can complain,” Nightshade shrugged.

You’d think that at least she’d be on my side.

“Well, I guess you guys did do something while we were gone, at least,” Klaus sighed as he picked up his sticks off the sand. “Go ahead and toss your firewood in the pit, Noah. I’ll get the fire started. You set up the telescope.”

I nodded my head. “Sure.”

The two of us got to work on our respective tasks while the ladies talked in the water. I was still a little miffed that we were doing most of the work, but I eventually let it go. Assembling the telescope wasn’t that hard a task. There were just a lot of parts to put together. As I worked on the telescope, I noticed Klaus staring at something while he was getting the fire started. I followed his line of sight, only for it to lead to Maud, who was wearing a pale blue bikini with thin straps, leaving little to the imagination.

This was the first time I’ve seen Maud showing this much skin… or fur… coat… whatever. The mare usually dressed pretty conservatively, so you’d think that she’d opt for a one piece. I looked at Maud’s face, and as she was talking to Nightshade, Jade, and Griselda, she would occasionally glance back at Klaus, who would then look away and work on the fire.

I get he really can’t handle her midriff.

It kinda amused me that Maud was acting like she wasn’t into Klaus. Ever since Moon told me about her suspicions, Maud’s efforts to gain Klaus’s attention became a lot more obvious to me.

It’s funny how you don’t notice some things until someone else points it out to you.

Two hours had passed, and the sun had already set. The six of us were gathered around the fire, roasting marshmallows and shooting the shit about… well, just life in general. Of course, Maud and Klaus sat next to each other, Griselda sat to the left of her little brother, and I sat in-between Nightshade and Jade.

The telescope was set up nearby and was hooked up to my laptop. I programmed the computer to follow the comet as it passed by and record the telescope’s view of it.

“How much longer until the comet passes, Noah?” Maud asked. As the person with the telescope, I was the unofficial timekeeper.

I looked at my watch and almost choked on my marshmallow. “Three minutes!”

At that moment, everyone rushed to finish their marshmallows. We then scurried to the telescope with some of us looking at the sky and others looking at the computer. As time went by, we all grew more and more anxious to see the comet until-

“There it is!” Nightshade exclaimed as she pointed in the direction of the comet, and I immediately aimed the telescope so it could lock on to its target.

The view was amazing, both with the naked eye and with the telescope. From the ground, it looked like a big white ball crossing the sky, but close up, there was a multi-color trail running behind it.

“It’s so pretty,” Griselda said as she leaned forward to get a closer look, only for her chest to make contact with my bare back. “Oh. Sorry, Noah.”

“It’s fine…” I said with a shiver.

Maybe I could get past her looking like my best firend…

“It is really beautiful. Isn’t it, Klaus?” Maud asked.

“Yeah…” he answered absentmindedly. I glanced over at them and saw the earth mare grasping the griffon’s arm, and he held her close in response. I smiled at how cute they looked before turning my attention back to the comet.

Unfortunately, the moment didn’t last forever, and comet eventually left our sight.

“Imagine, by the time that rock comes around again, we’ll be around a hundred and ten years old,” Jade said in awe.

“Yeah, but I’ll be over a hundred and twenty. I’ll probably be long gone,” Griselda joked.

With the comet long since out of sight, the others helped me pack up the telescope before heading to bed. Klaus was going to be sharing a tent with his sister, but before I went into my tent with Nightshade, I saw the two griffons talking, the older sister smirking at her younger brother before nodding her head. I ducked into the tent before Klaus turned around and headed in my direction, passing my tent and heading toward Maud’s.

“He’s really gonna do it,” I whispered to myself.

“Who? Klaus?” Nightshade asked.

“Yeah. He’s heading towards Maud’s tent. You think Maud’s gonna let him sleep with her.”

“That’s a given. The real question is whether or not they’ll get it on.”

I scoffed at the notion. “I doubt it. Even if they wanted to, they probably wouldn’t because the rest of us would hear.”

“I was just joking, Noah,” the mare said, rolling her eyes. “Besides, tent sex isn’t very comfortable, so it’d be a terrible setting for a couple’s first time.”

“How do you know that?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m just going off of gossip that I’ve heard,” she answered with an innocent face.

I let out a “hmph” and got under the blanket next to Nightshade.

“You want to know why I’m so sure that Maud and Klaus like each other?” she asked out of the blue.

“Sure, why not?”

The mare gave me a mischievous look and smirked at me. “I may have peered into their dreams once or twice.”

“Don’t you think Princess Luna might find you?”

Nightshade shook her head. “Nah. Earth’s dreamscape is entirely separate from Equus’s. It’s completely different in the way it looks, too. Maybe I can take you there sometime?”

“That sounds cool,” I said as I finally got into a comfortable position. “So, Nighthsade…” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think about where we stand right now… in terms of our relationship, I mean.”

The unicorn looked at me with a surprised expression before answering. “Well, even though we’re just friends, I’m still glad that I get to be around you and be a part of your life.”

“Do you still… have feelings for me?” I asked.

“Of course I do, Noah,” she answered with a matter of fact tone. “I still love you, and I always will, but I’m also willing to wait until you’re ready to love me back. Even if that never happens, as long as I get to see you happy.”

“See me happy?”

The mare nodded. “What really killed me during our time apart was that I made you feel so miserable, and I don’t ever want to see you like that again, so even if your happiness ends up being a loss for me, it’s worth it to me.”

“Is that why you invited Jade to see the comet with us?” I asked.

“Well, that and I wanted to get a chance to actually get to know her. She’s actually really nice. I’m looking forward to hanging out with her some more this summer.”

I looked at Nightshade in awe, and I was reminded of just how much she had changed from before.

“Thanks… Goodnight, Nightshade,” I smiled as I shut my eyes.

I heard a chuckle, and I felt a wing reach over my shoulder, the soft feathers caressing my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see the mare smiling at me, still in her Nightshade form, only she had one black wing unhidden and her eyes were here natural teal blue with those cat-like pupils. It amazed me how much control she had over her transformation magic.

“It’s Moon,” she corrected before retracting her wing and concealing it once more.

The two of us embraced each other as sleep took us both, and I had a content smile on my face, happy that I had such an amazing mare by my side.

Maybe I’d be ready to try again sooner than I thought.

Author's Notes:

You can read my afterthoughts HERE.