Chapter Seven

I shuffled out of my bed, around the curtains that served as the interior 'walls' of my studio, and blinked stupidly in the glare of computer monitors.

"Pinkie? Twilight? ...Crazy Dan? Why the fuck are you in my home? It's past my bedtime." I glared toward the window and confirmed that, yes, the sky was the gray of dawn.

"Oh! Um, hello, Tamara!" squeaked Twilight. "We're just... sort of doing things. Important things. Why don't you go back to bed?"

"No. I've seen this movie. Puppets drink your blood, or something." I wasn't very lucid just then. Instead of heading back, I rolled onto the couch with my comforter wrapped around me like an impractical toga.

"I hate that movie," said Pinkie, nodding along.

"We're... installing some stuff on your guest session," said Crazy Dan. At my glare, he hastily added, "I'm not touching your computer account! Swear to baby Jesus. Just- this is the only computer the girls have been using to browse the net, and Twilight doesn't want them to break their brains."

It clicked, and I groaned. "Fanfiction?"

"Yes, that," said Twilight.

I looked to Pinkie, who shrugged. "I've already read it all."

"Pinkie, there are too many to read in just three weeks," I mumbled. She stared back at me until I shivered and pat her on the head. "Just stay away from the porn channels, okay?"

"Aw..."

"Just don't delete my harem fics," I told Crazy Dan. "I've got the entire cast of 'Les Mis' as queer, robot vampires. It's post-ironic-meta fiction. A period piece, you could say."

"Lady, I don't know whether anything that comes out of your mouth is true, anymore," said Crazy Dan. "And I'm afraid to ask."

"Then you really don't want to read my Deadpool, Lord of the Rings crossover."

"Is it weird that I've read better Daring Do fanfiction in a world that doesn't publish Daring Do than I've found in Dash's house?" asked Twilight. "Also, Spike may never, ever read this. Any of it. Why does everypony ship me with Big Macintosh?!"

"'Cause he's studly!" said Pinkie, trying to be helpful.

"He doesn't read anything but murder mysteries," grumbled Twilight. "A girl has to have standards. And the number of ponies who think I have some sort of teacher complex..."

"Don't you mean 'people' who think you have some sort of..." I trailed off at her expression.

"Those too," said Twilight. "It was worse when Luna sent me a letter, saying I had 'her blessing', just in case. Tamara? I take everything back- let me stay here. I can live on your couch forever, and nopony can ask me if alicorns like it rough, okay?"

"This is the most awkward wake-up call I've had all week," I replied.

"Why in the names of all the stars in heaven did you have to sit yourself in this misbegotten place!?" Starswirl, wearing his now eponymous cloak of bells, stamped on the roof of my home. Given the way Amaranth listed far up the foothills to the east, the roof served as a back door to the next street back and up.

"Many reasons," I said, sipping happily at my tea. "Mostly to stay ahead of the crowds. I'm a very trend-conscious mare, you know."

"What crowds, Tham'ra?" asked Starswirl. He'd gone straight from apoplectic to tired of my shit- a record for him. This was his third visit so far this year, and I felt a little sad that he had gotten used to my shenanigans. I'd have to step up my game.

"We'll get to that," I said. "Tell me, how are the unicorns doing with that whole 'management of the celestial bodies' thing?"

Starswirl settled back down into his chair and nursed his own mug of black tea. "Fine. The schedule has never been so precise as it is now- my old timekeeping spell has eased things. The princess has, as they say, stepped into her role quite naturally."

"Right," I said. "Good to know. Tell me, why did the earth pony tribe only manage their Winter's End Festival on the first day of summer, this year?"

"Far be it for me to claim to know Puddinghead's mind," said the stallion. "And you know the patterns drawn by the sun and moon are circuitous things at best, half understood even on good years-"

"Starswirl." It was short, clipped, and shut him up immediately. "Don't talk to me like that. I am old and wily and half-mad, and you can not tell me that this is all part of the 'natural course of things'. There is something wrong in the Paradise Estate. The name was a joke in the days of Dream Valley, and it's a cruel joke, now. When will the unicorns send their expedition? I assume Platinum intends to lead."

Unicorns are very specific in the technique and posture required to bash their heads into table surfaces- it's a natural consequence of having a horn.

"Confound it, mare, how do you know?! How do you always, always know?"

