1 + 1 = 2. And that was inarguable fact. And it had been inarguable fact ever since Star-Swirl the Bearded and his apprentice Write Angle had helped all of Equestria learn about math, physics, trigonometry, algebra, and other fancy tricks involving numbers. 1 + 1 = 2, and that was inarguable fact.

But how on Equestria was somepony supposed to explain what ‘1’ was?

Twilight Sparkle had pondered this question more than was healthy, which was essentially the way she pondered everything. In Twilight’s mind, her horn made her like a prism, a moving symbol of glass that could focus light on whatever needed to be seen. For two weeks, Twilight had been shut up in her study, trying to figure out why 1 + 1 equalled 2. One. What was one? She had one apple on her desk. She was one Twilight Sparkle. One pony. One pony plus two ponies equalled… three ponies?

That was another thing—math was no use in the real world. The ‘real’ world where ponies did things other than exactly what Twilight predicted they would do. She had given up predicting a while ago, mostly when Pinkie Pie had shown her that no matter the amount of study she did, there were always surprises waiting in a swamp with the nine-faces of a hydra or other catastrophe. And Pinkie’s ears wiggled often, which meant ponies were talking about her, and Twilight knew that was true even if she didn’t suspect it was a 1:1 occurrence.

Twilight suspected many things—it was the work of a scientist, which she considered herself, to ask questions; to poke holes in the fabric of what was true and find what wasn’t. That was the scientific method, anyway—throw all your guesses at the wall, and at the end, only the wall is right. Twilight was better a metaphors than she thot, but didn’t use them often, because words like ‘parallelism’ and ‘quantum reciprocity’ went thru one ear and out the other with other ponies, and nopony else seemed to have the time to stop and look in a dictionary for a second.

Except the problem was that everypony had the time, as far as Twilight could tell. Everypony she had ever met had more time than they knew what to do with—so much time they would waste it, kill time if they were bored enough. Even the idea made a cold sweat gather on Twilight’s skin. Time was so precious—every grain of sand slipping through a double-slit to superposition;

Twilight wished she could explain all of this to somepony else. Heck—she wished that when she spoke, ponies would hear her, instead of just listening, which was what everypony did their entire lives, and heard too, with their subconscious (the sound of a nearby couple’s chatter, a wagon moving in the street, arr-whee!), but they never heard anything Twilight Sparkle had to say. They hadn’t heard her when she told them about the end of the world the first time, or the second time… after that it had become exhausting to even think about the idea. If the world was really going to end, wouldn’t it end already? And what were the Elements of Harmony besides a group of ponies Celestia had picked to do difficult chores for her while she stayed in her castle and on her four-poster bed and ate grapes and brought in concierges and…

Twilight’s imagination became foggy on this point, and it fogged over in the same way it did every time her thot-process reached ‘what ponies do together while they’re alone’. Because two ponies couldn’t be alone—that was like 1 + 1 = 1. And Twilight knew that wasn’t true. Unless.

There were instances. Twilight could do the math. When one was something other than one. When one and one made one because they were hidden numbers, imaginary, little decimals collected in carry-overs and mind-ledgers instead of actually in front of her.

Twilight Sparkle was horny as fuck.

She knew that she was because she had been since she was a teenager, and had debated in her head a dozen times the night before she left to study w/ the princess whether or not to go next-door to her brother’s room and seduce him into taking her first time. But incest was something only done by ponies who were raised wrong, and Twilight’s parents had brought her up to be a proper filly, chaste, studios, and capable of repressing her sexual urges whenever they came on. Until lately, anyway.

The problem was more than sex; Twilight could masturbate and that would accomplish nothing. Rather, it would accomplish something—a burst of chemicals would be released into Twilight’s brain saying “Congratulations, you had sex!” But of course this was a trick—Twilight had only had sex with herself. No stallion, no other pony in the room, and no foals afterwards, which was all her biology was aiming her at anyway. Sex was just a mechanism for procreation—1 + 1 = 3. Twilight scratched the back of her head. Maths were, as usual, no use when it came to real life.

Usually, talking to somepony else helped. Heck, even Spike (tho he was a guy, and therefore about as dense as the gems he liked to eat for breakfast) could at least sit and listen to the whirlwind of chaos in Twilight’s brain, and perhaps pick out one worthwhile thot or conclusion that she could pin down, hone in on, and eventually hunt to death. But this time there was nopony to ask—nopony Twilight could convince herself would have a solution.

