They were waiting for me at the train station.

“I believe you’ve met Dusk Shine?” said Rarity. She was out of her cast by now, and only had a thin pink scar to remind me of my failure.

“Yeth. Briefly.” I squinted at the purple unicorn stallion, who was wearing a heavy red cloak in warm weather. There was something weird about him.

Twilight said, “Rarity has arranged an opportunity for you. We’ll need to discuss it in private, though.” She leaned over, looking around the train platform with exaggerated caution. “It’s classified,” she said in a loud whisper.

“Would you like to get settled in first, darling?” said Rarity. “I wouldn’t have sprung this on you so suddenly, but Doctor Dusk’s availability is somewhat limited.”

“No,” I said. “I have to know what thith is about.” If this was about Rarity trying to ‘fix’ me, I was going to be pissed.

Twilight took us to what she called her conjuring room — a large, open basement directly underneath her palace. Even though it was huge, it was so full of books, boxes, and various pieces of magical and scientific equipment that there was barely room to draw a magic circle. I was lying on a dentist’s chair that Twilight happened to have for some reason, and Dusk Shine was staring in my mouth. He had his cloak off and his wings were out. They’d explained to me who he was, where he was from, and what he’d agreed to do for me. I was overawed, to say the least.

“She definitely has an overbite, and I’d say it’s probably at least contributing to her sigmatism.”

I nodded. “I’ve had thpeach therapy; it didn’t help much.” I remembered who I was talking to, and added, “Your Highneth.” It came out a little resentful. I’d been right. Rarity was trying to fix me. I was pissed. I was trying not to show it, though. I didn’t want to offend the princess and the prince.

“It would be trivial to correct,” said Dusk, turning his attention to the exterior of my muzzle. “A few simple shaping spells on the bone, muscles, and connecting tissue, done in a Hopper’s circle to make them permanent. Pain would be minimal. I’d recommend checking in with Twilight once a week or so for the next month to make sure the spell is holding. Which it will, but better safe than sorry.”

“Is there any chance it could go wrong?” asked Rarity.

Dusk raised an eyebrow. “I don’t want to sound conceited, but I’d be more likely to seriously injure myself while flossing my teeth.”

I could see that. I always had a hard time getting the floss around my hooves.

Twilight nodded. “I can’t speak for Dusk, but… okay, I know it seems like I’m making devastating magical errors every other week, but that’s doing weird, complicated stuff. I hardly even have to think about basic stuff like this.”

Dusk puffed out his chest fluff. “Yeah. We’re objectively, certifiably geniuses. I’m not even bragging. It’s just a fact — we don’t make mistakes.”

Twilight grimaced. “We kind’a do make mistakes, though.”

Dusk frowned, but didn’t deflate. “Okay, we do. We make awesome mistakes.” Twilight nodded in agreement.

Rarity tapped one forehoof against the floor anxiously. “So, Frazzle, dearest heart, what do you think?”

I laid my head down on the headrest and closed my eyes. Why was I so offended? Rarity was only trying to help me. I know it seems ungrateful, but this is exactly what I’d been worrying about on the train home from that first amazing week. She had the instinct to perfect, and the desire to show off. I’d been afraid she’d try and make me into the kind of mare people expected her to be seen with, and now it was starting.

And yet I had to admit my lisp was a curse. It held me back in life by blocking my voice and sapping my self confidence. I would love to have it gone. Orthodonture had been beyond the means of a widowed mother trying to run a farm by herself, and I was still paying off school loans, so it’d be a long time before I’d be able to get it done for myself. Not to mention I wasn’t excited about going through years of braces and retainers as an adult.

Now Prince Dusk was saying he could fix it all as easily as clapping his hooves.

“Frazzle?” said Rarity. I realized I’d been quiet for several minutes.

Buck it. What did I have to lose? I looked up at Dusk. “Let’th do thith.”

———

The Hopper’s circle wasn't circular at all; it was a large pentagon with a lot of weird geometric shapes drawn around it at various distances. A little spark of static electricity shocked me when my hoof touched it.

“Ouch!” I said, waving my hoof.

