Pillow Talk

“Sweetie Belle?!” I exclaim in complete, terrified alarm.

“You can hear me?!” Sweetie Belle exclaims likewise, minus the terror and alarm, plus surprise and delight.

I slam the pillow over my face. We remain there, locked in a silent stalemate.

“...what are you doing?” she asks uncertainly. “Can you hear me?”

I pull away the pillow, whispering agitatedly, “Stop using my mouth!”

“I’m not using your mouth,” Sweetie says, with a huff of displeasure.

“But you sound like me!” I say confused in the darkness, having no luck looking around for her hoofsteps with my ears, in a second body maybe? How did she get in here?

“No,” Sweetie Belle says contrarily, “You sound like me.”

Two blinks.

“I know that!” I hiss to ...her? “I have to sound like you. I’m in your body!”

“Yeah...” she says hesitantly. “Um, sorry about that.”

“Sorry?” I say in an agitated, harsh whisper, “Sorry?!” How could she be sorry? I have her body! I’m the one who should be sorry! She’s—this is all her fault! She knew she was... what did she know? She really she—she’s really here? I’m really talking to...

“Sweetie Belle?” I ask into the darkness, my plaintive begging already sounding choked and shaken. I’m so incompetent, there was no I couldn’t save her. She’s been fine all along? I thought she was... gone.

“...yes?” she says, after a pause.

“You’re really Sweetie Belle?” I ask less ambiguously. “The real one, I mean?”

“Yep,” Sweetie says perkily. “Sorry I thought I’d be able to talk to you when you came over.”

“Oh, thank goodness you’re safe!” I immediately gush at her... um... wherever she is. “I was so worried,” I tell her. “I woke up as you and didn’t even know if you were okay and I didn’t know if I should ask for help, or if I was in danger, or if you were in danger, or anything!”

“Sorry I worried you,” she mumbles. “I just couldn’t do anything to tell you, when you um, got in me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I affirm to her fretfully. “I just woke up like this,” I say, looking at the discarded pillow fallen from my hooves, my little curled forward limbs that I walk on, because they’re her limbs, and I’m in her bed, and... “I don’t know what happened,” I whimper in her voice, managing to sound less like a male human, and more like a very girly unicorn filly.

“It’s okay, don’t cry don’t be sad, it was my fault,” she assures me hastily. “I didn’t know it would put you in my body. I should have got somepony instead of touching it.”

Composing myself, I ask, “What happened?” pausing to sit up, “Where are you?”

“I don’t know where I am,” Sweetie says doubtfully. “The same place I was, when I visited you. I think... around?”

“So, like a ghost?” I ask in puzzlement.

“Kinda,” she admits, “Except I feel like I’m really here in bed. And um, sitting up now. I’m just not... in the same... thingy?”

“But you’re okay?” I ask her worriedly, looking up at the ceiling again. No Sweetie Belle up there either. “What happened to you?”

“I’m... okay,” Sweetie says, a little too hesitantly. “There was a scary voice saying things about an overload in the conduit, but it just kinda kept happening, and when I woke up, I was the same as before, except now I’m watching me instead of you. But I feel fine?”

Huff. “What exactly happened down there in the Badlands?” I ask her, speaking carefully

“Well it was an accident,” she says, sounding perturbed. “We went down there to try and get our cutie marks from the really wise space rock, but like Scootaloo said, all we got is tired and thirsty and hot and dirty, and all we found was a big dumb cave. But in it was a spinny magical thing, so Scootaloo said I should try to use my horn on it. I was just horning the spinny magical thingy, but then it started to talk to me. And I told her about our cutie marks, but she just kept telling me something about a conduit into a metal...something...ation. She was talking about a door though, because when I asked her to open it, she made a door, except when I went through it I went out of my body.”

“And that’s when I found you!” she finishes cheerfully.

Well, at least I know that whatever it is was ‘spinny’ now. “Found me, where?” I ask uncertainly.

“In your world!” Sweetie says brightly, “With all the metal carriages that pull themselves. And the glowy magic paintings you keep looking at. The ones that change to different things.”

“Oh, you mean... right, monitors do kind of look like magic paintings,” I mumble. This could be trouble. What if she saw the show? What if she saw my

“There were so many people there,” Sweetie says engagedly, “I kept switching from person to person. The voice called it roaming scan. But when I found you, I knew I was meant to find you all along!”