Twilight was afraid everything about her was wrong.

This was, she had learned, a common worry—Nurse Redheart had provided palliative bedside manner, comforting the poor shivering unicorn as best she could while she waited for Dr. Asp. Canola Asp was his full name, he explained, as he introduced himself and had Twilight sit on the cold examination table. The steel felt cool on her bottom, and would have almost been pleasant if she didn’t have the feeling that at any instant (an instant shorter than a moment shorter than a microsecond etc. etc.) her entire body would unravel into its constituent parts and become nothing but the memory of a form, and all the little iotas that were Twilight Sparkle would become an impression of purple where she had once been, and the earth would be the only thing to know her again.

Twilight coughed. No blood. Lucky.

“Mrs… Sparkle?” The doctor made the act of looking at his chart to refresh his memory, but there was no way he’d forgotten who Twilight Sparkle was. Everypony knew who she was. Twilight didn’t say anything, but began to rock back and forth on the table, as tho her mother were cuddling her before bed. She didn’t answer the doctor, nor appear to even notice him. Her eyes were off in space—and then on a fixed point on the floor that Twilight was sure she could bore thru like a laser if only she stared hard enough. If she stared. She hated the floor. Stare. Laser beam. Stare.

“Hmm…” That was the doctor again. Twilight Sparkle had been rocking and staring at the floor for seven minutes, and was unresponsive to reflex tests, motor-skill examinations, and made a loud yelling noise whenever Dr. Asp attempted to touch her for a further examination.

“What we need here is a Psychologist,” Dr. Asp said.

And so, with some difficulty, Twilight had been taken there too, and told her crazy thots were perfectly normal, and that everything would be alright, and to please stop rocking and shaking and go back home and get some sleep, please, and thank you, and they’d make another appointment for later that week, okay?, and thank you, and goodbye.

Twilight was alone when she was at home—Spike was there, but Twilight was alone. She made herself salad for dinner, and stared at the lettuce leaves in the sink, watching the water take them over, turn them to little green valleys filled with rivers of the stream above, and where the landscape ended, Twilight had no idea.

“Twi?” Spike asked, noticing Twilight’s preoccupation with the sink (at a four-minute duration, long, even for a Twilight who was lost in thot—she usually came back in at least a minute or two). “You feeling okay?”

Twilight left the lettuce in the sink and ran up to her room to cry for two hours.

And Spike felt very confused, but at least he had the dinner to himself, and a few sprinkles of emerald even made the salad taste good, so that was alright.

No, Twilight thot to herself as she buried her face in her pillows and wept like her face itself had turned into a faucet. I am not, Twilight thot, feeling okay.

But everypony knew that anyway.

Twilight Sparkle had never felt ‘okay’. When her parents said to her “Everything okay, Sweetie?”, Twilight Sparkle lied to them, because what was everything, and what was okay? And she hated the word ‘sweetie’, hated everything that was sweet, the sweet-tooth was her brothers and she ate sensibly to keep her waist trim so stallions would like her and oh Celestia why hadn’t a stallion ever liked her she was so lonely it hurt the black hole in her stomach felt like it was pulling lower and her right hoof was sore from so much rubbing and the rest of her was sore too but more her brain said and no her body said and that was the source of the tears, in so many words. They went on for a while.

What was ‘right’, and what was ‘wrong’? Twilight Sparkle hated those words. She hated the word ‘normal’, and she hated most words these days, because she knew that words were something ponies had made to communicate with each other. And so far, they weren’t working at all.

Because when Spike had asked Twilight if she was okay, she had given him an answer, and, for his sake, without the words that would turn into “I want to die every second of my existence”—because Twilight had learned that words held as much power as the book that she had taken them from, and the ones she made up in her head were just rearrangements of the dictionary she had read when she was five anyway, so that nothing she could say was new or unique or original—Twilight Sparkle had given up on all those things when she became the Princess’s student. When she fought Nightmare Moon, exactly the way she was destined to, oh those thousand years.