"I am a wise and strange witch," I told him. "Hold on. Whistle! Get up here! Stop doing your job and say hello to the mage!"

The door at the top of the staircase burst open. Winter Whistle stomped out, mug in hoof.

"Tham'ra, you hired me to actually get work done. Not to drink tea with crackpot wizards!"

It warmed my heart to hear him refer to a classically-trained battle mage as a crackpot, to his face. Starswirl didn't care, the codger, but it showed a certain freedom in Winter's attitude that had grown over the last year.

Also, he'd seen what I did to the last pony to dare call my assistant a half-breed.

"Your job description is whatever I decide it is. Sit, or I'll send you to buy a calendar. It would make a better assistant, and with half the talk-back."

"You couldn't figure one out," snarked back Winter, taking his seat. "Hello, again, Starswirl."

"Winter Whistle. I have never so admired another stallion's patience as I do yours," the unicorn said. "How is your levitation coming along, my boy?"

Whistle ducked his head down- only his dark coat hid the flush on his face. "Quite well. I mean, compared to how I was." He furrowed his brow and, slowly, and with no few errant sparks, levitated his own mug. His horn was visibly stunted, compared to most, and was barely fluted at all. Still, there were a few things he could accomplish with some focus. More so, ever since Starswirl had started dropping hints.

I clapped, and Winter let his mug clunk gracelessly back onto the table.

"Well done. Remember, circles within squares, and breathe," said the unicorn, referring to a common magician's thought exercise.

"And you're here just in time," I told the pegacorn. "We're about to discuss the unicorns' mass migration away from pony lands."

Let it never be said, in the great history texts of the future, that Starswirl couldn't perform a magnificent, beard-soaking spit-take. Well, I'd never liked that table cloth anyways.

"Is there nothing you hold in confidence?" he asked me, glaring.

"A great deal more than you can imagine," I told him. "But there's no reason to hide anything. Besides, I trust Winter Whistle more than just about anybody else."

"I'm not sure how I feel about that," said Winter, not bothering to specify whether he meant the migration or my trust.

"Besides, you have only fragments of lore to go on, as per the destination," I said. "A few vague mentions about dragon migrations."

"Which you provided for me, to whatever purpose which still escapes me," said Starswirl. "You've shown no great love for unicorns, after all."

I went on as if I hadn't heard him. "And you can't honestly believe that the movement of a princess and her cohorts will go unnoticed," I added. "How is Clover, by the way?"

"Fine," said Starswirl, rolling his eyes and apparently giving up on arguing with me. "And she's fine. She and the princess are... closer than I expected they would become, but there's little enough harm to it. Better than the few months she couldn't stop talking about you."

I mimed fanning my face. "That's flattery, Starswirl. Right there. Keep doing that. Tell me how all the mares love me, again?"

The poor guy groaned. Eventually though, he had to ask: "What else do you know about what's to come, Tham'ra? You know I hesitate to ask how you've come to know... a great deal of what you know. Nor will I diminish the efforts you've put into gathering lore. But, have you any ideas you might care to pass along?" He frowned. "Since you keep second-guessing mine, that is."

"Sorry," I said. "Truly, I am. What little I've gathered over the years is as vague as it is useless. I have a direction, sometimes, but I stumble blindly because no real course has been set. You," I said, "and yours are the ones putting the world into motion. I'm just following and picking up on spare pieces."

"You are a strange one, witch."

"You're telling me," muttered Winter.

"A pox on both of you," I declared.

"Tham'ra? Tham'ra. I literally cannot see. You cost me a job, forced me to follow you in your mad experiments, and now you have taken my sight. Congratulations, I am broken."

"Drama queen," I muttered, and removed the topmost books that had somehow settled over the last available gap in the... impromptu book fort?

"There," I said, peering into the gap. "I have restored your sight. It's a feather-plucking miracle."

"Are we done, yet?" he asked, slowly digging his way out of the stacks. "You wanted these unpacked. Surely we can wait until later to begin sorting them?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said, peering at volumes I'd collected... quite a long time ago. I could do with rereading a few of them. "Come on. Let's go to the waterfront. It should be quiet, by now."

"Don't want staring crowds," muttered Winter.

I cuffed him harmlessly over the head with my wing. "I know you don't like crowds, dummy! Neither do I! I just know how to act crazy enough to get some personal space."

"Act?" he asked, a small smile finally appearing on his muzzle.

