Rosewater dashed out of the alleyway as soon as the spell concluded and the essence of Damme flowed around Cloudy in an iridescent cloud of vapor and magnolia. It was a blatant breaking of the laws in Damme, but it was a time for risks by the stars, and she was going to do what she needed to make this chase the best chase she’d ever had.

Behind her, an emerald streak flashed past the eaves of the buildings and swooped low in the only direction Rosewater could have taken, wings cupping as she braked and swept the alley and the street beyond with a ferocious column of wind that tugged at Rosewater’s tail and sent debris swirling against the opposite wall of buildings and through the low shrubbery of the narrow median.

Cloudy followed it down as Rosewater bolted for a hidey hole under an awning before hooves slapped down behind her and wings swept the space she’d just been.

Sure as rain, it was enough. The wind of her passage betrayed her, and Cloudy snapped around and leapt at her.

Rosewater ducked, but found her tail caught as Cloudy snagged it in her teeth, grinning at her over the pink hairs, then winked and dashed away, prancing away like a deer with her wings sending her bounding into the air only to land again.

Tit for tat. I got you, and you got me. Message received.

It was Rosewater’s turn to laugh and bound after her, noting the path took them out of the city. Or would… it would lead close enough to some of her goal scents to pick them up along the way.

Assuming Cloudy didn’t turn the tables again.

It had been an absolute spur of the moment, catching her tail and not sealing the game with a kiss or a tackle. Just because she could end the game didn’t mean she wanted to end the game, even if Rosewater had made one little gaffe as a tease.

Cloudy laughed and watched as the shadows behind her followed, seeming to stagger from side to side as it blended with shade after shade and shape after shape. She was good, but the more Cloudy tracked her, the more she saw the flaws in the shadows she made.

A little roughness on a fine edged line, a blob that should have been a leaf shape.

All completely unnoticeable if she hadn’t been alerted to them, but all there, and all blending to form an almost outline, the finest details obscuring the finest features.

Let’s take this out of the city, Rosewater, so we can really stretch our legs. Cloudy laughed again and took off, leisurely circling the shadow below to let her know she was seen. Once they were out of the city, though, and away from the dangers posed by curious Dammeguard wondering why their lieutenant was going, medically speaking, snooker loopy.

The figure below her broke into a trot, then a gallop as she entered the main street out of town towards the verdant loess hills and distant Dammehollow.

That’s right, Rosewater… out there, we have the entire world to dance in, uncovered, unfettered. Show me how you can dance in the moonlight.

Rarely did Rosewater dare to let her veiling drop anywhere near Damme. It was habitual to never approach the city or anywhere near it. But here, in the wild wilderness outside Damme, with Cloudy circling above her, waiting for the game to enter its final phase, she dared.

She stood on a hill overlooking the city when she dropped her veil, the moonlight streaming over her anew, unfiltered by her artificial shadows and made her coat glow silver in the Mare’s gaze.

Green wings shifted high above as Rosewater started out again, her run turning to a gallop as Cloudy dropped and swooped to the edge of the hill in front of her, hooves barely making a sound in the browning grass.

Rather than turning to face her, Cloudy tucked her wings in and shot a grin over her shoulder and plunged down the side of the hill, her flashing pink tail the last thing Rosewater saw before a whoop of joy chased back up the hill.

A naked chase. No magic. No wings. Just hooves.

Just two ponies figuring each other out.

It barely registered that it might have been a trick when Rosewater plunged over the edge of the hill blindly, chasing Cloudy down the loose, silty slope. No rocks met her, only a loose tangle of grass and soil that tumbled after the galloping shape of Cloudy as she stopped just shy of plunging into the thicket and bounded around it, aiming for the next hill.

It was a risk, but Rosewater turned the other way when she hit the floor of the dale, hoping it was a ruse.

Cloudy laughed as she looked behind her. Rosewater was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t doubt the mare would hold to tradition. This was as important, more so, to her than it was to Cloudy.