Normally, when the sad was a feeling in her stomach that refused to go away even with masturbation or ice cream or reading every book in her library twice (again), Twilight went to a friend. And ‘friend’ was a word she disliked even now, because she had no idea what it meant. Was a friend someone like Spike, who would see you run sobbing up to your room and leave you alone so he could gorge himself on left-overs and after-dinner snacks? Was a friend someone like Rainbow Dash, who would come over and play hoofball and card games and had even shared some of her ‘saddle-puff’ with Twilight once which made her dizzy and shaky and threw up in the toilet and Rainbow Dash had wanted to stick around but was busy and had to work and Twilight knew she’d be fine anyway, so she’d spent the next three hours throwing up into the toilet while Rainbow Dash was off somewhere else. And she hadn’t hung out with Rainbow Dash since then.

Fluttershy was impossible—it was like talking to a geranium. Pinkie Pie may as well have been Discord for all Twilight could follow what she said, and Applejack wouldn’t stop working for anything other than the ‘end of shift’ time, which was 6:30PM, which seemed unreasonably late to force yourself all day, but Applejack got touchy when ponies told her she worked too hard, so Twilight Sparkle avoided her and the subject at all costs.

That left Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle wasn’t sure about her either. There’d always been a certain ‘understanding’ between them; ever since Twilight had first stumbled into the Carousel Boutique, she’d known Rarity was smarter than she looked—or, that she looked beautiful, and happened to also be one of the wisest and smartest and kindest ponies in all of Equestria. How was that allowed—that a poor (and yes, due to her generosity, giving away every bit she had to somepony who needed it more, Rarity was in fact poor, or at least by Twilight’s definition of the word) and wonderful dress-maker in a little town of Ponyville could be possessed of such amazing qualities, that would drown every day in the world of dress-making she forced herself to endure? What about the world outside—to create, to learn, to love! Twilight’s heart throbbed, then dulled into the usual “time for suicide” feeling. That she had never bothered renaming it said as much as needed to be said. But here she was, still alive, so that was that was that.

Rarity, Twilight Sparkle thot. If there was another pony alive that she trusted—excepting the royalty, who of course had their own agendas at play at all times, and therefore weren’t really ever to be trusted anyway—it was Rarity, and mostly because she knew how similar the two of them were. Workaholics to the bone, always on a quest to find the new truth or the new beauty—and hadn’t a pony once said those two words were the same thing? Bright Star, Twilight thot, and he had written about nightingales and swans and everything that was beautiful and lovely and true in the world. And he had a pony that loved him too. Twilight wondered about love.

Because love was something Twilight had figured out. She loved herself. She loved her friends. She loved the princesses and Ponyville and learning and games and fun and pretty much everything.

Except she hated herself.

And those two things couldn’t both be true. It came back to the question that had locked Twilight in her room in the first place. One plus one equals… two, but also negative one? How could she love herself and hate herself at the same time?

That question, unfortunately, was an easy one to answer.

Because Twilight knew that everypony in Equestria was born with a certain ‘anatomy’—meaning that stallions did stallion things with stallion parts and stallion brains, and mares did things the opposite. And this was called a ‘binary’ and Twilight had learned it wasn’t really the way things worked, because when she went out she was ‘Twilight Sparkle’, not ‘female pony’, and this was a concept that was almost impossible to explain to anyone so Twilight Sparkle didn’t bother.

Twilight Sparkle didn’t bother with a lot of things; love, being one of them.

Because love was something ponies wrote about in books, that happened in faraway places and times and to extraordinary or sometimes exceedingly homely ponies and it changed their lives forever. Twilight didn’t think ‘change’ was real—because nothing ever changed. In Equestria, no matter what happened, the status quo always returned—nothing ever changed.

Twilight got up from her bed, hoof and crotch still wet from her ‘play-time’ (the only thing she could call it in her head without her mother’s shrill voice screaming at her to go to bed, and was she up reading again, and No, mother, I’ll be to bed in a minute, the Playpony Moondancer had given her after school, that stallion that looked just like her brother, his white coat, his, c-, c-, c-c-cock…

Twilight came just like that, without even touching herself, and then the stomach feeling came; the “what-did-you-just-do-you-silly-filly?” feeling. Because her parents had taught her that if you were in bed and you felt like another pony should be there next to you, you should go get somepony to be there. But Twilight Sparkle had no friends, no lovers—just her brother and parents, and so when she felt that feeling she had lied to her mom and her dad and her brother and even herself and kept it inside and said everything was ‘fine’.

Everything was not ‘fine’.