“...you were meant to?” I eep in the darkness. How would she know she was meant to find me? Was she? Some sort of prophecy? Magical intuition? I can’t even think. My head is swimming with confusion and exhaustion. Not only am I dead tired, but I just orgasmed! Yet I need to stay awake. I just... just want to go to sleep and ..feel better, and...stuff.

“Yes,” Sweetie explains, “Because you knew who I was, before we even met! You used your magic painting to make pictures of me, and all my friends, and lots of the ponies in town.”

“What... pictures?” I ask with a growing concern, in the same sense that a hurricane is a mild breeze.

“Well, I don’t know all the ponies in the pictures, but they were mostly my sister’s friends, but they had me in them sometimes too!” Sweetie declares excitedly. “Like I was a comic book character a lot. Oh and the one with me and the squirt gun, with Rarity and Apple Bloom’s family all worried, and I had Rainbow Dash prisoner! There was a really scary one where we had a pirate ship, with a cannon, and I could use magic! One where um... there was a really big filly, licking me... I liked that one. And I liked all the ones where me and Rarity were hugging. And um...”

She gets progressively shyer, as she reveals more about what she saw, and I get progressively shyer too. I remember vaguely what she’s talking about, and the direction she’s going... I wish I could say something, but... I mean... if she saw my image collection, then that means she saw... “A few were pictures of ponies sitting on weird things,” Sweetie says uncertainly, “Like sitting on your round claw hooves, and on... joysticks, I think? And they looked really um, so happy they were silly. “And um...

“Just one, of me sitting on a... stallion’s... thing.”

Sure would have been nice if I could ever tell a soul about this as long as I live, or in any lives thereafter. I’ll tell them right about the time I calmly explain to everypony how innocent and not worthy of rainbow lasers to the face I am, despite the real Sweetie Belle truthfully saying I have pictures on my computer, of innocent little fillies fucking full grown stallions, herself included. Oh yes, so it will be such a pleasant surprise, just an innocent misunderstanding. And then we’ll all have a picnic lunch, and go frolic amongst the fields.

“So, that’s how I knew it was destiny!” Sweetie Belle concludes dramatically, “And sure enough, when we’re together, you did something amazing with my bottom. That’s why ponies were sometimes sitting on things in your paintings, to make their bottom do that!”

“I can’t believe that happened,” I groan through my hooves. Thinking of Sweetie Belle getting off to my porn is not making the sticky situation between my legs any better. “You really had to come into my head now, after I went and did that!”

“I know!” she says in happy agreement, completely ignorant of my misgivings. I settle my head down on the pillow, just trying to think for one second, without passing out from exhaustion. My legs are a... mess I don’t want to look at, and I can’t just leave them all slimy like that. What am I going to do about this? I didn’t think it would be such a mess! I found Sweetie Belle?!

“I couldn’t talk to you,” Sweetie continues, “And it was so frustrating. And then you did... what was that?” Sweetie asks me that again, as if prompted by my squirmy legs. “It felt amazing! I didn’t know my pee pee could do that!”

“Y-you could feel that, huh?” I ask her weakly. I wonder if I could just think to her, instead of talking out loud. It really does sound like she’s talking though! Just not... from anywhere. Can other ponies hear her?

“I can feel everything,” Sweetie responds enthusiastically. “I could feel my legs and the tickles and the funny flippy feeling below my tummy, and then it just started going!”

My pillow’s underneath my head, so I just cover my eyes with my hooves. With her hooves. One of the hooves is sticky. I am so dead.

“Not just that though,” Sweetie continues to babble, “Though that felt the best of everything, but I could feel you getting carried out of the cave, and taste when we were eating food, and how nice Rarity was and you trying to walk and climb things. A-also the wrestling was um...” she pauses uncertainly and says, “It felt kind of like the sticky tummy thing you did just now, just not as much, and it was kind of touching the pee place sometimes.”

“A-about that,” I put in. “Do you have any um... tissues in your room?”

“Yeah, in the drawer of my bed table,” Sweetie points out. “But, I don’t have a runny nose, I... ohhh.”

I am revealing way too much information to an 8 year old girl here, so I intelligently say absolutely nothing to that, and just roll over blushing horribly and trying not to get my sheets any more... that. I can reach the drawer from my bed, thank g—thank someone. It’s clearly positioned deliberately, so a sick little filly can reach over and wipe her ...nose when she needs to.

“So it’s like a runny nose?” Sweetie asks, while I wiggle the drawer open enough to get the tissue box. Ugh, I can’t let her think that, that’s terrible.

