Ari

Let it be known that I am excellent at asking all the wrong questions. Like asking an attractive mare in my dream why I dreamt her up, yes, I too don’t know how that would be answered. Another stupid one was asking myself in front the mare if I was horny to dream her up. My latest question though must have taken the prize so far, as I asked my marefriend if dream magic was a thing I also admitted that I dreamt of a mare other than her.

Yah, it wasn’t my finest moment.

So I was expecting anger, a kick, maybe a little laughs, and a rebuttal that magic cant do everything. None of that happened; first Chrissy froze in place while Lyric started to press into me almost to the point of knocking me over, and then I froze as I realized something was really wrong. They both held a slight tremble now, it made me look around for the creature that had roared earlier. But the trees and shaded grass were empty with the faint bird song in the background.

What was going on with them?

“Chrissy?” Moving into her side I gave her a nudge with my nose, this wasn’t looking good if her reaction was what I think it was…

“What did she say?” Her fear was plain to hear and see, coupled with Lyric’s response it was like a big resounding ‘yes, you did just meet the princess of the moon’ to my mind.

A strong wind whistled through the trees as you considered the dream. “Well first she just appeared, yelling at me in old Engli-err, old Equus, wanting to know what my dream meant. Then, huh, it’s a little fuzzy now, anyway she was trying to convince me she was real and trying to tell me her name but…” I trailed off as I realized I had inadvertently called her attractive, which was going to bite me in the butt later.

“But?” Lyric prodded me with a slight edge to her voice.

“But I didn’t believe her and she began circling me, inspecting me I think, before she called me a fake Alicorn and disappeared.”

I heard two sighs of relief beside me.

“That is okay then, she doesn’t know you exist yet, Azure and Barium have another couple days to reach Canterlot and I think we can all agree that it is better for the plan if she doesn’t know where you are. She can find out many things with dream magic-“

“Actually dream magic is really a form of mind magic-“

With a glare at Lyric Chrissy continued, “As I was saying since she can access your mind with dream magic we should travel when she is awake and sleep when she is asleep. So we are going to be nocturnal while we are in Equestria. Then she won’t be able to visit you anymore!”

Well that seemed actually pretty airtight, if not a little inconvenient today as I was going to have to pull an all nighter. But I wasn’t going to complain about not have Moonbutt in my head, which seemed like a good idea. I could do without her screaming and I didn’t want to see her reaction after she read the letter. Eventually I would of course but that would be on my own ground, with a magic inhibitor and wing restraints on hoof. Speaking of that…

“I completely agree Chrissy. I definitely don’t need her in my head.” Giving my mare a reassuring nuzzle to her neck which got me a cute trill, I continued, “However that got me thinking about our plan or rather the fact that Lyric doesn’t know about it yet.” Lyric was now giving me her full attention, which was actually kind of cute, with her sparkling eyes and scales.

Chrissy nodded before looking into the space beside her.

Shaking myself out of my thoughts I continued, “So we are traveling to Zebrica where we are going to get an airship and make some Alicorn grade magic inhibitors for their horns and Alicorn grade wing restraints, then I’m going to meet with them.” Lyric looked very concerned at that, but there was nothing to worry about, I had had plenty of time to work out some details.

“I will probably drug them like the Diamond dogs did to me with their gas, abduct them, and then we are going on a two week tour of the continent to show them the damage they have caused. By the end of it they will understand and we will return them after they promise to stop moving the sun and moon.” Lyric had gone from attentive to scared, doubtful, and finally thoughtful.

“After that is all over I think we will find a cozy spot somewhere on the planet and hide from the princesses.” I added with a slight chuckle and a grin.

My grin was fading as both maresstill looked thoughtful, then concerned, finally settling on downright disapproval. I was starting to feel worried as Lyric got a strange look in her eye.

Starting to walk again, Chrissy spoke in a slow voice, like she was scared of upsetting me. “Ari I know I said that was a great idea but after thinking about it we need to make some changes. For one, I’m pretty sure none of us know how to make magic inhibitors of any variety nor restraints, we need to find a trade pony for that part, and that means we need to find another pony that is sympathetic to our cause-

“And doesn’t mind working with a changeling and a siren.” Lyric muttered loudly, we both stared at her. “What?! I am just saying ponies can be weak willed, snobbish, and complete prudes. For example, Do you know how many friends I had growing up?”

Lyric looked at us, actually waiting for an answer, so I shook my head no. Chrissy frowned and shook her head.