“Please try not to mess up the lines!” said Dusk, hurrying over with a piece of chalk.

After he’d redrawn the part my hoof had smudged, I stepped over the lines and into the center of the circle. Every hair on my body stood on end. Things outside the circle had prismatic auras — at first I thought there was something wrong with my glasses, but the auras were still there when I took them off. I bit my lower lip. Unicorn magic was freaky and unnatural.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Just sit still,” said Dusk. “Is the analgesic spell ready, Twilight?”

Twilight’s horn flared, and my face felt numb. “Yep,” she said.

“All right. This will only take a second.”

Dusk’s horn glowed, and I saw my muzzle changing shape in front of my eyes. It was subtle, but noticeable. I tried not to scream — I was afraid that if I did my face would freeze that way. My muzzle was completely numb, but I could feel a deep, sickening pain in the bones of my skull as things they were anchored to shifted around. I would hardly have called the pain “minimal”, but it was over quickly. Twilight and Dusk’s horns went dark, and I could feel my face again. It ached a little. Things felt ever so slightly out of place. I probed my incisors with my tongue. Definitely smaller. Lower jaw definitely further forward.

I tried talking. “Sibilance. Salubrious. Sanctuary. Sobriety. Sorcery. Solstice.” My eyes sprang wide open. “Oh my gosh!” Without those big buck teeth getting in the way, I could actually talk! My tongue wanted to keep tucking itself behind my top incisors, but it was easy enough to fix if I concentrated, and I was sure it would soon become second nature.

This… was… incredible. So much more than I’d imagined it would be. Why had I been so angry? Why had I doubted the best marefriend in the universe? I pronked out of the magic circle and squeezed the living daylights out of Rarity.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I squealed.

“You’re quite welcome darling,” she said, pushing a hoof in between my foreleg and her windpipe. “It was nothing, really.”

I let her go, and I bounced around the room, breaking into a brief musical number. “I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!” I sang.

Dusk was grinning like he’d just gotten laid. Twilight hugged him and nuzzled him, beaming with sororal pride. “Way to go, staff counterpart!” He nuzzled back, and the nuzzling began to get slower. The hug didn’t stop. I suddenly felt very awkward.

“I think perhaps it would be best if we adjourned,” suggested Rarity, whispering in my ear.

“Yes. Yes it would,” I said, and we collected my bags and went back to her place.

———

A short while later we were sitting on her bed side by side, exploring my new mouth together. After a while her kisses began to become more hesitant, and eventually she pulled back. I scooped up the thread of drool linking our lips with my tongue and sucked it into my mouth. Yeah, I’m gross. I’ll own it.

“There is something about me we haven’t discussed. A secret I have kept from you,” she said.

Celestia help me, if this is when the old pedo broke out her collection of foal porn, I was on the next train back to Canterlot. “Don’t worry, I won’t judge you,” I lied.

Rarity nodded. “Scarf?”

I reached for my neck. What? I wasn’t wearing a scarf. I wasn’t even wearing a bow tie. What was she talking about? Then I noticed something red moving in the corner of my vision. I jumped, and turned. There was the mannequin she always had in her room with the jumbo-sized scarf around its neck. The scarf had fallen off it, and was crawling towards us. I looked at Rarity. Her horn wasn’t glowing.

“Are you doing that? Please tell me you’re doing that.” I said.

“I am not,” said Rarity.

The scarf crawled up onto the bed to curl up next to Rarity, like a python at the zoo stirring to collect its dinner.

I scooted my bum across the bed until I fetched up against the headboard. “What is that thing?”

The scarf pushed one end against her belly, and Rarity stroked it lovingly, as though she were caressing the neck of a favorite dog. “Darling please, you’ll hurt his feelings.” She pulled it into her lap; its coils overflowed her soft thighs and tumbled onto the bed around her. “Scarf is a special friend of mine. He has shown me many things.” The end of the scarf slid sensually up her chest, and she began to lick it’s tassels. “He is… he is my Master.”