Twilight had decided to go to Rarity’s, with the understanding that no matter what happened, doing something was better than sitting in her room waiting for something to happen to her. That too often was the case in Equestria tho—coincidences rained from the sky, and puzzling out the signs from the detritus was almost impossible. Twilight stared directly at the ground all the way to Rarity’s, and still saw a smoldering cigarette butt and a pamphlet that she forced herself not to make out the words on (An O------ --- ----- --ee!). Rarity’s house was twelve minutes away. Twilight made it there in eleven minutes and twenty-six seconds and twelve milliseconds. Twilight was a perfect time-keeper, a fact which she told no one other than herself and even then checked her watch to make sure she was right.

Eleven minutes and twenty-six seconds and .1 milliseconds, her timer said. Damn that point one. Where was the rest of the millisecond? Twilight shook her head and put away the stopwatch, which she carried with her always now, because it was a pocketwatch, and a stopwatch, and a little pad for her to take notes attached to the back. The perfect multitool.

Knock knock. Twilight hated knocking. It made her feel like a ‘customer’. She thot she was a friend, but as the door opened, Rarity could decide whatever she liked: Who was this pony, Twilight Sparkle, standing on her door? Come in, buy something? Oh, you’d look lovely in something like a winter accent, the summer is ending so soon and we have this lovely number that dazzles like the sun settling on snow, please, won’t you try it on…

Twilight sighed. One minute thirty-two seconds. No response. Knock knock knock. The third louder this time. Twilight could use morse-code in situations like this, but it was highly unlikely the pony on the other side of the door would understand her.

Two minutes six seconds. Twilight sighed out the last of her impatience.

“Twilight!” Rarity beamed as she opened the door. She did that a lot—beam—no matter who she ran into. She seemed like a pony who liked other ponies. Twilight immediately felt at odds—the urge to run away and bury herself under ten layers of blankets and never come out.

At least go inside, she thot to herself. Don’t waste anyone's time.

“Uh… hi, Rarity. How are… you?”

Even basic sentences were a struggle now. All the words in the world bounced around in Twilight’s head when she thot, and pinning any of them down into what she wanted to say was rather like throwing darts at a field of dandelion seeds.

“Wonderful, wonderful! Thank you so much for asking.” Rarity moved as she spoke, which struck Twilight as both normal and strange. It was something she was very bad at doing—moving and talking at the same time—or moving and doing anything else, for that matter, because her brain seemed to be programmed to do only one thing at a time. It was a laser beam, and she already knew that. But Rarity’s was more like a…

“Take a seat, won’t you? I’ll put on some tea. Or, hot chocolate, if you’re in the mood, hmm?” Rarity turned her head behind her back and gave Twilight a wink before she dashed off, presumably to the kitchen to ready the tea and maybe hot-chocolate.

How did she know I wanted hot-chocolate, Twilight asked herself as she sat down. The chair Rarity had given her was a turquoise papasan, and Twilight sank into it like a foal into a ball-pit for a few seconds before she rediscovered the principles of resistance, independent motion, and how to sit properly. The chair was more comfy than it had any right to be. Twilight wanted to fall asleep in it, but repressed the urge. She was good at that.

“One cranberry tea, one hot-chocolate with extra marshmallows!” Rarity announced as she returned to the (living?) room with the drinks hovering in front of her. She levitated Twilight’s cup onto the table aside her papasan, and took her own seat opposite, taking a small sip on her tea.

“It shouldn’t be too hot, dear,” Rarity said, reaching one hoof towards Twilight’s general direction. “I used a cooling spell before serving. No burnt tongues. See?” Rarity took a drink of her tea, a long draught that Twilight could see disappear down her throat, then smiled.

Twilight smiled back, then stopped smiling. She stared at her hot chocolate for forty-two seconds.

“Hmm,” Rarity said.

Twilight stared at her hot chocolate.

“I sense that perhaps you didn’t come over for drinks and conversation.”

“I don’t know what I came over for, Rarity,” Twilight said, leaning so far back in her chair that it threatened to topple. Rarity caught the momentum transfer just before it happened, lodging the papasan in place with a quick jolt of energy from her horn that kept Twilight safely seated—while not even noticing the almost-instant feat of spellcraft.

“Well,” Rarity said, and took another sip of her tea. “It seems obvious you’re here for something, or you wouldn’t have such a determined look on her face.”