“It’s... more like a sneeze,” I say distractedly. Oh yeah, that’s totally better. I’m just going leave it at that, end of story. Or wait, maybe I can dig myself further into Tartarus by opening my mouth again!

The tissue box is hard to manage, but I get a few out, and with a sigh of relief I start wiping myself off. Not even caring about how silky they feel against the smooth curve of my groin, I... no, I am not doing that again. I’ve got to get ahold of myself. I just wipe myself off, what I can, and my sheets, and drop the tissues off the side of the bed. What I can’t get, will just have to stay ...damp, because I’m going to go to sleep, and forget that this ever even happened.

In the silence that follows, I feel myself settling into the glowy half daze of sleep—”But what was that?” Sweetie Belle asks in the darkness. “Why was my tummy doing that? How did you make my bottom do that sneezy thing?”

“It’s called an orgasm,” I mumble, full of misgivings but just... I don’t want to hurt her I mean, but keeping her ignorant could hurt her even more! It’s her body! “You saw what I was doing. I just... touched it in the right places, until it started going on its own. I was doing it because I... wanted...” I huff in the darkness, “Because it feels good, and lots of things were making me think about it today. And because...” I let my eyes slide open a little bit.

“I think Princess Luna is going to get me when I go to sleep,” I tell Sweetie somewhat morosely. “Because I’m stealing your body, she’s going to k–make me go away forever, so you can be just you again. I can’t hide from her she’s the princess of dreams, and she’ll ki– she’ll do the same thing she did to Nightmare Moon. I just wanted to feel something good, that I was really curious about, before I... died.”

And now that the real Sweetie is being quiet, I don’t want to go to sleep anymore, not that my body is willing to listen to me. She speaks before I pass out though, saying in a troubled voice, “You can’t die. You just got out! You have so much life left to live!”

“Sweetie could...” I ask in a weakly excited voice, “Could you follow me, into my dreams? Maybe you could talk to Princess Luna, and tell her I’m not... trying to hurt you.”

“I don’t know how,” Sweetie says mournfully, and that little bit of hope dies in my heart. “I haven’t been able to sleep since this happened. You just get quiet and lay me there, and I’m still out here. It’s kind of boring really. But then every time you wake up, you... you have really bad nightmares, don’t you?”

“I thought I was a nightmare,” I say, “But... yeah. Mostly just memories of my home, of... what you saved me from. I think when you tried to save me, it gave me hope, and that means I care more about ...not dying. Stuff that didn’t scare me before, scares me a lot now, because I don’t want to lose...

“...because I have something to lose, now,” I finish. It’s quiet again, letting me finally, woefully, drift off to sleep.

Sweetie speaks up saying, “So anyway, about the um, you’re doing really good at walking. It feels weird having someone else who has a hard time walking.”

“Sweetie, please,” I moan once again. “I just want to sleep at this point.”

“But then the princess will get you!” she cries in alarm. “You can’t sleep now!”

“Just...” my heart goes out to her, but there’s not much Sweetie can do, if she can’t face off against the princess in my dreams. “If you see Princess Luna,” I say, “Tell her to save me, that I didn’t mean to take your body. S-she might get mad at you, but all I need is a body or something, like even a–a crystal, or a little animal, or I don’t know. All I need is something so I can keep living in your world. S-so if you tell her to do that, that’s what you should do. Don’t worry about me if I... if I don’t wake up, and you get your body again. It’s not the princess’s fault, it’s just a bad situation. I’ll try to talk to her... maybe she’ll be lenient since you’re here and not d-dead.”

There’s a pause, a foreign feeling of unsettlement, and Sweetie just says evenly, “...I could sing you a lullaby.”

My eyes are tearing up again. “I would love if you could sing me a lullaby,” I say to her in a voice, in Sweetie Belle’s voice, and so thick with emotion I can hardly say it. So... that’s just what she does. She sings me a lullaby. She sings that lullaby, in the same sweet voice that I’ve been using these past days. And she sings it right this time. I don’t even hear the end of it, before I’m off to sleep.

It’s my first dream of Ponyville, and there isn’t a single pony in it. It’s the middle of the night, with the streets wreathed in darkness, totally silent from here to the horizon. Except the sounds I make. I’ve been turned into a pony in Ponyville, an impossible dream of waking up in Equestria, and nobody is here! I know why of course, because they left already. I wasted time getting ready, and now there are only empty streets lit by automatic lights in what is otherwise darkness.