The scarf — or Scarf, I guess — bunched himself up and pressed himself into Rarity’s mouth, stretching open her lips and filling her cheeks. She closed her eyes, and he began to move back and forth inside her muzzle. I gulped. What was I even watching? This was insane. Insane, but kind of hot. The other end of the scarf slinked towards me and slid up over my thigh. I raised an eyebrow. Aggressive, greedy, and entitled. Rarity was right to call it a ‘he’.

“Watch it, pal. I haven’t made up my mind about you.” He slipped back apologetically.

Scarf coiled around Rarity, showing an acute awareness of the lusciousness of her hips and croup. The end that had been in her mouth slid out, dripping wet, and wrapped around her neck. He pulled her down face first, her muzzle nestled amongst the sheets, and her rump high in the air in a position of obscene submission. I felt an angry pulse of jealousy in my heart — jealous both of Scarf, and of Rarity. I sighed, and doffed my glasses. It looked like I was going along with this insanity. I rose up on my hind knees, and pulled my shirt and sweater vest up over my head. The end of scarf that had been caressing Rarity’s haunches rose up and regarded me with interest. At least, I thought that was what was happening. Without my glasses they were just a white and red blur. I nodded, and arranged myself with as much dignity as I could next to Rarity, in the same humiliating pose.

“Oh Frazzle,” moaned Rarity. She looped her hoof over mine, and began to kiss me. Scarf put an end to that — he moved like a striking snake, flashing around my body, pulling my mouth away from Rarity’s and lashing us together, side to side, flank to flank, cheek to cheek. I gasped in surprise and fear. My heart raced. What was this thing? Had Rarity thought things through when she’d taken it for a lover?

“If I might be so bold, I think that Scarf would like us to know that he is in charge here,” said Rarity, her voice shaky with lust and fear.

A coil of scarf wrapped around my fetlock, and tapped my forehoof on the bed three times. I nodded, my cheek rubbing against Rarity’s.

“Are you sure you are comfortable with this, darling? I know it’s rather unusual.”

Buck it. I wasn’t chickening out of anything this weird. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good.”

The coils shifted again, and suddenly there was a loop gagging my and Rarity’s mouths. The silk pulled back our cheeks, and held down our tongues. No more chit chat. One end of the scarf was on my plot, and I could safely assume from the way Rarity was groaning into her red gag that he was caressing her rump as well.

I inhaled deeply and slowly through my nose, trying to calm down and enjoy myself. I could feel Rarity’s ribs pressing against my side. Her ragged breath and rapid heartbeat vibrated through me. My right legs and her left legs were tied together. Any move she made, I felt. Her breath was hot against my mouth. We were like conjoined twins, or like warriors fighting side by side in a phalanx. But as close as I felt to Rarity, I felt strangely distant about Scarf’s caresses. His silky body rolled over my plot, the tassels tickling the inside of my crack, and it felt good, but it just wasn’t doing that much for me. Maybe it was because I’d been thinking of him as male, or maybe I just wasn’t that into scarves.

His end lifted off of my rump. I strained and twisted, trying to see what he was doing. The coils around Rarity’s cheek and through her mouth dug into her flesh, making her groan in pain. When I noticed this, I bit down on the gag and tugged harder. I felt a hot tingling between my hind legs — being cruel to the mistress who had so often been so deliciously wretched to me gave me an evil thrill.

But all of that was driven out of my mind when scarf came down on one of my cheeks with unbelievable force. He had somehow made the last couple hoof-lengths of his end stiff and hard as a board. Pain sang through my rump, and I screamed into Scarf’s body. The blow was followed by a half dozen others just like it. I felt and heard Rarity receiving the same treatment. A single tear trickled out of her eye, and dispersed itself into Scarf’s coils and my cheek fur.

I found I had changed my mind. Scarf was amazing.

He wrapped up my dock, and jerked my tail back as far as it would go, then aimed a flurry of blows at my ass, my cutie marks, and the back of my thighs. I bit down on my gag, grunting at every blow, loving the hot, burning pain that followed each slap. I could feel Rarity’s haunches jiggling against mine as she got her punishment.