Whether she was still on the hill, hoping to catch her, or had followed her down, Cloudy didn’t know, and that was a part of the joy of a naked chase. It would be better with mist and a forest, but this was as close as they could get. Hills and vales where some mists did linger about the thickets deerkin used for their winter excursions southward, and some flowed through the passes between hills.

She considered the hill ahead, its stepped side betraying how loose the soil was, and the shrubs that dotted its surface had their roots exposed in places where the soil had slumped after a rain and yet to be covered again.

Going up the hill would be slow work, and give Rosewater time to catch her rather than letting Cloudy lay an ambush of her own.

Or she could double back and possibly meet Rosewater coming around after her, or set herself up for an ambush from above if her chase partner was being canny. It all depended on how patient of a chaser Rosewater was. And how well Cloudy judged her.

Rut it.

Cloudy turned around and broke into an instant gallop, a feeling of urgency overtaking her from behind, a feeling of exposure and danger from around the bend. It was a need to hide and escape, but a joyous note in her heart told her exactly what it was. Some small sign had told her Rosewater was there. A sound, a scent on the slight wind flowing from the north.

It could have been your imagination.

So she ran from her imaginary pursuer, tail flashing side to side as she ran past the small slide she’d started coming down.

Surprisingly, the scents of Damme met her when she crossed the line, baking bread, wood shavings, and the sea air blown in from the west. None of it should have been there, but it lead her onwards, around the copse.

Signs of Rosewater’s passing were here and there; a hoofprint in a bare patch of dirt, a pink tail hair laying like a heart-thread on a bush. Her imagination hadn’t been wrong. Rosewater had been chasing her around the opposite way.

Cloudy laughed aloud and increased her pace, flashing her tail against the same bush to leave another pink hair there, or more, and aimed for the gap between two hills, rocky bases bared by the yearly flow of water in the spring. The beds were dry now, and she found easy purchase as she climbed up the shallow incline.

The sound of laughter behind her brought a smile to her lips as she went.

Where will you go? Rosewater thought as she chased Cloudy’s scent around the copse, laughing at herself for not thinking of it. Of course she would double-back if she didn’t see pursuit right away. The dale was nearly circular, holding only the low, shrubby trees in the middle as any point of interest, so there weren’t many places to hide.

She laughed aloud as she caught Cloudy halfway up a defile of rocks and small boulders, perched on one of the latter to catch her breath and looking back down over the dale.

You sly mare. No wings, but still going for height. And you brought me down here just because of this.

“Good lu-uck!” Cloudy singsonged down at her, breaking her stance and bounding up with the sure footing of a mountain goat, skills from perching on improbable ledges giving her an advantage on the uneven ground that Rosewater didn’t have.

From higher up, Cloudy could get the drop on her before she had a chance to make a counter-plan.

That wouldn’t do, but the steep sides of the defile left her little chances to clamber up the softer soil, and she would get three steps up for every four she made. Hardly ideal. Loess was hard to climb.

She could circle back around the copse and try to find a linking hill, but this was home turf for Cloudy. She knew the terrain better than she, and would know where to look for a white-coat on dark backdrop.

Without magic to cover herself, she was at a severe disadvantage at night. It would be different if there were any snow on the ground, but of course there was not. Not even a flake for her to hide behind in vain.

Rosewater hissed under her breath and considered the landscape around her. Even if she’d taken a shortcut, it would take time for her to reach a hilltop and begin a waiting game. A stalemate chase.

That won’t do at all.

But there was one option. She set her jaw and started up the defile. Her longer legs gave her an advantage of speed, and she was no stranger to rough terrain, even if she couldn’t leap and perch on insane ledges like a pegasus.

I’m coming, Cloudy.

It had been a spur of the moment plan. Continuing around in a circle, trying to catch up to Rosewater without the mare finding out was doomed to failure. The Rosethorn nose had certainly picked up her scent long since, and that laughter told her just as much.