"Maybe. Who knows. I'm a mad old woman, Winter. Let me have my quirks," I said, gathering up our scarves. Autumn hadn't hit so much as it had capitulated to winter like an army of naked molerats faced with a dragon. The leaves were freezing right onto the branches, shattering off instead of just falling, first.

"You're not old," muttered Winter.

"I'm probably eighty-two!" I said. "And I count years differently- it's probably been even longer. It feels longer."

"It doesn't matter," he insisted. "Gods help us if you ever do grow to be the cackling madmare everypony thinks you are, but you're not. You're just... different. You understand things, and make the whole world fit in that strange head of yours. You make every pony fit, too."

We passed under the bridges that formed over the lane wherever the second floors of this sloping settlement grew close enough to one another that one address and its opposite became indistinguishable. I considered Winter.

He had lost his job, but it was even odds whether it had been my fault, really. His old boss had been looking for excuses to get rid of him, and he'd burned favors to get the position in the first place.

The stallion had been pushed out of his home mere days after his father had died. Winter Wing had sired four children, and shielded the colt as well as he could, given his situation. I'd have liked to have met the old man, I thought.

Half-breeds, as Whistle had sardonically called himself, were rare. Tribes didn't intermix often, and usually their foals were healthier for it.

"But I'm half of one, and the other, and still don't come to even half altogether," he'd said to me, once. But he was clever, and beneath the anger there was a sharp wit that cut even me, sometimes.

The waterfront was, indeed, quiet. I found myself casting half-furtive glances at the distracted stallion, and even my famous motor mouth failed me. He intrigued me. Months ago when he first started to open up, it had been all of his little contradictions, and the way his hurts masked his hidden strengths. The way he babbled about the sky, as his moon and stars cutie mark declared to all the world to see, when he was brave enough to go without his cumbersome jacket.

Eventually, I had shocked myself when I finally realized that I was looking at him longer, taking in more of him than I expected to. I hadn't looked at a stallion that way... ever, honestly. He was absurdly tall, all long limbs and slim barrel, and messy mane that I just wanted to reach out and mess up a little further.

There would be an Equestria, soon. I'd solved the mysteries, more or less, that had plagued me since I first stepped off of Earth and into strange, strange lands. I still didn't feel any great urge to settle, so to speak, and even Amaranth was just a stopping point, but I wondered if I might not welcome company. More solid company, that was- assistants came and went, and I didn't much care to see Winter go.

"Follow me," I said, stepping off the pier and onto the rocky shore to the north of it. This was the route I'd have to follow soon. Me, and every other pony that hoped to live beyond the great coming frost. For now, it was just a private place to have a conversation that I was suddenly very nervous about. My stomach was fluttering- it hadn't done that since I'd faced murderers and pirates and finally stopped flinching at the blood.

"You look a bit... off," said Winter, eyes full of concern like they were when we both pretended to be normal ponies. "Are you sure you don't want to go back? Sleep might do you... well, I know you don't seem to need sleep, as we mortals know it, but you could read, or something."

"I'd like to tell you a few things," I said. "More than I've told anybody else. There's a lot, so we'll be walking to make sure you don't doze off halfway through," I said, the words coming clipped and fast. "Then I'll ask you a question. And I swear by all the virtues I never claimed to have that I'll abide by your answer. Would you listen, Winter?"

"Yeah. Alright. If you feel you need to-"

"Want, not need," I corrected him. "I want to more than anything, but I could go without. I just... haven't wanted something in a long while. Not like this."

"Then go ahead. I'm all ears," he said, flicking said appendages wryly.

"Right. Fine." We stepped onto a more solid, smooth part of the shore, which took away my excuse to lower my gaze and watch my steps, but I kept it up anyway.

"I was born almost a century ago, now. I was born on another world. Not some far country, not in the distant past, as Starswirl's convinced, but another world. I wasn't even a pony- picture a tall ape, mostly hairless. Like an adolescent dragon, even. I met some curious ponies mostly by accident- they'd gone wandering and come across me one day in the park, as they explored my home ity.

"After that, I found myself with just enough magic, which didn't otherwise exist on that world, and just enough ignorance to put it to use rather recklessly. It... made me feel special. When my friends couldn't come visit me, I was set on going to them. But the land here is magical, and it doesn't like something like what I was. I put together a spell that cost me everything, hoping it would let me adapt. It did," I fluttered my wings, "in the most dramatic way possible.