Twilight frowned. Did she look determined? She had been going for ‘friendly’, mixed with ‘confused’. Now everything was wrong. As usual.

And because there was only Rarity there now, Twilight began to sob.

Nothing had worked. Her books, the only vestige in a world where ponies ran around and said nothing of what they meant, had all become jumbles of words—and words a thing that ponies made up, and Twilight a pony, but was she sure about that? And that was the true horror, the one she couldn’t get rid of, she had come here to ask a question, to say to Rarity, say something, say…

“Twilight, dear… are you alright?”

And from the look on Twilight’s face, covered as it was in tears, Rarity already knew the answer.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh dear.”

Twilight sobbed.

Situations like this were, whether or not Twilight knew it, something Rarity specialized in—not least because she’d been in them so many times before, but because she had something she liked to call just ‘common sense’—‘common decency’, she’d heard it called a few times, but preferred to think of it simply as knowing the right thing to do. Here was her dear friend Twilight, stumbled to her apartment barely capable of forming a coherent sentence, yet also so sober that an entire pitcher of apple-cider might turn to dust just from being in the same room as her. She didn’t want hot chocolate, and she was crying. What did she want?

Wordlessly, almost as silent as the breath of one flower to another, Rarity got up from her chair and hugged Twilight—so full that there was no escape, a blanket hug, forelegs locked around to keep Twilight very firmly on Equestria.

And still she cried. For three minutes. It was alright—Rarity didn’t mind crying.

“Oh, Rarity,” Twilight finally managed, the sobs wracking her chest. Rarity levitated over a box of tissues and a waste-basket, both of which Twilight made immediate use of. Rarity gave Twilight a series of slow, soft pats on the back of her head, and thru her mane, reminding her of the feel of being cared for as a filly, whether she liked it or noticed it or not.

“I just don’t… I don’t feel right,” Twilight said, sniffling thru the remaining tears as she dried her eyes. “I always feel wrong, Rarity, like there’s something wrong with me for… like there’s something wrong with my… like I shouldn’t have a…” Twilight kept trailing off, her sniffles taking up the words, and her eyes falling away to aether instead of matching Rarity’s.

Rarity placed a hoof aside Twilight’s cheek and turned her head so that their eyes were lock.

“What doesn’t feel right, Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight’s eyes shivered for a moment, the tears sparkling behind them, then draining back to wherever they had come from. Twilight swallowed, then nodded, then raised her right hoof and pointed, down, inward, between her legs.

“Here. Here doesn’t feel right.”

A moment of silence passed.

In that moment, any number of possibilities opened and unfolded—the one where Twilight, overcome with her own honesty, ran or flew or teleported from the room never to speak to Rarity again, or at least not until Monday when she had calmed down a little. But the real possibility—the one that Twilight could never have calculated, or made out of one plus one equals two—was Rarity leaning forward to kiss her. Which was what she did. Kiss her.

Kiss.

Twilight was being kissed.

She had been kissed before—boys had their tricks all her life, and she’d had more kisses stolen from her than ones she’d given away. And this kiss was a bit of a ‘gimme’ as well, but Twilight didn’t mind one bit.

Because what she had expected was anything but a kiss. She had expected a hug, a conversation, a long explanation about how everypony felt that way about themselves, and if she would only learn to truly love herself, then the ‘wrong’ would go away and the world would become a paradise of choices…

The kiss was still going. Um. Twilight was starting to feel… antsy. That was the word she used for when it felt like ants were… places. Or like she was an ant, who was busy, full of purpose, needed to get to work on… need to get to work on the act of… needed to…

Rarity broke the kiss, smirking. Twilight’s mouth hung open, a tiny strand of saliva from the right corner dangling.

“Twilight,” Rarity said, “would it be alright if we went up to my bedroom? I’d like the two of us to talk a bit.”

Twilight nodded. As tho she were hypnotized, she rose from her chair and made her way to the foot of the stairs. Rarity levitated both cups away, presumably to be washed later, and followed Twilight, then led her, upstairs, to where Twilight knew Rarity’s bedroom was, from the slumber parties they’d had and the schematic of Rarity’s house she’d seen, and she knew the geography of almost ever building in Ponyville, which was enough to make your head hurt if you let it.