So she did what she usually did in tense situations: go for height. But not just straight up a hill. That would be a long, slow slog over soil that tended to crumble and slide for the first hoof before she struck actual clay.

The watershed channel was her only option, then. The way water had flowed every year for centuries had carved out a path down to the rocky base of the hills, shaping them, had left a rocky base for her to climb up if she dared. She could make good time, even. It’d been days since the last rain, and the stones were all dry, though the soil in the base of the dale was still somewhat damp.

Rosewater could make it, if she were careful. It would give Cloudy time to find a hiding spot to spring an ambush on her and claim victory.

And at the top, she stopped to watch what Rosewater would do.

Following her wasn’t the first thing she thought would happen, nor how good of time she made, despite taking the safer center-line route where the largest boulders stood out.

Damn tall mares, Cloudy thought appreciatively, watching the play of muscle and sinew as she hefted herself up steadily and readily, using the moon’s light and how it reflected off her coat to find her way. She was beautiful in the moonlight, and when her head lifted during a pause to watch Cloudy, those rose wine eyes seemed to drink in the moonlight and glow just for her.

Tonight, they really did.

It was a surprise finding Cloudy watching her intently as she scaled the rocky terrain, making sure at least one hind hoof was firmly planted before starting up again. During a pause to catch her breath, she looked up, and there was Cloudy staring down, a faint smile on her lips and an appreciative set to her ears.

If she had whistled, Rosewater might have blushed.

“Enjoying the show?” Rosewater asked through a huffing breath. “Why wait?”

To her surprise, Cloudy laid down at the edge and crossed her forelegs over the side of a boulder. “And miss the show? My dear Rosewater, you cannot reach me yet, and I do so admire a mare when she stretches so. So lean, so sleek. And the way you work your rump…” She mock shuddered and licked her lips. “So delicious.”

She did flush then, and bared her teeth in a grin. “Oh dear, how shall I ever respond?” Another surge of speed, still careful, and Rosewater stared up again. “I will catch you—” Rosewater paused again, pretending to need to catch her breath. “—Cloudy. And I will show you just how well I can work my rump.”

“Promises, promises,” Cloudy yawned, her eyes gleaming in the dim light. She didn’t move from her perch yet, but she tensed more and more every tail length Rosewater made it up.

It was only about thirty from the ground, and at such an angle that it was more of a difficult hike than a climb, and the rocks held her weight admirably.

“That’s… exactly… right.”

She didn’t need to fake the heavy breathing much by the time Cloudy rose and backed away from the ledge, grinning ear to ear, seeming certain of her victory. All she would need to do was find a bend in the waterway, find some place to hide, and spring her ambush, catching Rosewater against the side of the hill and claiming her victory kiss and the win.

But if Rosewater could just keep her preoccupied long enough…

She can’t be so out of shape, can she?

It was less an accusatory thought and more a speculative one. The victory would be all the sweeter if she could spring her trap in the middle of a fierce flight down the stream bed between hills. Timing was key. Understanding how much fight Rosewater had left in her was key.

She’d never seen the mare run, even while surveilling her, so it was easy to believe she only watched what she ate to keep that figure. But Rosewater’s private life was also largely a mystery. She didn’t know word one about what the mare did behind closed doors or the times their spotters lost track of her. For all Cloudy knew, she ran to Canterlot and back in the afternoons.

But she did seem winded… even if her pace didn’t falter much and not a lot of sweat showed on that gleaming, beautiful flank of hers. Oh, the fragrance she would be giving off, the sweet musk of a chase fresh on her, and the excitement of such a lovely mare, alone with her in the dim light, exploring each other under the Mare’s eye and with the Mare’s nearly full moon blessing.

Cloudy snapped herself out of the reverie. She would get to taste those lips soon enough, and maybe even other lips as well. If they weren’t both too winded from their chase.