"Even then, even alone and changed, there were some positives to it. I had real magic, then, for instance. And..." I licked my lips. "I wasn't the happiest example of my race, Winter. I was... born wrong. Female with all the male attributes." I shuddered. "All of them."

"I couldn't even... my mistake cost me my first world, my first and second group of friends, and I'd traded a physical dysphoria for a mental one. That's me. As I am, as I was, and as I figure I'll be for at least tomorrow. Knowing all that now, as nobody else has, I ask you:"

I tugged off my cloak, naked as I so rarely let myself be. "Would you have me, Winter? All of me? I'm a mad witch, put together all wrong again and again, but I... I want you. Would you want me?"

We had stopped walking, standing on the cold shore with only the crashing green foam to break the silence. I was flushed and almost sick with tension, and looked Winter in the eye through my bangs as if they would somehow shield me from disappointment.

Seconds passed, maybe years, even. I must have blinked, because suddenly Winter was so much closer, and I felt my neck stretch back as he licked my jaw. Heat ran through me, but even that wasn't enough, because if all he could do was-

He kissed me.

It was... innocent, and desperate. Like mine had once been, in those days where I felt most unwanted. I'd learned an ease to simple, casual affection between bodies, but even my first days, my short days with Oak Branch had been a thing of instinct when we couldn't trade words so much as glances and-

I kissed back.

I couldn't feel even the dim chill, anymore, that little reminder that though the cold couldn't pierce my coat and feathers, it was still in fact there. But I felt like summer all over.

I broke the kiss long enough to dart forward and seize the base of his wing in my teeth, making his body shudder. He leaned over, easily with his long, slim neck, and reciprocated. I whined- he was taking it slower, and I could hardly stand that. I reached up and brought a hoof down his chest, and had one of those rare moments where I wished I still had fingers to play across his flesh.

His wings flared. Not quite a pegasus, maybe, but I was pleased to see he had the same reactions. Those would be my guides.

I licked at the joint. Winter gave the kind of throaty moan I'd never heard come from a stallion's throat.

"Tham'ra, Tham'ra, please. Let's... I want to..."

I swallowed. Slow, teasing was the bulk of my experience. It was my preference, even, usually. But right then my nerves had fed that sense of want so much, I'd ended up driving myself into a frantic mess of desire. My back legs ached, I could feel them trembling and I was already pushing them into the sand, trying to lever myself closer under Winter's neck.

"Yeah. I'm... ready." Years, I mused, and I still managed to get myself into new, overwhelming sensations. This was new. I just barely managed to check once to see that we were alone -because I knew we wouldn't make it back up through Amaranth and to the close confines of the house- and frantically put up a weak illusion in a wide dome around us.

I backed away, offered a grin that was equal parts nerve, laughter, and desire, and turned around. I planted myself, not too low, because he was that much taller than me to begin with, but lowered my front until the sand tickled my throat. I glanced back at him, heavy-lidded, and raised my tail. It had hurt to keep it down over myself by then, anyway.

Winter looked at me like I was the only beautiful thing in a world of cold ashes. His chest heaved, and at this angle, I saw he'd pushed out of his sheath entirely. Ponies so often looked positively tidy. A tuft of suggestive fur, a slight bit of bulk that revealed not a thing. Winter... I stared. It wasn't anything I'd never seen on a stallion, though never so close and personal. His length stood out and throbbed, roughly human-sized but shaped just differently enough, and on a slightly smaller frame, that it commanded more attention than I would have expected.

I forced myself to relax, between my thighs. I wanted to enjoy this.

"Slow, Winter. Slow at first, but please." I breathed. "Take me." And because I wanted him to know, and feel like I did: "I want you."

He nodded, and came closer. My eyes closed as he carefully, slowly slid his face and chest over my back. I pressed further back against him, tightening the curve in my spine.

"Tham'ra?"

"Please. Slow, but... don't not... I..."

I felt him press against my folds. The flared tip of his length stretched me from the start, roughly -deliciously- pushing me apart. I flexed, unconsciously, and he gasped.

Another pressure came up against my sex. The flared ring at the halfway point -and god, but he was only halfway in!- pushed against me. I groaned, and decided I wanted to push back.

His wings, still rigid, collapsed around my sides, pressing me in at the same time as he was pressing me from the inside out. I panted, memorizing him as he made a pressure map of every nerve, and only then did he pull back.