Everything is there, Carousel Boutique, Sugarcube Corner, Twilight’s treebrary, but all the ponies and all the animals already left for something even better. It just makes my heart ache because I almost made it. But here I am and it’s just a little bit too late. I just have to live here now, wishing I could be with somepony until I die. They don’t even care about me, because I took too long, and now I’ve missed my chance. There are no second chances. There’s no hope for me, because it’s too late, I’m too old, and everyone got tired of waiting for me.

Nobody’s there to see me cry. Nobody’s there to hug me or comfort me, but I don’t care. When I sink to my haunches, haunches I’ve become accustomed to since coming here, when I just start crying bitterly at my loss and just the sheer unfairness of everything, something shines in the corner of my eye. I look up, but it’s not the sun. It’s a window. There’s the warm glow of candlelight in a window!

That means somepony is still here! If I hurry, maybe I can catch them, maybe they can help me find where everypony else has gone! I run through the streets, that light always staying in my vision, leading me forward until I reach the unremarkable house it glows in. Just another random house in Ponyville, but there’s a light on, up in the second story!

I move into the dark house, the shadows of boxes and furniture stretching towards me gloomily. But there the glow comes, down from the stairwell in the back of the boutique. I treat it like an obstacle course, or a challenge, sidestepping every shadow before they can get me. If the shadows catch me they’ll delay me just long enough, that the light will die, and I’ll miss that pony too, but I can’t let that happen. Not again! I won’t!

The floor crumbles away behind me as I pull myself up the stairs, forcing myself upward faster than the below can be consumed, and then—then I’m in a room. It’s a simple room, with a desk and chair, a dresser on which a candle flickers merrily, a little rug on the center of the floor, and Twilight Sparkle’s bed for some reason, beside the open window. The room is... the room is empty! I was too late! I rush over to the candle. Maybe the pony left a note? Maybe there’s another light? I can’t be too late; the shadows never caught me, even once! I did everything right! I...

Next to the candle, there’s no notes or records, just a broad rectangle of gold foil. Slipping my nail under its edge, I use my hoof’s push/pull to hold it, peering at it with uncomprehension. They say you can’t read in a dream, and I can distinctly read what’s on this ticket, so maybe this isn’t a dream at all? Maybe it’s real! I look out the window, hoping it’s real. If I just believe enough, the ticket means it has to be true!

With a deep roaring rumble, an impossibly large train expands from the horizon, making my hair blow as it zooms past, my weird, curly locked unicorn hair, that I remember now. I look up at the giant locomotive, from my perch down there in the candle-lit first story window, as the train slows to a squealing halt, right in front of me. Because I have—a ticket! I have a ticket! I run outside the doorway I’m standing in, my hooves beating underneath me in the snow drifts, right up to the train, which opens to a steamy warm interior glowing like a fire. And stepping out of it, it’s him! It’s the conductor! I remember him!

“All aboard!” the tall man shouts, as if I’m not the only one standing there. “Next stop, North Pole!” I walk up to him and he glowers at me with shadowed eyes like he’s going to tell me to go away, that I’m too late, but when I hold up the golden ticket in my hoof he smiles generously, taking it in his slim fingers and punching it for me, so many hole punches. I look at the ticket he’s punched–it says “PE”

“Well, come on!” he says, swinging his lantern around. He swaggers up the stairs into the massive train’s warm glowing interior, and I climb up the steps one after the other, just like I learned. I... I think there might be hot chocolate in my future. The train howls, creaks, puffs and rolls away. In the quiet emptiness of the town it leaves behind, the silence is broken by two sets of hoofsteps crunching in the newly fallen snow.

“Now that,” the voice of Princess Celestia said mirthfully, “Is how you deal with a few little nightmares.”

“We could have done that,” the much smaller, cornflower haired Luna muttered resentfully. She looked aside, in admission that she really could not have. Her sister, in response, cupped Luna’s chin in a golden limned hoof and pulled Luna to look at her.

“Yes, you could,” Princess Celestia told Luna, with that perfect earnest honesty of hers. “And you will. You have a far finer touch than I, and when you believe in yourself, there will be none who suffer under your guidance. Just remember that sometimes the greatest effect you can have is as simple as leaving a ticket on the table, and letting her mind fill in the rest.”

“W–I shall remember,” Luna said looking up to her sister with grudging respect. “If this be simply a lesson sooth to me how to be effective with no power, I accept its truth.”

Celestia shook her head. “No, sister. This is a lesson of how and when to use power.” She curled her head over her sister’s, saying wryly to her, “Remember too that I have had a very long time to practice. I may not seem it now, but this was a lesson that took me a very long time to learn, because of the power I represent. For you, it should appeal to your own nature, one you may finally come to understand.”

