A hint of cold—a suggestion of cold—could now be felt in the air and it was enough to cause an annoying tickle in Dim’s lungs, making it be a laboured effort to breathe. Still, somehow he studied, trying to make sense of Princess Cadance’s transmitted spells. New information had blossomed into his mind, opening, blooming, revealing hidden secrets. She had given him payment, something meaningful in return, something for his continued cooperation. Contrary to what many might believe, Dim had his own sense of loyalty, odd as it was, and Princess Cadance had secured it.

So had Eerie.

Then there was the matter of Blackbird…

Lifting his head, Dim’s neck flared with pain and he leaned back with the hopes of easing the ache. Seeing only the dull grey walls of his room, he closed his eyes, no longer wishing to see something so plain and featureless. He understood the reasoning; paint was heavy and so aesthetics were sacrificed to reduce weight. The tickle in his lungs worsened and his ears needed to pop, so he began yawning in an effort to combat the growing pressure.

Mid-yawn, he heard the door open and when he opened his eyes, he did not see Blackbird as was expected, no, he saw Jolie. A born pirate she was, Jolie. Clever, wickedly smart, and tiny. Little Jolie was a brain packed into a tight, trim, compact, space-saving body. She was a captain that reflected her ship and Dim had some valuable insights into her nature.

“Bonjour, mon camarade mercenaire,” she said, offering up a polite greeting while also sliding the door shut behind her with her hind leg.

“Ich spreche nicht die Sprache der Romantik,” Dim replied, having no idea what she might have said. “Nur die schöne Sprache des Krieges. Warum ficken, wenn du töten kannst?”

“I have no idea what you just said, Dim, but now my skin is crawling and I’m pretty sure that I don’t wanna know.” Jolie stood before the door trying to blow her dark crimson mane off of her bright scarlet face. “I came because you and I have to have a heart to heart, Dim. Nothing personal, but I don’t trust you and I need to trust you, so we need to have a chat.”

After taking a moment to think about it, Dim chose to humour the little mare. “Very well.”

“Let me get right to the point, Dim.” Jolie advanced a few steps and Dim realised that this small cabin must feel so much larger for her. “I don’t understand your motivations. You chose to help Eerie and I don’t understand why. I am trusting the safety of my Gratin, my crew, my ship, and myself, all of it, everything, to you. This is no good, Dim… no good at all. I need to understand why I’m doing this.”

From these words, Dim observed a number of things, but one thing stood out. “You speak of the order in which you value things…” Nothing was said right away in return, but Jolie’s eyes narrowed, her ears angled forwards over her face, and the sudden wrinkles made her appear wizened. “Do not cross me and you have nothing to fear from me. I am given to fits of temper when I feel betrayed.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The tiny mare’s hooves rang out against the thin wooden floor as she approached while she kept her eyes focused on Dim. “Look, I’m gonna pry. I really need to know what your deal is, because I am being forced to trust you with an awful lot, and I’m not happy ‘bout that.”

Sighing, Dim realised that there would be no making her go away, and that he was going to have to commit to a conversation. The tickle in his lungs had grown unbearable, and was now in his throat as well, a wet, clinging sensation that felt like it was robbing him of air. With a pale flash of amber light, he conjured up his smoking supplies, slipped a clove and cannabis cigarette into the long silver stem, placed it between his lips, and lit it. Almost right away, the tickle began to subside as he puffed away, while studying the mare standing before him.

“You need to get your lungs checked, Dim… you sound like you’re dying.”

“Maybe I am,” Dim replied while exhaling sweet, clove-scented smoke. “How many will I take with me before I go I wonder?”

Jolie did not laugh, no, she scowled, and Dim saw that his humour had fallen flat.

Dim, a slick mercenary, moved to reassure her. “I am loyal to Eerie’s cause. We have come to an understanding, she and I. Her cause is just—”

“Minotaur shit.” Jolie spat out the words and flicked her tail in a rude, impertinent way.

Sighing, Dim performed yet another conjuration and held up a coin in his magic. Leaning forward, he looked down at the mare before him, watching her rude tail flicks with hidden amusement. “Eerie paid for my services.”

“That’s a grain penny,” Jolie grumbled and she shook her head. “That’s worth a measure of grain. Either you got swindled or you’re a fool.”