And then he pressed forward, again.

We moved, awkwardly at first, until we had the measure of each others' timing. I could feel his movements growing more confident, and my own grew more demanding, and he brought his tongue to the thin, soft coat between my wings. There weren't words to compare that sweet pressure to anything human, and I gave up trying to label it a long time ago. I just knew that it made me writhe.

His body slapped against me, the sound low and thick so that it blended in with the distant, crashing waves. Sweat beaded under my legs, and the droplets shook free as he thrust again, and my breath came out so hot with every gasp that it ought to have melted the sand into a molten puddle under my chin.

Winter moved more desperately then, pressing against my walls in a new, foreign angle, where I had nerves stretching all the way to my rasping, moaning throat. I grew more frantic in turn, wings and forelegs thrashing in sharp jerks against the beach as I tightened myself against every attempt he made to draw back, to draw out of me. I didn't want him out of me. I wanted him to... to...

"Tham'ra, gods, Tham'ra, I-"

"Finish me," I rasped. "Don't stop until you can't move, until you, ah! Have nothing left in you..."

Seconds later, his body shuddered, shaking me from the inside out as he bit my mane and pulled. His length pulsed, throbbed, filling me further and I flexed the muscles in my channel even harder, trying to draw him in as much as I possibly could.

Three, four thrusts came before his motions slowed, and he fell against me completely. In turn, I slumped and let my back legs loosen until we were both curled up in a warm, heavy pile.

I felt him try to move, so said, "No, wait. Stay in me... just a while. Until you can't." He slumped back, and slung his neck over mine. I cooed -an embarrassing thing, that winged ponies could make when they weren't vehemently denying they could- and didn't find myself caring, much.

"I've never felt like that," he told me. "Is it always like that?"

I grinned, bright and damp, and said, "No. It gets so much better." I was warm and achy, and hadn't come, but it left me with a low burn in my belly that I found quite pleasant. First thing on my list was to introduce him to oral, then to oh-so-many things.

He softened, eventually, and drew out with a kind of torturous slowness that made me sigh. I felt emptier and, at the end of it, fuller. I'd enjoyed it all so much more than I'd expected, and more than I would have believed before meeting him.

I tried, briefly, to interpose other stallions in his place, and it just didn't work. Still queer -for a human, at least- but I had happily made Winter my little exception.

'I think,' I mused, 'that I'll keep him.'

Months passed. The town hall was built around an auditorium. Tertiary education was all but unheard of among pony kind, and apprenticeship was usually the best method available for education. Still, each town of a certain minimum size tended to have some official who arranged lectures when there was an available space.

I strode in, up onto the rickety stage, and levitated a small, pointed cane. I rapped it on the great slate board that leaned against the wall behind me.

"Mares and gentlestallions!" I said, pushing myself a bit to be heard throughout the space- I'd probably be croaking like a frog for the next two days, but I was too excited to let that dissuade me.

“This is a brief talk concerning the aethira, that race that once built a kingdom stretching from today's Forest Primerum, down to the southern coast of the subcontinent. If you've ever wondered where that extra volcano by the Balking Butte came from, well, it's because the aethira seemed pretty intent on going out with a bang. So they made a gods-be-damned volcano!”

I grinned, and my audience seemed suitably appalled. Dozens of ponies, among them path-charters, trail-blazers, and historians had apparently caught wind of my little speech. I'd been doing about one per month, and they were turning out to be popular!

And if they were appalled now, then they hadn't seen anything, yet.

“This lecture will involve discussion on how to recognize aetherian ruins, how to bypass their dangers, and a quick refresher course for those who don't know to avoid active volcanoes. Also, I'll detail my ongoing efforts to recreate the magics that can, apparently, summon volcanoes!”

Some mare near the back began to cry.

“If my lovely assistant, Winter Whistle, could set up my maps, I'll describe the blast zone.”

At the sight of Winter, whispers broke out. Most of them were by the few locals who'd come in, but I could see Winter trying to shrink in on himself, even as he mounted the stage.

Mean thoughts ran through my mind. With a loud cough, I brought out the cord necklace I kept tucked under my cloak and made it subtly glow. On it was a feather that shone a deep, dark blue, and it didn't take a genius to know just whose wing it had been offered to me by. I would have offered him one of my own, but a stallion carrying a mare's feather carried unfortunate implications. Reminders of 'the bad old days'.

