It was a dim, drizzling night, and Applejack and Rainbow Dash were together in the former’s bedroom, mainly because the latter didn’t have one. Applejack was lying on the bed, with Rainbow lying on the floor.

“You wanna get up on the bed with me?”

“It’s too much work.”

“Say, how many tahmes did you flah fifty kilometres as fast as you could last year?”

“I did eight races, but there was a lot of training and practice for that distance too.”

“But this is too much work.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“Well, you want this more than Ah do, so you’ll come up soon enough.”

“We’ll see.”

One hour later, neither of them had surrendered.

“You gonna sleep on the floor?”

“I might.”

One hour later, neither of them had surrendered.

“If you come up here, you can have sex with your girlfriend who you love so much you wanted to be her girlfriend.”

“If you come down here....”

They fell asleep without having sex.

Applejack woke up first. She always had some rope in her wardrobe in case things turned sexy, which technically was rare, as they usually started that way. The sleeping Rainbow Dash on her floor meant that now was one of those times, so she took some out and used two coils to hogtie her and another for her wings. Like most ponies, she took several months to get good at tying things, and it wasn’t a skill everyone had. She was in fact an exceptional knot-tier, her proudest moment coming when she was eleven and she placed third in the Under-12 Vota Province Tying Championships.

Applejack was still in the bathroom when Rainbow woke up. She didn’t immediately need the bathroom, so she was fine with being tied up for as long as Applejack wanted, as long as it was shorter than thirty hours since she had weather to do then. After a few minutes of boredom, Applejack came back in.

“I’ve been waiting here for I don’t know how long. At least three minutes, for sure.”

“Yep. You got anythin’ to do today?”

“No.”

“You’re gonna eat me out until you choke.”

“Okay.”

Twilight put her front hooves together as she continued to watch the monitor. “It’s all going according to plan.”

“You’re playing a business management game,” Spike said.

She looked over her shoulder. “What are you doing here? And what are cameraponies doing here? I thought we were doing an Appledash episode.”

“Usually their sex is really boring,” said the only transcriber there. “They just do the same thing for half an hour and never talk. So we’re filming you in case we need some filler. We might even get so desperate that we include me explaining to you why we’re here.”

“So what about you, Spike?”

“I got lonely.”

“How long have you been standing behind me?”

“Maybe ten minutes.”

“Well, I’m not one for pointless conversations.”

“You do it with Rainbow Dash all the time.”

“Yeah, but she officially comes over for sex and we just happen to talk. Talking by itself is like... I don’t know... salad dressing by itself. Well, it’s not that bad. It’s like a slice of cheese by itself.”

“So you won’t talk with me?”

“I thought that was clear.”

A couple orgasms later, Applejack was still sitting on Rainbow and still breathing at seemingly random intervals and intensities. Big Mac knocked the door.

“What are you doing?”

Applejack went up to the door. “It’s weird, you don’t wanna know.”

“I won’t judge.”

“Don’t you respect anypony’s prahvacy? Go away.”

“You’re making it seem suspicious.”

“You don’t trust your sister.”

He gave up and went away.

With the Appledash not providing the content expected, a small piece of filler had to be stuck on the end of the episode.

“Transcriber #2?”

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t that a little... meta?”

“Oh, and you’re helping?”

“I’m actually here! You’re talking about the structure of the show.”

“We’re not supposed to exist either.”

Rarity and Sweetie Belle were having dinner, a pilaf featuring a long list of vegetables practically endemic to the cuisine of Equestria and its southern neighbour Chevik, whose food Equestrians had for several generations been very fond of importing, the reverse not true.

“What happened at school?” Rarity said. “You didn’t answer me after you came back.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just frustrating. Stacey and Scootaloo got into a fight again. Stacey stole her protractor, so Scootaloo threatened her and she still wouldn’t give it to her, then they got in a fight and as usual Scootaloo basically beat her up, so eventually—well, it was pretty quick, but you know what I mean—she was on the floor with a sore everything, basically paralysed without infinite pain tolerance. So Scootaloo asked her the combination to her locker, and this wasn’t a scheme, she knew better than anypony Scootaloo wouldn’t steal anything, but she shook her head, so Scootaloo kinda... sucker stomped her, knocked her out is what matters, to the sound of everypony making fun of her for losing to the starving foal again. And she still doesn’t have her protractor, but next week we’ll see what happens....”

“Next week? It’s still a school day tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but Stacey’s in hospital. She should be out in time to be there Monday.”

Rainbow Dash was lying facedown on the cloud she had chosen for that night’s sleep, and with Twilight’s confirmation that eating a hoofful of cloud wouldn’t kill her, it was finally the time. She had been excited about it for the past few hours, and she smiled as she tore off a bit of the cloud. She breathed a few slow, heavy breaths, then took the bite. It had the texture of packing peanuts and tasted like cellophane, but that was far outweighed by the simple fact that she was eating cloud. She chewed it, slowly changing the texture to saliva-soaked packing peanuts, and shook for a moment as she swallowed it. It was pleasant to do it once, but she wasn’t going to dig into every cloud she landed on. She wondered if someone would fly by and wonder if the piece torn off with a bite mark was really what it looked like, then mentally shrugged and, as it were, went to bed. Next Chapter: Chapter 47: Perform or Die Estimated time remaining: 14 Hours, 60 Minutes