She rose and backed away from the edge as Rosewater got within a couple of tails of the edge, and turned and darted towards the bend as soon as Rosewater’s head appeared over the lip of the last stone and heaved herself up to rest on the same stones Cloudy had occupied just a minute before.

And sniffed at them. Rosethorn markings glowed bright in the moonlight, accentuating Rosewater’s cheeks and highlighting the fine bone structure of a high-born noble.

She’s sampling my scent… A shudder ran through Cloudy as she thought just how aroused she’d gotten watching Rosewater climb up. She was a fine mare, finely built and took care of herself, and even a heady chase and run through the nearest fields and hills into the rougher loess hills lining the Crystal Forest hadn’t dimmed the brightness of that coat, or the showing of pink in her ears.

Her marehood would be just as pink. Just as soft. Winking.

Just like Cloudy.

She shuddered again, stamped a hind leg, turned, and dashed away. She needed to win.

The heady fragrance of an excited mare caught her attention before she was even halfway up the steep slope, tending more to her hooves placement than staring at the watching, smirking face above her.

But that musky, delicate bouquet of excitement that had been missing for far too long in her life drew her attention perhaps more than it should have.

More than once, Rosewater wished their chase had taken place in a grove, with the mists curling all about, where teasing calls and half-glimpsed tails and faces were all they had to go on. It was the old way, the first chases had been thus after the custom became more accessible, after the naked chase was born.

Not requiring her to almost be a mountain-climber in order to chase after her hopeful paramour.

Rosewater heaved herself over the ledge and lay prostrate for several seconds, watching Cloudy standing a safe distance away, the mare apparently unknowing that her tail was flagging, her lips parted in an unconscious desire to meet breath to breath.

A quick check of her scarf, that she’d tightened around her neck before starting up, and she rose, flagging her own tail in a conscious show of desire. Cloudy was more than a stranger. She’d studied the mare, watched her, knew her by her actions and her love of Rosemary. This was a mare that she could find a deeper love with, if she so chose.

She was also as safe as anypony from Roseate’s predation.

Cloudy dashed away, showing Rosewater even in the night that there was a safe lip of soil around the shallow valley to find purchase on.

Rosewater broke into a slower run after her, eyes focused on the ground, Rosethorn markings adding a faint crimson glow as she let her nose guide her.

Unerring, Rosewater followed the trail at a sedate pace.

Finding the right place to spring her ambush was harder than she’d thought it would be, and took her farther into the foothills at the base of the Crystal Forest than she’d liked, but she did find it eventually.

Sometime in the ancient past, a slab of slate carried by the unimaginable weight and force of a glacier had fallen out of the scree to lay at a slant in the loose soil, eventually slipping to one side and forming the side of a hill that jutted out oddly from the rest of the smooth-sided, round hills that made up the rest of the glacial till all around her.

It was obviously a place for an ambush, and Rosewater would see it as such… which was why Cloudy cheated, just a little, and helped herself up the side of the hill with a single sweep of her wings, while keeping her hooves mostly touching the hillside, and made her way past it and around to lay in wait on the near-side of the slab, her coat not standing out nearly as well as Rosewater’s would have against the dark stone.

And yet there was still reason to…

Rosewater stopped at the bend, studying the way ahead just as Cloudy settled in to wait. She’d been right to risk the cheat and make her way up the hill quickly. If she hadn’t, she’d still be scrambling her way up the loose stones and sand in the lee of the stone when Rosewater came within hearing distance.

Now she could slip down the side of the hill after she’d passed and catch her unawares from behind. Then that kiss would be hers first, and the win and what to do after was hers to decide.

Come on, come on. Nothing to worry about up here…

Cloudy watched as her quarry made her way towards the stone, hooves placed carefully on sturdy ledges of soil and sand, testing each one carefully now that she was so close.

Worry about what’s behind the stone, not up here.

Cloudy’s fragrance grew both stronger and weaker in different ways as Rosewater made her way down the shallow ravine. Stronger in desperation, weaker in arousal, stronger in presence. She was getting closer and closer.