Right now Twilight’s head hurt because she had been crying, but it felt better because Rarity’s hoof had done some magic as well—whatever it touched, it soothed, and Twilight’s headache was only a dull throb by the time she made it to Rarity’s bedroom proper—white lace everywhere, lilac sheets with ivory trimmings, and enough crystals hanging to refract every point of light into a supernova, given the right alignment of entropy.

“Wow,” Twilight said. Even her tears stopped to say it. “This looks… your room is…”

It had been changed since the last time Twilight saw it. Decorated.

“…beautiful,” Twilight finished, noticing Rarity hanging on her every word. And how had that switch occurred? Twilight was the one hanging, wanting to hang, or she had hung around, and now was hanging out… but nothing was out? Or, hanging was…

“Twilight,” Rarity said, her voice the gentlest degree of ‘soothing’ that Twilight could imagine—like a cloud hug wrapped in pretty glitter. “Please come sit down. Let’s talk about this.”

Twilight sat on the bed next to Rarity, but didn’t say anything. Stared at the floor.

“Are you saying you don’t feel normal… down there?” Rarity asked.

Twilight nodded quickly. Once. Twice.

“And is this a feeling just inside you, or do you have, um… unique equipment?”

Twilight shook her head. Once. Twice.

“Nothing like that. I just… I don’t feel right. I don’t like myself. I don’t like my… my…”

“Vagina?”

Twilight jumped from the bed and was about to run before she recalled herself, composed, sat back down, stemmed the tears, avoided the burn between her legs that said ‘touch me touch me touch me right now look at rarity isn’t she so cute touch her touch her touch me touch anything for the love of Celestia…’. She cleared her throat. Ahem.

“Um. Yes.” Twilight said that. She stared at the floor.

“Why?”

Um.

“Well…”

Hmm.

There was no good reason, was there? Just a lack of comparison?

Twilight had read every book about pony anatomy she could find—there were always pictures, diagrams, even in the novels instructions on how to do exactly what it was somepony did with their… thing. Whichever type it was. But Twilight had never done that. She had flirted, tried to go on dates, almost thrown herself at that one stallion who had been practically dragging on the ground before he was even hard… it was always rejection. Not just of sex—of her. Of sex with her. Nopony wanted to have sex with her.

Twilight began to cry again.

Rarity’s foreleg wrapped around her shoulder, and held her tight.

“Twilight,” Rarity said, hugging thru the tears. “Is there a reason you feel this way? I can’t speak for your, ahem, marehood, but in my understanding you’re a wonderful and perfectly… ‘normal’ mare. Any stallion should be happy to have you. Or any mare for that matter. Griffin. Whomever.” Rarity smiled, but noticed a few seconds after that Twilight wasn’t returning it.

“Twilight,” Rarity asked, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “Have you ever… you know… had… sex?”

Twilight turned towards Rarity and locked eyes with her. Sparkles of the tears at the edges of her eyes glowed in the light from the room’s prisms.

“Oh, dear,” Rarity said.

Twilight fell forwards into her and began to cry.

Her mouth was on Rarity’s mouth instead of crying, and Rarity hadn’t started anything. Rarity was sitting next to Twilight Sparkle, and then they were kissing, and Rarity was on her back and Twilight was pinning her to the bed, kissing her, like she was kissing someopony she knew, or loved, or like she had meant to do this all her life but had only just now built the courage inside herself.

The kiss was what sunlight tasted like.

And Twilight had never known that taste before, even when she drank the sweetest teas and the darkest brews from Celestia’s private collection---because what was light? It was the sun, certainly, and it was Celestia, and the agent that allowed all sight in Equestria.

But what was dark?

Dark was just the absence of light. It wasn’t a real thing.

Or was light just the absence of dark? And had Twilight just pushed away every shadow in her head, with only two sets of lips to do the job?

The kiss broke, time lost, Rarity gasping and Twilight doing the same. They locked eyes for a moment, but stayed both upright, catching themselves.

“My word, that was… something. Twilight… were you planning this from the very beginning?”

Twilight shook her head, the tears threatening their return. Trust, what was that? And true love, that too?

“No,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “It just… felt… right.”

The ‘right’ became another kiss. This time Rarity was on top.

And the two of them kept kissing. This was a kiss into a kiss into the ‘act of kissing’, which was certainly something Twilight had never done. She’d never given herself to somepony else completely, always kept behind the mask, behind the book, behind the words that nopony else knew or understood. But what did everypony in Equestria, including Twilight, apparently, understand?