“W-we are sorry, sister,” Luna said leaning into the embrace earnestly. “Thou hast undergone so much due to our—”

“Now, none of that Luna,” Celestia gently interrupted her. “I’m quite ready to put that behind us and start anew. What of you?”

Luna paused, and pulled back from her sister, saying with a frank edge to her voice, “For now, let us see if there remains any of this hot chocolate.”

Her sister smiled at her understandingly, and they faced the snowy night where the train had gone down the dark tunnel of the empty Ponyville street. Together the two princesses went galloping after it, vanishing into the blustery snowy night.

I don’t really know what to think, upon awakening. I just stare at the ceiling, lost in thought.

“Are you still there?”

I jolt up in bed at the sound of Sweetie Belle’s voice. Oh gosh, oh no, oh right she, she’s in my head or something and... I... kind of, sort of, maybe, accidentally raped her last night. And she doesn’t even know it!

“Sorry, sorry!” she shouts, “I’m still here! You can—you can still hear me I guess. I didn’t mean to scare you I was just worried!”

“I’m fine,” I say crabbily, rubbing at my sleepy eyes.

“Did you have a nightmare this time?” she asks.

“I didn’t have a nightmare,” I say to her, now fully awake in bed. And my naughty little snatch beneath the sheets feels... unfairly unremarkable, considering what I’ve done. “B-but about last night, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” comes her innocent reply. Boy, I’d make it even worse for her if I told her about all the evil monsters who hunt down women and rape them, and how I’m exactly the same way. It’s such a crazy situation, because as long as she doesn’t know she’s a bad person having been despoiled like that, she won’t feel like one! All that dreck of feeling abused and wasted and ruined, it all predicates on you accepting the fact that rape will ruin you, and waste you, and abuse you. And all Sweetie knows is I made her “bottom” feel good!

I wish I didn’t have to be a monster...

It was bad enough that I was masturbating with her body, but now I know that the real Sweetie Belle was right there along with me, feeling everything I did to her, paralyzed, trapped in her own body, helpless to say no, or to do anything to stop me from stroking her relentlessly to climax. Jesus Christ why is that so fucking hot? I’m squirming even with the thought of it! I am such a freak.

“...are you gonna do it again?” comes her hopeful voice.

“No,” I blurt. “N-no because, um, because Rarity might be here any minute and she’d catch us. Me.”

“Oh, so it’s a secret?” Sweetie asks.

“Yes,” I cling to her suggestion, whispering, “It’s a very secret secret. We must never tell any–pony else what we did last night.”

And she outright giggles at that. Not the “I saw something silly” giggle, but the giggle of pure self indulgence. “This is so cool,” she says eagerly, “My bottom can do something amazing and not even Rarity knows about it. Do you think her pee p—”

“Vagina,” I cut her off before she can sound even more weird about it.

“What?” she says.

“It’s called a vagina,” I tell Sweetie, “And you don’t pee from it. Your pee... place is just nearby it.”

“Oh, so—”

“Yeah, it’s... just a little hole next to your vagina, that the pee comes out of. They’re easy to get mixed up.”

“So the pee comes out of one place, and the um, sneezy good tense thing comes from right next to it? On the vagina?”

“In the... yeah, close enough.” I can’t believe I’m giving a sex talk to an 8 year old unicorn girl from inside her own body.

“You sure know a lot about my bottom!” Sweetie remarks chirpily. Oh Sweetie Belle, do you even know the half of it... well, if she saw my art collection, then she surely did.

“So anyway,” Sweetie says blithely, “You wanna surprise Rarity? By showing her that her bottom can—”

“N-no,” I stammer quickly. “We’re not... that would so not go well. You can’t... surprise p-ponies with that.”

I feel Sweetie pout in or beside me, and she says, “But you surprised me with it. And I really liked it. I don’t think Rarity would mind if we surprised her, if we did it until she got to the part where you start bucking up into the air.”

“Just... trust me on this,” I say unconfidently. “It would not go well.” Sweetie seems unconvinced, so I add, “Rarity would get really mad.”

“If you say so,” Sweetie admits to me, reluctantly.

I start to lie back in bed, and she says quickly, “Maybe you could touch it just a little, until Rarity gets here?” Dear god I’ve created a monster. “It sort of gets more tickly the more we talk about it,” she adds. I want to tell her off, but she really is right. And I do want to touch it again. And this time it’s not even rape, because Sweetie is asking me to do it.