“NONE! When your mother’s mere presence makes mares jealous wrecks and their weak willed stallions putty not many ponies want to be around you! My aunts, my six thousand year old aunts were my friends growing up!”

At this point Lyric was yelling and shaking. I didn’t know what to do for her, we started on the topic of the plan but it quickly took turn into left field causing me to realize I knew basically nothing about her. Lyric was a very flirtatious pony, was half siren on her mother's side, and presumably had a dead mother since she wasn’t with her anymore. She had had a rough time under Jabbar as his bait for catching ponies and apparently I was the first stallion to not be affected by her mind magic. That fact caused her to stalk me, challenge my marefriend to a mare challenge, and then continue to flirt with me after joining the group. Really I didn’t know anything about her other than she was really close to her aunts and mother growing up. Well I felt like shit now, I hadn’t stopped to really try to get to know her, at least she tried to even if it was in a extreme fashion.

“I- I didn’t know Lyric.”

Although my voice was soft, apologetic, she still started to cry, and I still hated tears. My mind raced as I tried to think of what was appropriate to do to calm her, come on instincts, you got to throw me a bone here!

As if my brain listened my body had an urge and I let it go with it, I don’t know much body language here, and words are definitely not helping.

My instincts had helped me before.

I licked up Lyric’s tears, an odd sensation of scales on my tongue combined with the saltiness of her tears, continuing to even as her sobs turned to hiccups. Another win for instincts-

A sniff sounded from my other side halting my relief, as if in slow motion I looked at Chrissy, tears were filling up her eyes. I had messed up.

“Chrissy?” My voice sounded as nervous as I felt, I had made her cry.

“I-I thought I was your marefriend?! Why are your putting-“ She stopped herself and shook her head before continuing, “Ari you don’t know what licking means do you?”

Thinking it over realized I must be missing some context for licking, Chrissy had done it at the oasis but she had said it was a thing friends did, however maybe she meant a different type of friend than I understood. Such a thought made me narrow my eyes at her, had she been sugar coating her explanations before? How long had she wanted to be more than traveling companions?

“So when you licked my muzzle at the oasis and said friends did that did you really mean mare friends do that?”

Meanwhile Lyric was watching our conversation with interest, tears forgotten as her ‘rival’ was put on the spot. I’m not blind and quite frankly I think Lyric has been putting a lot of moves on me that I just don’t see, I mean Chrissy had been. I really only noticed when it was right in my face, err, in light of earlier with Lyric and Chrissy flashing me I think that’s very appropriate, although not entirely what i meant.

“Y-yes, I just didn’t want to scare you away and my heat was just starting so I couldn’t help it... But your muzzle did heal nicely because if the licking!” She sounded a little desperate now, worried, maybe at my reaction. Although she was right about my muzzle it was fully healed and looked no worse for wear from the glass shards.

Although I was a little off put that she had been twisting her words to get her way, I understood and could see why she went with that, she had probably grown up doing that. Chrissy probably never had true honesty before, ponies needing to be fooled into feeding Changelings, a fact that still rubbed me the wrong way. I loved Chrissy, maybe not the overly romantic speal I have read about but I surely enjoyed her company, her personality, and especially her body.

However, these word games and twisted meanings couldn't continue.

“Just be more honest next time okay?” Chrissy nodded her head before giving me a couple of licks on the muzzle. “You too Lyric, we should be honest about this sort of stuff.”

Lyric nodded as well and moved in to lick my muzzle, I saw it coming and raised my eyebrow at her. “I thought I said no more flirting?”

“It’s not flirting if you added your scent to me first.” Lyric winked at me, retracting her tongue despite her words suggesting otherwise, it threw me off.

“Sooo, I have to agree with Chrissy on getting a trade pony, we can test it on you, but think we would butcher it if any of us tried to make one. We need to get this done right the first time, surprise is our biggest weapon here it seems.” And with that Lyric brought us back from left field.

Speaking of field, the forest was starting to thin out turning into a field, not the pretty meadow type of field though. This field had the drowned yard look, soggy grass, and the glisten of water just waiting to become a mud puddle. A faint sulfuric smell hung in the air and in the distance I swore I saw a large froglike creature, it was the size of a sheep from our spot the three hundred feet away from us.

They noticed my distraction and took in our environment as well, wrinkling their noses as the smell reached them as we stepped into the soggy field. My skin crawled at the sensation of the mud in my hooves, which while being hard enough to take days of travel they were still sensitive enough to feel the follicles of fur beneath them when touching a pony. Well right now they felt the grass sinking into the mud that had hid beneath the surface.