Rarity’s lips said “more”, with an exclamation mark from her tongue, flitting briefly inside Twilight’s mouth.

Twilight opened her mouth, and Rarity’s tongue welcomed her. “Thank you,” it said. Rarity’s kiss was like bath-bead aroma and soft-serve vanilla ice-cream; it reminded Twilight of summer days where she melted into nothing, and her entire self ceased to be, but for the sensation in her lips, and as a result, thru every other inch of her body.

The second kiss ended, this time with Twilight pinned to the bed, Rarity over her—all four of her legs extended, like a stallion looming over her, readying the two of them to rut. Twilight shivered, and almost let out a moan, but caught it with her hoof.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Rarity asked. Twilight had never heard her voice that way before—almost dirty, naughty, as tho something suspicious was afoot that Twilight would only learn in time. “Are you lying in my bed right now?”

Twilight checked what she knew about reality. This also involved checking her pussy to determine that she was soaking wet, but she already knew that, so it only gave her a brief shiver.

“Yes.”

“And are you in my bed because you want me to have sex with you?”

Twilight took a moment with this one.

Why had she come over to Rarity’s? To feel better. To get help with feeling ‘wrong’.

Well, Rarity was here. Helping her feel better. Showing her she wasn’t ‘wrong’.

Or was she? And that was the feeling—that even tho Twilight’s marehood matched perfectly Row A Column 4 in the chart of labia and neighbouring anatomy she had seen, it still ‘felt’ wrong to her—because nopony had ever touched it besides her. That was the ‘wrong’—and that was her, Twilight Sparkle.

“Yes,” Twilight said. It meant two things at the same time.

Rarity kissed her again. Vanilla chocolates. Hazelnut. Twilight’s head spun, her pussy throbbed. Every inch of her skin and fur and horn sizzled with an electricity bubbling up from her stomach and spreading thruought her body.

“You want to have sex with me, Twilight?” Rarity asked. Her voice was a tease, and Twilight could tell, finally, that this was a game the two of them were playing—and Twilight was good at games.

“Yes,” Twilight said, the anxiety leaving her words every time she said them. “Yes, I want to have sex with you. With you Rarity. I want you to rut me.”

Rarity gasped, and this threw Twilight off, because she wasn’t sure if she’d said the wrong thing. But then she looked up—into Rarity’s eyes, the soul of the soul—and knew that what was about to happen was exactly what she expected.

“Then let me rut you, you dirty little filly,” Rarity said.

And ‘rutting’ turned out to be Rarity’s tongue.

That was something—Twilight had a tongue, used it to talk, to eat, to do pretty much everything involving her mouth—she’d never used it on another pony like this. For them like this. Oh, word.

This was better than anything—better than a hug or praise from Celestia, better than seeing her BBBF, better than finishing a giant book she’d been working on for months. This was a tongue—another pony, another pony’s want, their desire, their body touching hers. This was the ultimate ‘right’—and it made her squirm, and squeal thru her muffling hoof, and what was that feeling right when Rarity had touched there with her tongue, it was—

“Oh! R-rarity, I-, I’m…”

Rarity knew. She was Twilight Sparkle, in the throes of her first non-solo orgasm on Rarity’s delightfully comfy bed. This was something Rarity knew would happen because she knew exactly what to do with another pony lying spread legged on her bed—make them feel good. And that was all sex was anyway—making the other pony feel good, in exchange for them making you feel good too. Except that just that thot—that sensation—that what she was doing was exactly what Twilight Sparkle needed, was enough to make Rarity feel like the sexiest mare in all of Equestria. Her wetness matched her bravado, and her tongue left, despite Twilight’s sighs, because she had something better for it.

“Could you just spread your legs a bit further like this, dear?” Rarity asked as she worked herself into position. The rubbing like this, so much fun, and if everything syced up… Rarity shivered. She loved it when stallions came first, spraying her in seed and getting her eyes and face and whatever else they fancied all sticky—and then she came or didn’t, depending on whether they noticed how close she was, and whether they felt like helping. And the ones that didn’t got to go back to Mary One-Hoof. Because Rarity had more than hooves, and more than a tongue, and she knew how to use every bit of herself.