“Fine...” I say somewhat grumpily, returning my hoof to touch the softness between my legs. It feels like coming home. She gives a pleased ‘noise’ at that, or whatever you call this thing she’s doing to talk to me. We both remain silent, just enjoying the feelings in our–my—in somepony’s gut. My eyes are half lidded and I’m breathing roughly, when Rarity walks in the door saying, “Sweetie—oh, you’re awake!”

With the rest of me perfectly still, my hoof slides away from my groin with utmost care, and then I nod to her saying, “I woke up earlier.” It’s weird how I’m barely even wet down there. I just feel sort of pleasant all over, but... well, a lot less than sexually aroused. Maybe I’m still tired from doing it last night. I still feel a warm glow from that. I guess it is true that girls take longer to get aroused. If I was a man, I’d have gone from boner to ejaculation twice before Rarity walked in. Well, only once because of the refractory period. Mmm... ejaculation. I...

I wonder if I can find out about birth control.

“Well do be a dear and rouse yourself,” Rarity says to me, walking around the bed. “Do you need any help getting out of bed?”

“I should be fine,” I say, shoving back the womanly thoughts that are no doubt caused by touching my womanly parts. Carefully kicking my back legs over the edge, I slide down the side of my bed into a heap, then collect myself standing again. It’s funny that the real Sweetie Belle isn’t saying anything now. I can’t ask if she’s still there, without talking out loud. My attempts to think at her certainly do not get a response.

“Alright, now to the mirror,” Rarity says, her large white broadside right beside me. I shake my head, patting her side with a hoof and pushing away. Instead, I prepare to make the arduous 10 foot journey on my own hooves this time. Rarity watches uncertainly. Then, I actually... draw a blank for a few seconds, before just putting a hoof down and counting from there internally. 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3,... I have to count, because that makes me remember to let go with the right hooves at the right time.

“Very good, Sweetie!” Rarity says in exaggerated delight, as I hobble wobble my way to the dresser mirror in my room. I look in that mirror and, oh that’s why my bangs are in my face. I must have slept on them until they flattened out. Boy do I look silly. ...I’m Sweetie Belle...

The brush in Rarity’s magic floats above me, brushing my curls more separate, its light strokes getting them bouncing right up in the air, looking less like bed head and no longer obscuring my vision. I help out too, by grabbing the brush as soon as I can, and when my hooves nab it, Rarity releases it, letting me have the novel experience of brushing my own hair. With the brush braced in between my front hooves, I certainly can’t brush the back of it, but it’s something at least.

Rarity once again uses a second, sharper bristled but less stiff brush for my skin, or hide or whatever you call it. I don’t really care what you call it, because I just want to lean into this second brush forever. It’s like the best back scratcher ever, except on my side. Cleaning the pink and purple hairs off the first brush, and the thin white fuzz off the second, Rarity then lets me try brushing her!

I definitely don’t have the slightest bit of telekinesis down yet, but I can do it holding the handle in my mouth this way. It’s a surer hold than my hooves can do, at least. I have to say there’s something incredibly satisfying about dragging a stiff brush against the long broad hide of a horse...like being. Even when you yourself are a horse...like being. And doing so for one, with such beautiful diamonds on her hindquarters! The fur they compose even seems to glitter, as I brush over it and... oh wow I am like three inches away from her snatch.

No, bad thoughts! It’s so close I can see freaking everything it even has a sort of humid smell to it distinct from the rest of her. I—she turns her ass away from me and says pleasantly, “Thank you Sweetie, now would you be a dear and clean off that brush. I fear my coiffure requires a more sophisticated touch than a filly like you is yet able.” And starts brushing her own hair.

She soon announces that we are both quite presentable, and we go to have breakfast, in a room with no one else around to care about our appearances. It’s great though, because even if it’s silly frou frou stuff, I feel really good. It just feels good to have all that loose fur and stray hairs off my body. It just feels good for, I dunno, paying attention to myself I guess, and to her, and to her [bad thoughts elided]. I feel good in general and... well, good enough that I’m actually humming at the breakfast table.

“Somepony’s in a good mood this morning,” Rarity smiles over to me. “What is that lovely slow melody? I don’t recall.”

My eyes light up as I realize what I was humming. “I had a dream,” I tell her a bit wonderingly. “It was about a... do you have mov—I mean. Um. It was about a magic train that went all the way to the North Pole. And that was the song that played, whenever it showed the train riding through the snowy arctic wilderness.”