She was a screamer — she wailed into Scarf’s body every time he struck her ass. “Mnnnnnh! Mnnnngh! Mnnnngh!” Just like that. The right side of my muzzle was soaked with her spit, and my cheek was soaked with her tears. The tears made me uncomfortable, and I started to worry about her. I tapped my left hoof against the bed three times. Scarf, wrapped around my fetlock as he was, felt it and stopped immediately. That was good — you’d better believe I was watching and judging him to see if he was safe for my Rarity.

Both ends lifted themselves towards our faces.

“Why did you stop, Scarf?” She rolled her eyes towards me, the pupil and iris a blue and black blur at this range. She was so close that I could make out the pink smudges that must be the veins in the corners of her eyes. “Frazzle, are you all right, dearest heart?”

“I wath… I was checking on you. You were scaring me.” She wasn’t the only thing that was scaring me. I was starting to feel claustrophobic, trussed up against her like this. I wasn’t going to chicken out, though. I wasn’t.

I felt, rather than saw, Rarity smile. “Oh, poor Frazzle dear. I suppose you haven’t seen me in my submissive mode before, have you? I can be rather demonstrative. Scarf, perhaps more conventional affections are in order this afternoon.”

Scarf bobbed both his ends in agreement. When I had signaled my readiness, he gagged us again and returned his attention to our hindquarters. He was much more gentle, this time, and much more intimate. I shuddered against Rarity as silky folds caressed my plothole and my quim at the same time. He spread out to his full width, sliding all over the inside of my cheeks. I groaned into him, and Rarity groaned, too. I could have stood to be spanked more, but this was delightful.

He gave me a gentle swat on my pussy, and teased my lips with his tassels. I twisted against Rarity, straining against his serpentine embrace. The knot of a tassel found my clit, and began to rub against it. Gently. Too gently. The pleasure was exquisite, but the touches far too light — the joy would have been even more intense if he would… just… push… harder. Then he pulled away. I wailed with frustration, and Rarity did, too.

A few seconds later, he was back, but with a difference. He’d formed a fat, long knot a few hooves up his length, and found a way to slick it up. That knot went under my tail. I groaned, and pushed down, flaring open my tailhole. Yes. Anal play. So good. I saw Rarity’s eyes pop open as he pushed through her little rosebud, and I almost choked laughing.

Our bonds tightened. His improvised cock pushed into me, spreading out inside and making me feel deliciously full. That knot was back at my clit, rubbing hard this time. I gave myself up to being used — the pleasure was pure, hot, and relentless. It didn’t take long for him to make me come the first time — the knot drove me expertly to an orgasm that made my eyes roll up into my head and that left me shaking when it passed. My jaw ached from biting down on Scarf. I hoped I wasn’t hurting him. When I’d finished coming, I realized Rarity was about to orgasm. Her flanks and thighs shook against me, harder and harder. She tightened all her muscles, making my bonds dig into me painfully. When she found the breath to let out a muffled scream, it drove me mad with lust. Scarf hit me with a perfectly timed grind against my clit, and another wave of heat and fire pulsed through me. Rarity started to come again before I was even done, and that wasn’t the last time for either of us. By the time Scarf loosened around me, I was a limp rag. Rarity rolled over to face me, kissing me over and over again, our soft barrels heaving against each other. That had been so much fun!

Then I noticed Scarf was coiled up between us, mysteriously clean and dry, but unmoving.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“He’s fine I think,” said Rarity, stroking him. “He gets tired after a while. I think he might be very old.”

“Have you had Twilight look at him?”

Rarity looked frightened. “Oh, no! She… well, she does mean well, but she gets very curious sometimes. I’m afraid she might hurt him.”

I reached between us, stroking both Scarf’s silky body and Rarity’s hoof. “You might want to risk it. I can see you care for him. It would be terrible if anything happened to him. You might not even know until it was too late.”

A look of fear flickered across Rarity’s face. “I suppose you’re right. I will bring him to Twilight, if he allows it.”

Oh dear. I’d made her sad. I needed to distract her. I rubbed my lips against hers. Our mouths opened. We kissed until our tongues felt limp and tingling. Then we lay side by side. After a while, her cat Opal hopped on the pillows at the head of the bed and stared at us. It must be feeding time.