“I would remind you now that this is a polite and friendly lecture,” I announced, and brought forth the illusion of a low, mad groaning noise coming from the walls themselves. An illusory trickle of dust, which might give the impression that I could bring the roof down around our ears at any moment, helped to further get everybody to shut up.

“As I was saying, if the lovely assistant, who has touched me in ways none of you shall ever be allowed to, can provide my maps...”

Two months. We had a summer, of sorts, that ought to have been a bright flare of a season. This solar cycle had, in years past, driven back the snows with a sharp, bright blow. Word was that the unicorns were going to try to hold the pattern for as long as they could- both other tribes had grown dangerously unimpressed with the last few years. The deep freeze was coming, and the windigos were quietly, subtly drawing closer.

Still, life went on. Particularly, it went on in the tiny living room that was less filled with furniture than it was filled with cushioned bookends. I might, I admitted, ought to have left some of them in the cart still parked in the nearby alley. Casting my usual security precautions over two locations every week, though, would have been more than I'd be willing to put up with.

It was midway through the week, and I was hunting pegacorn. I crept under a curtain, eased around a stack of transcribed, oral histories, and grinned out from under the legs of a tall bench.

"Whistle... Winter Whistle..."

He was, as before, hunched over a desk and doing some translation work. Over the months he had picked up on old earth pony, my first language when I arrived, and had been drawn into my little 'Rosetta Stone' project. Silly pegacorn- he wasn't running. He probably didn't even get that I was hunting him.

The poor, oblivious bastard.

"Tham'ra, why are you crawling under the furniture?" he asked, not bothering to look away. Damn it.

I gave up the effort and stood, shaking my mane back into something presentable as I cantered over. Impishly, I ducked my head under his wing, forcing it out over my neck.

"Tham'ra?" he looked puzzled, up until I thought he caught the look on my face. "What are-" His breath caught, and he swallowed. "You're... you smell... gods, Tham'ra, why are your seasons so weird?!"

I pouted. Winter had been around long enough to pick up on that little tidbit. I wandered around clear-headed when entire pony villages decided to go stupid, or tended to stare just a bit too long at the mares trying to go about their working days when they were being all productive and clear-headed. Now I was staring at Winter.

"Alien, maybe? Or maybe I spent too much time on the road for my body to adjust," I suggested. "Winter..."

"Ah... ah, um. Should I... get a room, somewhere? Give you a few days?"

"You can't have a few days," I grumbled. Yay, biology- turning seventy percent of the pony population into dumb teenagers twice a year. I was feeling very delightfully stupid. And warm. Stupid warm.

"Tham'ra, you're not thinking straight. Remember last fall, when you went and tried catching fish with your teeth? You scared all hells out of me, and I'd only been working for you three days, then!"

"I don't care that I'm not thinking straight," I told him. "I was thinking straight last week. Here." I ducked under the desk, giving his barrel a sharp nip as I went and sending him jumping back, and pulled out a very specific piece of parchment with my mouth. I pulled back out into the open, holding it out to him like an earth pony and waggling my brows as suggestively as possible.

Because he was being no fun, he took it with a hoof.

"Dear Winter Whistle," he read. "I can feel my... sexy times coming, and I want you to stay. If you want, we can do this, and if you don't want, you should run very fast because I'm going to want Thammy-time with my own hooves. No watching if... if you don't want to join in." He swallowed. "Tham'ra, this is in crayon. I've seen you draw, and it's beautiful, but these are stick figures doing... things! You've lost your mind."

"Winter," I said, forcing myself to be as serious as possible. "I want you to stay." He knew as well as I did what that meant, to go fooling around while I was in season.

Admittedly, if he didn't stay, it would be unbearable. I'd never had to stay away from a lover while in season, since being with other mares was basically free of... certain consequences. Being alone when I had somebody would leave me chewing on the furniture and trying to sit on ice cubes.

"With me?" he asked. It would be hard for him, I knew, wrapping his mind around the future like that. Pegacorns didn't tend to form families- they were, at best, fetishes for the ignorant.

"With you." I licked the corner of his mouth. "I can feel this one. It'll be short. Five days, maybe. But I want to make them count." To make sure he got the point, I reached further up and pulled the end of his ear into my mouth.