“My, that...” Rarity’s spoon clinks on her bowl as she says intensely, “That does sound lovely. This was your dream?”

I nod at her.

“It wasn’t another nightmare, was it?” she asks much more uneasily.

I start to shake my head, but then say, “It started out as one. But then the train came. I think it... saved me?” Huh, did it? Wait...

“I’m—!” I start to shout out, jumping to my feet from the stool, feeling like galloping forward in a panic. I’m alive, I want to shout. I didn’t even see the princess! Was the princess the train? But if she was, then I wouldn’t be Sweetie Belle anymore. She didn’t kill me! Could she not find me? Did the train protect me from her? What was that train really?

All of which I can’t exclaim in Rarity’s face. So I settle back in my chair, feeling dizzy from the realization. I went all through this morning without even realizing it, but I wasn’t supposed to wake up at all. Sweetie Belle wasn’t supposed to be a disembodied voice, who uh, enjoyed how I raped her on accident, and this bowl of green leaves and puffed rice was not supposed to be far more tasty and pleasant to eat than it should have to a human being. What happens is I just wake up from the world of ponies, and it was all a dream, and I live my life a sad, lonely human male, and die, as if I never had existed in the first place. But it didn’t do that. I’m alive!

“Thought I saw a bug,” I tell Rarity, who’s sort of staring at me warily. Then I calmly return to eating my cereal/salad with my face.

Rarity says it is quite acceptable to leave fork and knife there for show, and for the rare occasion to actually need them where a mouth would not suffice, so I pretty much don’t bother trying to engage my magic hoofsies. It really is easy to eat with your face. You don’t have to spear anything on a fork, or balance anything on a spoon, trying to get it to your mouth before it wobbles off, because your mouth is already just right there. And it’s not like my bowl is full of anything goopy or mushy. I’d have been making more of a mess, if I had to pull the food out of the bowl, than how I just progressively lower my muzzle into it, munching contentedly. And Rarity is doing it too, not even using her magic, so we are both doing it together, and... I’m pretty okay with that.

It’s probably the most content I’ve felt since arriving here. I don’t know what it is, but—I’m alive! Sweetie Belle isn’t dead. Something weird is going on, but nopony has tried to kill me yet, and I didn’t wake up from a nightmare that made me want to scream this time. So all-in-all, a really good morning. I can even almost sort of walk now!

And... the Polar Express. That was one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen. It just hurt my heart, even barely remembering it years later. I think that dream was the first time I’ve ever felt ...not sad about that movie. Shouldn’t I have been sad? I mean, I woke up, and it wasn’t real, and it was all just a dream. I didn’t get to see Santa or have my faith restored in Christmas. But it was a lot of fun, and the hot chocolate was really good, and I just... I didn’t wake up feeling like I lost anything. Knowing that made me feel like... something in me... sort of... healed.

It’s in the toilet room that Sweetie Belle finally speaks to me again.

“Psst!” she says, right at the moment I go “Psst!” in a totally different way. My bladder can’t exactly empty itself in surprise, because it’s already emptying itself, so I just stand there stupidly, trying not to blush as I hiss out, “What?”

“I don’t know if Rarity can hear me,” Sweetie says in a quiet tone. Oh of course the real Sweetie Belle doesn’t care about holding a conversation with someone while they’re peeing. Wait, that’s actually a good point.

“Is that why you weren’t speaking?” I ask her in our moment of solitude.

“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle replies above the sounds of my–our business, “But we’re alone now, so. I want to say something when she’s there, and you pretend you said it, so we can see if she hears it.”

“That’s a nnh–good idea,” I say, grunting a little as the flow starts to taper off.

“What should I say though?” she whispers to me.

“Well, you can say um...” I have to pause for important reasons, managing to tell her, “Hold on,” before my tail bobs, and the muscular contractions result in another “Plop... plop... plip.”

Sweetie giggles nervously making me blush. She says, “This is kinda awkward, sorry. I don’t mind though, really.”

I smile at... well, at the theoretical concept of her, and whisper, “Just say ‘Hey Rarity’ really loudly when she isn’t looking. If she looks at me, I’ll ask her if my um, my mane looks okay. And if she doesn’t, then you know that only I can hear you.” I have to add, “But, I know she can hear me, so don’t always expect me to reply.”

I think Sweetie Belle nods? I don’t really get it. Head voices, right? And of course when I wipe off, she giggles nervously. “It feels so weird when somepony else does that,” Sweetie says uneasily. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” I say in disgusted resignation, “But what can I do about it? I’m sorry, but it’s not like I have any other choice. I am not going to not wipe.”