The second Twilight felt the wetness of Rarity’s pussy against her own, she came, and it was a feeling unlike any she’d had before. Not the orgasm itself, which was so familiar she could have probably described the exact neurotransmitters involved. But this orgasm—this time, when she came, she felt something else. ‘Free’? And freedom was a word ponies had made up to mean ‘do whatever you want’. And what Twilight wanted was something she could never do for herself—to make somepony else want her. And what was Rarity doing, if this wasn’t want?

“It’s called ‘scissoring’,” Rarity said with a giggle, finally lining herself up into position. Her legs touched Twilight’s. Their pussies grazed. Twilight gasped.

“You can guess why, based on the poisition. But essentially, all you have to do is—“ Rarity demonstrated by rocking herself against Twilight, the friction between the two of them sending electric shivers down both spines “—and eventually we get exactly where we’re going. Make sense?”

Twilight nodded. She didn’t feel like she could speak.

Rarity hugged her, kissed her neck, kissed her forehead, her cheeks, gave her a quick peck on the mouth that Twilight was too slow for, her tongue leaving her mouth for a second then returning embarrassedly.

“Enjoy yourself, dear. That’s what this is about—not getting off, not making anypony feel good but yourself. You, Twilight Sparkle, are the smartest pony I know—and it’s time for you to learn how to feel good.”

Rarity took Twilight’s hoof and guided it downwards—between her legs—to her clit. The place Twilight seldom gave any attention, because it was like cheating anyway. Why not just make yourself cum if you wanted to cum?

And now she couldn’t. Because she looked up, and saw Rarity, rocking back and forth, her eyes closed or rolling, or matched with Twilight’s, and Twilight began to rock too. This was ‘scissors’. It felt like ‘make me cum’ to Twilight. It felt like ‘fuck me in my bedroom like a mare in heat and don’t let me go until I can’t walk again’. And Rarity was too polite for that, but she went rough when she sensed Twilight wanted rough, and the two of them began moaning together then, at last two ponies towards one goal instead of separate beings or things.

“Twi-…light… you feel… amazing…” Rarity was breathless as the tribbing went, and Twilight more so, so Rarity had to do most of the talking. Did there have to be talk? Well, Twilight liked it—the shivers doubled every time a word crept from Rarity’s mouth, as contorted w/ ecstasy as it usually was. The pleasures began to parallel, and Twilight moaned back, louder than she’d ever moaned in her life. Loud enough that she swore Celestia might hear her—and she didn’t care.

“Oh, Rarity!” Twilight felt the name was cliché to say ‘oh’ at all, but there were no better words—just this, the pony next to her, the movement, the friction, the soft caress of another pony’s folds against hers—so rough, she’d been, and there was no need for rough when there was gentle, there was rock back and forth, there was Rarity touching her stomach and legs and kissing her neck and mouth and nibbling on her ear that was it she was there now.

“Rarity… I’m… cum-… cum-…”

“-ing!” Rarity finished.

And the two of them came.

Twilight had never cum like this before.

Because when she came by herself, usually to an image or scenario she was going over or had conjured in her head, and the good feeling went away almost as fast as it had arrived—sometimes thirty minutes of rigorous pounding and bleeding skin for an orgasm that felt like a tiny piece of silver dropped in a giant, empty well.

But this time—and perhaps only because, as the black hole began to swell in her stomach, Twilight felt herself grabbed by Rarity and pulled beneath the blankets, from sex to snuggle without words, because apparently Rarity knew everything Twilight expected her to, and a lot more and then some.

Had she really come over to Rarity’s looking for sex? Twilight settled her head on one of the lacy designer pillows, staring towards Rarity’s back, her beautiful swirled mane, the diamond cutie mark on her backside…

“I know you weren’t planning any of that, Twilight,” Rarity said. And she said ‘know’, and that meant she knew, and Twilight felt her heart jump. “But that’s okay, because neither was I. Life is so much more fun when you just let things happen instead of planning, isn’t it?”

Twilight swallowed nervously. The words she had swallowed were “I guess”. But she didn’t guess. She didn’t know. She had only the faintest inkling.

But her inkling was Rarity. And that was as great a guess as she needed.

“Yes,” Twilight said, closing her eyes with a sigh, nuzzling into the body-pillow that was Rarity next to her.

“Yes it is.”

Author's Notes:

Chapter 2? Only the commissioner knows for sure! Tune in next time, for another episode of DRAGON. BALL. ZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!~~~