This is a story of ultra super secret extra spicy forbidden love. And strabismus. Mostly the first part.

Thaddeus watched as the pegasus touched down in the swamp that was his home. Well, one head watched, the other three were eating. Being a Hydra meant being a multi-story reptilian monster that spread terror as easily as cream cheese on a bagel, but that didn’t mean it didn’t come with perks. The pegasus neared his den, and at last, he recognized his one true love. Thaddeus joyfully trundled across the swamp to meet her, his lovely Derpina. Her gray coat shone like the morning dew, and her lustrous blond mane evoked images of the suns rays filtering through the clouds.

“Oh Derpina, my love, how I have longed for your touch. To feel your presence which brightens my day so!” Thaddeus’s leftmost head wept openly, such was his joy.

Derpy, for her part, pawed at the ground.

Thaddeus knew the uncomfortable truth her silence hid, but also knew it must be brought into the open. “Alas, my dear Derpina, I know it pains you so to be near me. To force you to fly ten whole minutes from your home to meet with me is proof of the hardship my nature forces upon you. I cannot ask for you to bear it any longer, as I know it so cruelly taxes you.” He felt shame at his helplessness, but there was no other way they could meet. Derpina was so brave, facing the cloud and breeze riddled skies near Ponyville. All just to see him. It broke his heart to see so beautiful a creature so strained, and all for his sake. He was a monster!

Thaddeus looked down at his four necks, scaled torso that was the size of a house, and enormous claws. Monster was too literal. He was brutish, he amended.

Derpy leaned forward, and bumped her snout against his scaled belly as she bit into some marsh grass he had been laying on. She chewed slowly before swallowing. “Muffins,” she said.

Thaddeus was in awe of his love’s selflessness. It was as if her love for him let her weather all manner of hardship unburdened. “Derpina, you are truly a wonder, but I cannot ask you to torment yourself for my sake, my...selfish need of your affections. Please, leave me and return to your life in Ponyville. Your comfort means more to me than the aching wound the sword of separation would carve into my heart.”

Derpy’s left eye spun clockwise, her pupil blurring from the speed, as her right eye stared steadily at a nearby rock on the ground. “Muffins,” was her response.

Thaddeus’s leftmost head continued to weep, wracked with high pitched, feminine sobs. “Derpina,” Thaddeus began. “You ask me to ruin you!  I, a terrible monster, cannot love a pony such as you. It is the most forbidden of loves! You would be outcast by your peers for desiring one such as me, mocked and shunned for it! Though never seeing you again would be exquisite torture of the highest order for me, I must ask you to think of yourself in this!”

Derpy looked him in the eyes on two separate heads, the wall-eyed mare’s gaze utterly unflinching. “Muffins!” she exclaimed.

Thaddeus knew in his heart, she was right. “You speak the truth, my sumptuous daffodil! Let those who would scorn our bond do what they will! Our love is the shield that will weather a thousand arrows!” He roared triumphantly, the ground shaking so much that a nearby sapling shook loose from the ground. It began to fall, straight at his Derpina!

He cried out, diving forward to intercept the lethal hazard. But it was too late, the sapling struck Derpy on the side. It rested there, leaning on her until she took a few steps forward and it fell harmlessly into the mud with a wet thump.

Thaddeus coughed awkwardly. “Er, well, my fair Derpina, I am glad you were unharmed by the callous touch of nature! It would have shattered my heart into a thousand fragments to see you injured!”

His rightmost head spotted something off in the distance. Bright yellow and pink, it was flying in low, pulling something behind it. He squinted one pair of eyes. It was a pegasus! And she appeared to be pulling a cartload of frogs. Transporting frogs? A likely story!

He hissed in displeasure. “Derpina, we are being spied upon. Run my love, before we are found out!” He dove between Derpy and the other pegasus, posing as if he expected a storm of arrows to strike him down. When he found that no dramatically appropriate assaults were forthcoming, he resumed his normal sitting position. Clearly, the spying pony was being crafty and forestalling her intended machinations for an opportune moment! He turned around to find that Derpy had not budged from where she was. She seemed to be occupied with staring at the sun and the ground simultaneously. Thaddeus helpfully nudged her further back with his snout. “Flee, my beloved Derpina! I shall slay the pegasus, at risk to my own life, to preserve our secret!”

Derpy raised one hoof and rested it on Thaddeus’s chest. Thaddeus was moved beyond words by his love’s compassion, even in the face of exile, and felt his formerly rage-filled heart melt. Could he really have been contemplating harming something so similar to blessed Derpina? It seemed impossible now.

“How could I have been so foolish? Of course, my dear Derpina, I will only frighten her away, I swear upon our love for each other, burning as bright as a thousand suns, as deep as the oldest canyon, as beautiful as a newborn sunset, as radiant as...” Derpy tapped him with her hoof again. “Er, right, off I go. Farewell, oh paramour of my soul!”

He sank into the bog as he moved towards the pegasus, soon not even his eyes breached the surface of the water. It shouldn’t be hard to scare off one pegasus. What could go wrong?