“I know what it is.” Dim unsummoned the coin and it vanished back into his hat. “Vizard has to eat and after all of this killing, I am bound to be hungry—”

“Don’t fuck with me, Dim!”

“I don’t care about the value.” Keeping his voice low, Dim kept his own temper in check. Jolie was geased, helpless, so attacking her would bring no satisfaction. “I only care about the intent behind it. If I do something, I get paid. It is the difference between a slave and a free pony. When I explained this to Eerie… she was kind enough to humour me and she understood.”

“Aw… that’s kinda sweet.” All of Jolie’s ire vanished, the mare bounced on her tiny hooves, and then, before Dim could protest, she was climbing up onto the bench with him, slipping easily beneath the fold-down table. Tiny as she was, there still wasn’t enough room, and ignoring Dim’s snarls of revulsion, she began to hug him. “I understand… I think.”

“There is a disgusting primitive clinging to me like a parasitic life form—eeeugh.”

“You’re like a foal needing a cookie for reassurance!” Though her legs were short, Jolie gripped Dim’s ribs and clung to the frail, wheezing unicorn, squeezing him hard enough so that smoke came billowing out. “I still don’t trust you, but I can sympathise with you. I think we can work together, Dim.”

A thousand horrible things lingered on the tip of Dim’s tongue, and he said none of them. Puffing away, he allowed Jolie her affection, but did nothing to return it. She was warm and there was a certain pleasantness associated with her touch, even though Dim was repulsed from being groped by a commoner. After a few moments, she went still against him, and he could feel her ear pressed against his side.

“This sounds really bad, Dim.”

“The Grittish Isles did not agree with me,” was his dismissive reply. “The pollution in the cities offends my poor constitution.”

Pulling her head away, Jolie’s lips made a pouty pucker and she looked up at Dim with stormy cerise eyes. She was attractive enough, for a commoner, and Dim saw some appeal in her face. Jolie was expressive, and while she was pleasant enough to look at, there was nothing else, no stirrings from within, no real desire was stoked. Dim found himself in an odd place, unsure of how he had arrived here, feeling feelings that he was ill-prepared to feel.

Suspicions aroused, Dim wondered what she was up to and why she was doing this. As for her behaviour… most peculiar. By her own admission, she didn’t trust him, yet she was being kind. Nice. What strange game was this? Even worse, she was touching him, an act that he found utterly reprehensible. Of course, Blackbird’s touches were no less confusing, though Dim was learning to forgive her.

“I’m gonna share something that maybe I shouldn’t, but I’m gonna do it with the hopes that you and I might be able to trust one another.” With each word, Jolie’s ear twitched against Dim’s ribs. “I’ve shared a bed with Eerie, Dim, and she’s told me what sort of nightmarish shit goes down in that tower you called home. It messed with my head pretty bad to hear what was done to her, but she didn’t need fucking, she needed straightening out so she could unfuck herself. She’d been fucked plenty already.”

Now, Dim was too confused to even try to respond.

After a moment of thoughtful silence, Jolie continued, “I know about what happened to you, Dim. Eerie told me about you. Long before you even arrived on the scene, Eerie spilled her guts right there onto the sheets and she told me what she’d done wrong. It was like lancing a wound, Dim. She told me about you… she told me about Darling Dark… and she asked me how broken did she have to be to ruin the life of another female in the same way her own life had been ruined.”

Lost in the past, Dim thought of Darling.

“I can’t be certain, Dim, but I’m pretty sure that Darling was Eerie’s daughter. It’s the way she talks, you see… Eerie talks like a mother mourning her foal.” Coughing, Jolie waved clove-scented smoke away from her with her hoof and looked up at Dim who sat in shocked silence. “So there’s my grain penny, Dim, my token gesture of payment to secure your loyalty. If you ever use it to hurt Eerie, I swear, I’ll find some way of hunting you down and killing you.”

Taking a long, deep toke, Dim filled his lungs with the deadening smoke, held it, and then posed a whispered question, to wit: “Can I be unfucked? Can Eerie?”

Jolie’s ears fell into a more submissive position. “Gosh, I hope so Dim.”