"Ah! Yes, yes I'd... I'd like that. Do you think we'll be okay?" he asked, eyelids fluttering. I gave him points for staying coherent- at that point, with me smelling as I probably did, and chewing on one of his more sensitive spots, he ought to have already lost his mind.

I spoke so that the heat of my breath would paint the inside of his ear, and told him, "We're going to be fucking magnificent. So fuck me, Winter."

There are rugs everywhere, and I'd just begun buying them for some reason, one a week for about six months straight a while back, but I reluctantly decide not to drag him to the floor. In all honesty, that would probably end up happening this week anyway, but our 'inaugural rutting' should, I felt, take place in our bed.

He hadn't slept in his own room since our first time together, and I hadn't wanted him to.

We stumbled up the stairs together, to the single, second-story loft room. I stopped him there, feeling silly and far too excited about the idea that struck me, then.

"Give me five minutes," I told him.

Winter boggled. "Tham'ra, I don't want to give five seconds. Why? Why in the name of all that is good and holy?"

I bit back a grin- I may have drawn my tail over his face a few times during our race upstairs. Though to think about it, it was less a race and more him following my backside with laserlike intensity...

"I have a little present for you," I told him. I cocked my head to the side and looked up at him with big, doe eyes. "You want your present, don't you?" I gnawed on my lip, slowly and very visibly.

The stallion nodded half hard enough to rattle his own teeth and turned -with difficulty, with his wings pressed out against the wall and banister- and looked away.

"And if you peek," I told him, "you won't get tomorrow's present." Honestly, both sets had been bought on a lark during one bored night out in the market, but I hadn't not been thinking about him, so I felt it counted. He went rigid and nodded toward the far wall.

I ducked behind the bed -pegasus down- and muscled aside a stack of spare blankets. The bundled cloth hidden underneath came free from its package and I went to it.

"Oh, Winter? You can turn-"

I hadn't finished the sentence before he had spun around, only to freeze. Certain things, I'd found, were just good for a girl's ego. Winter whimpering like a child in a sweet shop just then was one of them.

I came around the bed, slowly and deliberately, with green socks pulled up to the thigh on each leg. I'd managed to tie a large green ribbon into a bow around my tail, just to... highlight the whole image.

"Do you like your present?" I asked.

He went misty-eyed. "This is it, isn't it? You tried to describe how that 'Christmas' day felt. This is how it feels, isn't it?"

I snorted, which shouldn't have been sexy, but he kept right on staring. "Well, you didn't find me under a tree, but why not?" I decided not to hum the lyrics to 'Santa Baby', for fear that I'd laugh hard enough to chase away even my unusually high arousal.

"I'd tell you to get me ready," I said, almost stuttering a bit as I admitted, "but I've been... getting myself ready all day. Whenever you weren't looking? I was touching myself, Winter." I walked closer, angling around just far enough that he knew that I wanted to be the one to touch him, but not far enough to imply I wanted a chase, just then. I let the crown of my head draw along the underside of his wing, cat-like, before twisting my neck and ducking down toward his belly. He was already out, already hard. I leaned forward and dragged my tongue up toward his flared head- his member jumped at the contact.

"Ah! I thought, because the heat, we were going to..." his voice turned into a gurgle.

"We will," I called from under him, licking my lips. "Just making sure you were... up to it. To be fair, though, I probably will be using my mouth on you this week. I've never woken you up with my lips wrapped around your hngh, ah!" I gasped- he'd curled around my smaller form and pressed his face under my tail, putting a suckling kiss to where I'd been showing almost all day long.

Like I said, whenever he hadn't been looking...

"Bed," I growled. Ponies weren't built for growling, but I had reason to. I spun around and started pulling him by the shoulder.

"Like that time last week?" he suggested. "With you on your back, and me facing you?" Life as a pony- when throwing in the missionary position now and then was actually spicing things up.

"Yeah, just, help me over," I said. Short of catching me from falling out of a cloud mid-coitus, a real danger for pegasi, my wings didn't want to relax long enough to actually flip over.

Winter, so silly and kind out of the public eye, all but danced with me backwards until my rump hit the edge of the bed, then kept gently pushing until I'd toppled with a rush of air. I scooted back just far enough to give him room to climb up after me. Above me, silhouetted by the dusk light of the far window, he looked like ink and obsidian wrapped in sleek muscle and fur. His eyes were a bright, bright red that took in my body and glinted.