“Huh we walked faster than I thought.” I commented and the mares nodded in concurrence. We were much closer to Minotaria if the land was a good sign.

“We will be in Minotaria by tomorrow, if we stick along the border we can make it to the Gryphon Kingdom’s mountain range in three or four days-“

I interrupted Chrissy’s well memorized route, “Wait!” It just hit me now after nearly a day after getting rid of the ponies, “We totally forgot to double back in Saddle Arabia-“

“No I let you forget about that, it isn’t important, after thinking on it I realized I don’t want anything to do with them. They can hunt me till the end of time for all I care. After we are done saving the planet we are finding a nice place away from ponies-“

This time Lyric interrupted Chrissy, “By ‘we’ you mean me as well right?”

Chrissy snorted and looked at me. I raised an eyebrow back to which she threw her head in my direction. Why did she have to make it my choice? Couldn’t she see that I wasn’t doing soo good with it soo far with choies, I mean if I had just said ‘no’ to Azure I could have saved us plenty of trouble and time. If I had said ‘no’ to Lyric Chrissy wouldn’t have to use breakfast as a way to get time to have her own special breakfast! But…I wasn’t alone anymore due to my actions, I had a marefriend and a very flirty new friend, maybe-

A roar sounded from further on, even with the sun shining down on us I couldn’t see anything up ahead, even the frog creature was gone. That was a bad sign. We all tensed and went quiet, strategy talk put on backburner as we all knew something lay not so far ahead of us in the swamped field.

“What can make that sound?” I whispered to the mares, eyes trained at the now silent tree line, although we were still moving we were definitely moving at a crawling pace now.

****

Lyric

Just when I was going to get Ari’s acceptance that roar had to return, I swear it was worse than Chrissy, well it was definitely scarier than her.

She was acting weird though, I was expecting a outright ‘no’, a hiss, maybe even a bite for being soo bold. So when she differed to him to decide my brain halted, was she accepting me more or was she truly not worried about his decision? I could feel that he was accepting me into his herd, well not his full acceptance, and I certainly wasn’t going to say the word ‘herd’ around him till after he realizes his acceptance. But I was a step closer to being his mare, he had started putting his scent on me, had attempted at flirting with me… I think so on that last one, it is kind of hard to tell with him what is on purpose and what was just a cultural mix up. I sort of feel that was why Chrissy didn’t tell him certain cultural meanings, I mean, I’m still allowed to sleep next to him and preen him because of her twisted words. She really was a mare after my own heart, if she would only share him I wouldn’t have anything to complain about.

The echo of the roar still rang through my ears, I really hope we don’t run across whatever made that.

Did Ari say something?

“Well there is really many things that could have made that roar.” Chrissy’s whisper had my attention, so that is what he had asked.

“Like?” Ari looked apprehensively at her, which was kind of cute considering he knocked out that rock headed bull I… well let’s forget about that shall we. Ari was a very strong Alicorn, let’s put it that way. Jabbar was still unconscious when I left him and I certainly didn’t leave him in a nice way. If he lived he would be angry but I doubt that he did live, no water in the desert is basically a death sentence after all.

Might as well inform him…

“Like chimeras, dragons-“

“Highly unlikely! Hydras are more likely to roam this type of terrain.” Chrissy just had to interrupt; again, if she keeps this up I just might take her up on the challenge. Not that I want to be head mare and have to handle all the challenges that would come pouring in when Equestria discovered his existence, but I would love to kick her flank a little.

I squeaked in surprise as something wet hit my flank and heard Chrissy give a squeak on the other side of Ari.

Ari had just whipped me with his muddy tail! Oh it was soo on, I flicked my mud tipped tail right back to his rump, splattering his fur in droplets of mud. I heard Chrissy’s tail have the same idea as mine, it’s tip also dipped in the growing mud pit we found ourselves in.

Around us the mud was growing deeper, slowly transforming into a fen, I knew a swamp must be ahead. The smell was really giving it away. In fact it was the only thing I could unfortunately smell, Ari’s scent overshadowed by the offending odor, and any other scents were obscured as well. The smell of rotten eggs had taken over my nostrils.

My thoughts were interrupted as something wet and slimey landed on my head with a plop. With a squeal I was immeatiately airborne, bucking as best as I could in this mud hole, and in the process losing both my saddle bags and the terrifying…Frog.

I was a little surprised, it was a perfectly reasonable reaction!