Without realising that he was doing so, Dim slipped a foreleg over Jolie’s withers, and then in silence, he held her, too stunned to realise that his body had betrayed him. If Eerie was Darling’s mother, it would explain a great many things. Eerie knew that he had killed Darling Dark… and now… things were awkward. While holding Jolie, Dim thought of the uncomfortable struggle that had taken place when Eerie had held him. Had she been seeking comfort from him?

“Blackbird is very dear to me. I need to know if I can be unfucked.”

“Hmm”—rubbing her chin against Dim’s side, Jolie seemed thoughtful—“most of it falls on you, Dim. You have to want to be unfucked. Blackbird is pretty infatuated with you, Dim. If you take advantage of that, if you fuck her, you’ll fuck her, and then she’ll need to be unfucked. And when two ponies in dire need of unfucking continue to fuck one another, bad things tend to happen. Both you and Darling needed to be unfucked, if you need an example.”

Dim felt his skin go cold everywhere except for the parts touching Jolie.

“I tend to fuck those in dire need of unfucking,” Jolie remarked while cuddling against Dim. “No idea why, just works out that way. I’m cute, and little, and harmless, and unassuming, and I am totally non-threatening, so once somebody gets over their hang ups about how I look like a filly, they get totally turned on by how sweet little me makes their dick look enormous. Well… and I guess I’m not intimidating to other mares. Poor Gratin needs unfucking and it’s looking like it might be a long-term project.”

“So you fuck others to help them?” Dim asked in a quiet, reedy voice.

“I find it helps,” Jolie replied.

At a loss for words, Dim found himself with nothing to say.

“I’m an earth pony, Dim, and fucking is what I’m made for. I speak the language of romance, but also the language of bone-deep-in-pone. Sex is more than just fucking, it is how I learn the secrets of others. How I read their hearts. How I coax out all of the things that need to be said, and aren’t. Tongues wag during pillow talk, but you have to fuck away somebody’s inhibitions first. and that takes more than regular fucking… it has to be special fucking. As an earth pony, this all comes as natural to me as breathing.”

Dim still had no words.

“You… you’re a unicorn, and you speak the language of war. That’s a different kind of fucking. It’s a lot more violent and the orgasms leave whole cities in crisis. Where I woo others and work to get them to open up to me, you show up and surprise sex happens. We’re very different ponies, you and I, but the world needs both of us.”

“I see,” Dim somehow managed to say, but the truth was, he didn’t see much at all.

“I try to unfuck others the nice way. You unfuck others the hard way.” Jolie patted Dim on the ribs while offering him a sweet, sincere smile. “When we get to Fancy, there’s a lot of unfucking to do, Dim, a whole lot of the old smash-bang-rape.”

What a curious little mare sat beside him—Dim looked down at her while she looked up at him and a million crazy thoughts ran rampant through his mind, each crazier than the last. It was difficult to imagine having friends—but it was far more difficult to imagine having female friends. For Dim, the whole point of being on familiar terms with a mare was so that one might fuck them… otherwise, what was the point of expending all that effort to achieve familiar terms?

It was his experience with Darling, Dim realised. She had been the closest thing he had to a friend during his foalhood, and there had been no boundaries. The thought left his eyes curiously moist, a sensation that he found most unpleasant. And yet, for all of his thoughts, he seemed to be making friends with a number of females; Jolie and Bombay, first and foremost. It was too confusing and painful to think too much about.

“This is not your captain speaking,” a mock-solemn voice said over the intercom and Dim looked up at the source of the sound.

“Oh no,” Jolie gasped while doing the same and her whole body went rigid against Dim, her muscles turning as hard as rocks.

“I have an announcement.” Blackbird spoke a bit too loud into the microphone and it caused no end of cracking, popping, crackle, and static. In the background, there was laughter. “Semen!”

Jolie lept from the bench, flying right over the fold-down table, and while in mid-air she said, “I’m gonna kill that rotten Gratin sonuvabitch!”

Before the flying red mare hit the floor, Blackbird repeated herself over the intercom: “Seeeeeeeeemen!”

Shocked at first, Dim had no response and watched as Jolie hit the door running. It slid open along its hidden tracks with a bang of metal-against-metal and the frenzied mare made no effort to close the door behind her. In the span of an eyeblink, she was gone, and peals of laughter could be heard from the tinny speaker overhead.

Feeling better, Dim allowed himself to smile, and his face began to ache…

Author's Notes:

It's like the Good Ship Venus all up in there.