“Do you think I look extra fuckable, Winter?” I asked, bringing my forelegs down over my neck and chest, ruffling my coat to make it look messier than it was, and yet slightly less messy than it would be in short order.

“You really do,” he said, but pulled back.

I stared. He shouldn't have been pulling back- he should have been doing the exact opposite of that!

Then he ducked down and kissed my thigh, forcing a gasp from my lips. His mane fell around his eyes as he looked up and caught my gaze. “I think I ought to unwrap my present, but I'd really rather leave them on you.” He kissed further down, less than an inch from where I had already soaked through my own coat.

“Winter, I thought we were going to just,” and that was as far as I got, because he licked me, all the way up to the small pink hood where my nether lips met.

“We will,” he assured me, breath chilling the slick skin. “I'm just making sure you're ready,” he said, purposely mimicking my earlier words. “I want to-” kiss “-let you know all the-” lick “-ways I love you.” Suckle.

My eyes tried to roll up into my head as his lips pulled at my clit.

“For how you make me feel like a complete pony, and not like I'm half of anything,” he told me. “For how you trust me enough to whisper secrets into my ears, at night. For how you've learned every inch of my body... and taught me every inch of yours.”

Winter, the poet that nobody ever cared enough to hear. I whimpered. The poet who said silly little, beautiful lines to me when he thought I was asleep.

“For wanting me, when I was afraid to be wanted. My lovely, loved, and yes, fuckable mare,” he whispered, and kissed his way up my body. He paused long enough to run his tongue over my teats, but the remainder of the trip upward took much less time.

Really, it couldn't come quickly enough, for me.

I blessed him, in the back of my mind, for being tall enough to tuck his forelegs under my wings even as he lay chest-to-chest with me. His mouth tucked into the crook of my neck and he was still whispering as he carefully drew his lower body up into mine.

It had been a long time since I'd felt nervous about making love to him- since I'd had to psych myself up to be with a male. Instead, I just grinned at the familiar feel of his sex pressing inside of me, stretching me. I felt wet and heavy and full, and he always entered so slowly, at first.

I hissed as he bit my neck, just like I'd showed him to. He was a lot more picky about me doing the same to him, which I didn't mind much. I couldn't reach his wings from this angle. Instead I ducked my head over his and licked at the thin, soft down at the base of his horn.

A long while back, I'd broken out laughing as a unicorn mare confided in me how often the other tribes expected unicorns to want a kind of awkward 'head fellatio', when most of the horn didn't have sensation but for pain, when hit. The skin and nerves on the head's crown, however, just before their manes grew back from the horn, were almost as sensitive as wings, in the right mood.

And lucky me, I had a lover who could offer a direct comparison like none other could!

He grunted at the feeling of my tongue, and I had to let my head fall back into the mattress as he suddenly hit a harder, faster pace. My hips jolted back, and he pounded away. I was far too warm, and every fresh throb of contact sent static up through my belly. I could taste his sweat.

His eyes were closed, and I knew he was cutting off as many senses as he could out of instinct, just to focus just that much more on the feel of me.

I strained right back, trying to force him ever deeper inside me. I gasped, and there might have been words. Might have, because I was trying to speak English with a mouth never meant for it. Winter must have gotten my intent, though, because when I told him to 'fuck me harder' in a half-forgotten Minnesotan accent, he obliged.

When I began to squirm, half-controlled spurts and shakes, he bit down again, marring my cream fur with a flat ring that would bruise and I saw nothing but white stars. Long seconds passed, and I couldn't be certain but I thought I was clamping down on his length like a vice. He bore down on me and I felt him flex, inside, as he came hot and thickly. I kept on shaking, wrapping as tightly around him as I could for almost a minute afterward.

“Winter...”

“I know.”

“No, really. Winter?”

“Yes, Tham'ra?”

“Heat sex is the best sex.”

He groaned, which might have been an agreement, and might simply have been him giving up all hope. I was cool with it, either way.

"So..." I drew circles in his coat. "Again?"

Author's Notes:

A little bit hesitant to release this one, but that's mostly just because I have less confidence in writing explicit material than anything else.

Then again, after I've finished this one, I aim to write something akin to a rather well-known story: Xenophilia. I hope to bring the same love of world-building to that one as I think I have to this one.

Of course, I still have another eighty-thousand words of this story to release -already finished- and one or two chapters after that to finish things off.

I plan on punching you all in the feels. Your feels, they will ache.