“HAHAHAHAHAHAA” Ari was now stomping his fore hoof into the mud laughing his head off at me. I wasn’t that unreasonable was-

A mudball hit me straight in the muzzle, which although felt nice against my dried out scales, shocked me into blinking and opening my mouth. I heard Ari gasp in surprise to my right, looking over I saw he had been pushed over into the mud, and looking down at him was a very brown Chrissy.

We were soo dead.

Chrissy looked up from Ari’s mud splattered form and locked eyes with me, I having more sense than the stallion in the mud ran for the trees like a scared filly. Ducking behind the nearest tree I caught four more mud balls to the flank but I missed most of them if the resounding splats on the trunk were accurate.

Crouched behind the tree I waited, I’m not entirely what for as there was endless mud around us for ammo, and I had no intention to leave Ari…

I jumped in place as I heard Chrissy squeal and lots of mud squelching.

What was going on out there?

Curiosity won over my instincts which told me this was a bad idea, this would draw attention to myself, and I would become a target for mud again. It’s a shame I didn’t listen to that thought.

Peeking my muzzle around the trunk I saw Chrissy galloping away from at least a two dozen mudballs and Ari following with a manic grin. Oh dear Faust, that is going to take forever to get out of her mane. Ari saw me unfortunately and turned his head giving me a wink.

Wha-

A shadow fell over me, looking up it filled me with dread while at the sense time made perfect sense, a pile of mud levitated over me in golden magic. My ears pinned themselves just in time as the magic vanished and it fell on me all within the span of a couple of seconds.

Mud was everywhere now. It ran down my scales, through my fur, and coated my mane and tail. The coolness felt heavenly on my dry skin and scales, solidifying that I wasn’t visiting Saddle Arabia for at least a century, and we were never, ever living there. I was a sea pony, we would find somewhere with water, lots of water.

Chrissy was squealing again, a reminder that I had a stallion to deal with.

Getting up I gave myself a quick shake, mud flying everywhere before I finally removed the mud from my eyes. Trotting into the area I quickly gathered a couple of mudballs in my magic.

Now where was-

Again I was hit from above.

Looking up I saw Chrissy holding a second mudball in her magic, her eyebrow raised as my eyes twitched, she was being held up Ari as he hovered above me. Ganging up me were they? I will show exactly what a millennia and growing up with my overly enthusiastic aunts as friends resulted in.

Did I mention I was part siren, a sea pony?

I could practically feel their confusion as I grinned back at them, scowl forgotten as I prepared my revenge.

Feeling the water in the mud I drew it to me, its innate magic feeling the call of my magic, and I put forth the shape I needed. The feeling of the water brought about a sigh before I looked back to my younger opponents.

“ARI Fl-“

But Chrissy had noticed my towering wave of water too late to spare them, it crashed over them and surrounded me with it’s soothing embrace. It reminded me of mother, when she would take me below the surface to see the reefs, and I couldn’t help but add a bit of salt to the water surrounding me.

Later I would ask him.

Releasing the water from my hold, I opened my ears and eyes to take in my victory. Ari and Chrissy were both lying on their chests coughing up water and looking liking they had lost their will to fight. Did it matter that I might have started the fight when I reacted quite reasonably to a slimy thing dropping on my head, and after hearing roaring twice already it was called for.

Ari was the first to stand up, his wings dragging in the mud a little under the weight of the water, and a manic grin on his muzzle. Horse apples, maybe he wasn’t done.

Looking at me with the same grin as before he trotted over to me, “That was awesome Lyric! I mean the water felt amazing and the magic was just WOW. That was soo much fun!” He trotted up to my side with what I realized was actually a smile and gave me a wing hug and did something that had me blushing like a filly. He gave me a hard rub along my neck to my muzzle, I think he meant to nuzzle me but I wasn’t complaining, in fact I was hoping that it was on purpose, he didn’t mean no flirting really.

However I also realized at the same moment he did that that his marefriend, the lead mare, was getting up. Looking over at her with my muzzle blazing red, i saw her face go from to annoyed to an expression that I couldn’t quite read. Her ears flicking between sideways and forward, her lips set in a thin line, and her eyes meeting met mine, emotionless, before closing.

How was I not dead yet?

My brain went between my shock and joy for a good minute before let it sink in, Chrissy was accepting me slowly in her own way. They were still learning to share, I could live with this though, afterall the ‘no’ they kept insisting on was slowly changing.

I had a definite ‘maybe’ from them now.