Cloudy had slowed down this far into the maze of ravines and watershed channels, and now and again a hint of her strayed down one dead end and another, all of them ending in steeper defiles than the one she’d clambered up, most of them would be small waterfalls in the spring, and actual gushing ones at that. It would be a beautiful place come springtime when the grass greened again and the snowpack was gone.

A perfect place for a springtime fling with a lover.

With a tent, of course.

She soon enough came to a great gray slab piercing the heart of a hill and blocking most of the stream enough that the hill opposite had a deep overhang sprouting roots from its ceiling and sporting bushes all along the edge, half of them risking being lost in the next flooding.

But it was the deep cut on the opposite side of the stone that worried her most. It was a perfect ambush spot… or a place to seem to set up an ambush. Make her slow down enough to let Cloudy get ahead and plan a more elaborate trap later, when both of them were more tired.

What would you do here, my dear Cloudy? She hesitated on the edge of looking around the slab, sniffing carefully and drawing deeply on her heritage to take in all the scents around her.

The fragrance of her was stronger all around the stone, on both sides, but without a wind to clear away the older scents, all she could determine was that her pegasus quarry had spent an inordinate amount of time here inspecting and possibly even using, the stone as a place to set up a trick.

She risked a quick look, drawing her head back almost as soon as she’d taken the peek… then a longer one. Cloudy wasn’t there, and the slab’s shadow made it hard to tell if she’d tried to climb up the leeward side or not, but here in the shadows, it was easier to find evidence of her scent over everything. She had stopped there at least, perhaps knowing…

A rustle of shifting dirt sounded from somewhere above and to her left, then a clatter of rock on rock behind her and to the right.

For the briefest of moments, Rosewater thought she’d been caught by bandits surrounding her and worried for Cloudy. But nopony was to her left, and by the time she realized her error, that it was echoes, and turned around, Cloudy was already standing there, head raised, eyes fixed, and a sultry smile on her lips.

“Well hello, Rosewater,” Cloudy advanced closer, tail flicking side to side, her voice halfway to a throaty laugh. “So nice to catch you here.”

“Cloudy,” Rosewater murmured, dropping her head in submission. She’d been outplayed, and lingered too long investigating an anomalous scent. “You’ve caught me. The chase is yours.”

“So formal,” Cloudy said as she came up to within kissing distance. “So…” Her lips were on Rosewater’s in the next second, her teeth catching Rosewater’s lower lip and nipping lightly before letting go. It wasn’t until afterwards that she realized her tail was not only canted to the side, but raised high enough to let a stallion mount her. “Sweet. But this is our first chase. I think I shall claim a talk.” She hesitated, seeming uncertain, then glanced around and up at the sky, and nodded towards the nearby edge of the forest.

Sweet stars, am I that… horny? “I… think that may be best. I did more running and physical activity tonight… and more may see me fall asleep until morning.” She didn’t lower her tail until she saw Cloudy’s rise in response, then forced herself to make nice and Dammer modest. “I was worried, when I started, that you would… not be able to respond to me. Because of our history.”

Cloudy chewed her lip for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s talk, then, alone. We… have a lot to talk about, and away from prying eyes and ears, whether they’re there or not.” A faintly nervous smile crossed her lips, and she ducked her head. “You and I in a more intimate setting, with the, hum… formalities of the chase can wait.” Cloudy’s eyes hooded as she considered Rosewater from nose to tail, her own flagging to the side and then resting flat again. “But not for long, Rosewater. Tonight was good for me.”

Formalities. Rosewater shuddered and felt her own tail flag involuntarily to the side. It’d been so long since she’d tasted another mare, so long since real, warm lips parted hers, since a real tongue stroked and delved.

“As you say,” Rosewater purred back, catching Cloudy for a light kiss before she started off, her magic holding the mare gently. “Lead the way, victor.”

Author's Notes:

And continues!