“Well, I have to say,” said Spike, “it’s been quite some time since we had some genuine time to ourselves,” pulling Daring into a brief kiss, “whatever shall we do with our time? In a few months, we really won’t have very much to ourselves.”

Daring was completely in the nude, as usual, and Spike was also completely naked, something Daring insisted on when they were in their home environment. Spike Didn’t mind too much; he still felt weird about being seen in public without anything on. Thus why he regularly went about outside their residential area in only a pair of pant, he was sure some photographer from the Crystal Empire that caught that sight on camera would likely make their career with images like that.

“Trying to be a sweetheart, as usual,” responded Daring, “I was thinking of going over some designs for securing ourselves here.”

Spike knew what that meant; Daring wanted to put a few traps up along the stairs leading to their residence. “I’m game, so long as it doesn’t involve anything potentially fatal, it just needs to be something to make intruders question their decisions regarding our little haven. Also, it will make sure any of the younger residents that accidentally set off the security don’t get seriously hurt.”

“Good point, we’ll look into that all later. I can sense there is something else you want to discuss, go ahead.”

Spike let out a short extended breath before saying, “I noticed all the religious attire is centered on females, is there a reason for it?”

“A few,” said Daring, “since Zelshirska is female it makes sense to mainly focus on that side of things, for now, all her visible blessings seem to focus on the female form, and the ones with the most power in this religious order are females. Besides, the official attire for adults uses eroticwear as a base. Can you honestly think of any male eroticwear that would properly compliment the kind of attire the priestesses are intended to wear?”

“No, I guess not,” said Spike with a bit of a blush, “it would probably be less embarrassing to be nude.”

After that short conversation, they spent several minutes cuddling, which involved Spike occasionally fondling Daring’s swelling abdomen, and looking over some non-lethal traps, occasionally saying where they would probably put them. At one point Spike suggested a trigger for basically turning the stairs into a slide, which Daring was completely on board with. The real issues were installing it all and getting the proper resources to both set up the traps and reload them. Of course, setting up a reload system for some of the traps could be almost as tricky.

Afterward, the two came broke off from each other and Spike headed to the kitchen to work on lunch. After taking some quick inventory on what was in the kitchen, a habit of his that was instilled and encouraged by Twilight since he was very young, he got to work on making the two of them a small feast. Pregnancy has a tendency to greatly enhance a female’s appetite, and Daring was no exception to that rule.

Of course, Daring had yet to develop any odd craving; that wasn’t likely to happen for a few more months, he hoped. Spike really didn’t want to hear what a mare pregnant with a dragon’s baby requested, he’d already gotten an idea of what the odder things mares would crave when Twilight’s friends had been carrying. Besides, Daring had a serious appetite as is.

Today’s spread was a seven-course meal; it needed to be a multi-course meal because of her strong appetite, as was evident by how Daring was packing away the first course. Three dozen cucumber sandwiches, a large pot of cheddar-broccoli soup, five large loaves of garlic bread, a large pot of spaghetti with alfredo sauce, four dozen garlic knots and four extra large garden pizzas. And to compliment it all, a small variety fruit juices, apple juice and strawberry juice and even some blueberry lemonade.

Did he diminish almost all of their personal eating supplies? Most likely, would they have lots of leftovers? Hard to say, was it all worth it to see Daring gorge on everything in a very unrefined manner? In his opinion, yes.

Pregnant mares have a tendency to eat quite a bit more than usual; he wanted to be sure his partner had enough. Besides, they had supplies delivered to almost the whole in town once a month. Of course, Spike had spent almost half their supplies for the month on this one meal; but it was worth it, he was spending personal time with his mate. Daring was pretty decent with her cooking, it came from her previous lifestyle, but Spike had practically developed gourmet cooking abilities from his time with Twilight.

He only grabbed a few things from the spread, a few slices of pizza and some garlic knots, and left the rest for Daring. He didn’t entirely know why, but he actually enjoyed watching Daring eat. Her manner of eating in private reminded him of family gatherings, all dignified in public and less so in private. In fact, it was a bit of a quirk among the Sparkle family.

From the looks of things, Daring was very much falling in line with that tradition, just one more thing to worry about.

________________________________________

Daring had thought herself a pretty decent cook, that was until she tried Spike’s cooking. How this dragon managed to cook at a level so great was beyond her, she was hesitant to call it gourmet but she couldn’t think of any other words for it. Daring hadn’t eaten at all that many “fancy” restaurants but she had been to a few in her younger days, just enough to get a basic understanding of what more “elite” dishes were like, and Spike basically blew all of her prior experiences out of the water. A multi-course meal was also very sweet of him; she had been feeling her appetite amplify gradually as her pregnancy progressed.

The cuddling wasn’t bad either; it felt right. Before all this Daring had been not big on that sort of thing, or socializing in general. Now she was holding community meetings and reestablishing a church, and liking it. Not quite as much as her personal time with her new dragon lover, but still very much enjoying it.

Daring was really enjoying the food, as well as eating most of what was on the table at a rate she had never downed anything before, and started wondering what it would be like with the baby.

“Any idea,” said Daring between stuffing herself like a chipmunk and actual bursts of eating, “what it will be like when I finally have the baby?”

“Well,” said Spike, “based on what I’ve seen with Twilight’s friends that have foals and how things were during Flurry’s infant years, I would say a lot of sleepless nights with irregular periods of uncharacteristic cuteness. Also, a lot of running around being a bit clueless, more so for us since the baby is part dragon and part pony and we don’t know how that will translate in terms of what is acceptable for the baby to eat. You have to remember, dragons really like eating gemstones, that might mean the baby will be able to eat them as well. Also, you might find yourself craving gems in some manner during your pregnancy, despite your body not being able to process them.“

“Thanks for the warning, we’ll need to work on finding substitutes that ponies can digest.”

“I’ll send out the word for you to the princesses and Twilight, I’m sure Twi will like the challenge. She always did like problem-solving, especially if she could solve a problem before it became more obvious.”

Author's Notes:

So yeah, Daring and Spike had some alone time. It was a cute snapshot, in my opinion. Also, the monthly packages for most of the residents are likely to stop once the community opens up to the public.

Next Chapter, we skip forward a month or so. Which means we get to see how things progressed a little.