“Oh this is so embarassing,” Sweetie Belle’s voice rings out in the bathroom, “I always wipe, but now you have to, and it’s so weird. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” I mumble to her in exasperation. “Wait,” I say quietly, “Can you switch?” I ask, just to throw that out there. A puzzled pause, and I add, “Can you take over your body, and have me be in your head?”

“No,” Sweetie Belle says mournfully. “I tried so hard already, all day when you were in the wagon. I couldn’t even run away from the Cracker! It was so scary!”

“I-it was,” I admit, “But Apple Bloom helped.”

“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle says affectionately. “She gave me water, and shoved my butt right out so it wouldn’t squish me. I mean you. I mean I don’t know what I mean.”

I just take a deep breath, and nod silently, pulling the lever to flush away the filth that emanates from my rear end. Actually I’m surprised ponies don’t do more composting. Or maybe Rarity is just weird that way?

“It’s weird being able to talk without having to breathe,” Sweetie says to me, hesitating puzzledly then adding, “Well, I mean, I breathe with you, but it’s different than me talking. I’m so glad you can hear me!”

“Okay, quiet though,” I say. “I’m going to call Rarity, and then you can say ‘Hey Rarity’ later when she isn’t talking to me.”

For some reason, it doesn’t occur to me to wonder why Sweetie Belle is worried about Rarity hearing her at all.

“Alright dear,” Rarity says once she’s helped me into the hallway, “Now wait right here, I’ll just be a second.” And now she’s in the toilet room, quick as a flash, while I’m out in the hallway. Yeah of course Rarity has to do that too. Stupid biology, ruining my perfect prudish pony pristinity. I try to learn how to turn around, and walk away to a safe distance, but I’m not fast enough, so I get to hear the sound of... woah, that’s a lot louder than me. Oh because it’s a further distance to the bowl... yes, not listening to this. Could Rarity hear my bladder emptying the whole time? I can imagine she wasn’t waiting right here next to the bathroom, like I have to, but instead a very polite distance away.

I manage to coordinate at least three steps away from the toilet, when the blessedly diminishing sounds from within abruptly increase in volume to that of a flushing toilet. This is really not what I’m comfortable with. I just want to be downstairs with my face buried in a pile of food or in the capable hooves of Dr. Ace, or anything pleasant in general far away from this madness.

“Ooh, here she comes,” Sweetie whispers to me, as Rarity rounds the corner and double takes, before spotting my slightly altered position.

“You know, Sweetie,” Rarity says sidling up to me and settling to the floor, so I can climb up on her. “When I said wait right here, I didn’t mean walk away.”

“I was just trying to be polite,” I say, as Rarity raises up onto her hooves with me on top. She quirks an eyebrow at me in puzzlement, so I clarify, “I wasn’t supposed to hear you going.” Oh good job mouth, great way to put it. Rarity blushes and turns forward, shifts in place when I say that, and her words are very shaky when she says,

“Oh! I-I-I hadn’t thought of... I suppose you couldn’t have waited downstairs for me to do my business I didn’t mean to scare you oh my you did hear me. I’m sorry dear that was such a fluff up of mine. I didn’t even consider that, I would never do something so uncouth dear, I”

“It’s okay, Rarity!” I say to her trying to break her rising panic. I don’t want to get bucked off my own sister if she freaks out. “Everyb-pony does it. You can’t help it anymore than me. It’s like you said, a lady must um... always not worry when she pees.”

“Or something like that,” I make sure to add.

Rarity relaxes, and a melodic chuckle comes from her chest, but she doesn’t make any other verbal response, instead answering by resuming her trot, angling down to take us head first down the stairs, through her work room, the kitchen in the back, and then out of the boutique. For I have a date with destiny. Or a physical therapy appointment so I can learn how to walk. But basically a date with destiny.

We’re just passing what appears to be a pink hearts and flowers themed iron forging station when Sweetie Belle shouts, “Hey Rarity!!” at the top of her lungs, causing me to startle on the spot and jerk upright. Rarity immediately stops and turns her head to look at me saying, “Everything alright, dear? What’s the matter?”

“I was just wondering if my uhm... mane looked okay,” I say to her. The other voice of Sweetie Belle is being dead silent, no doubt on the assumption that Rarity most likely, probably, maybe not, really heard her right then. It sure was loud enough to me!

“Your mane looks fine, Sweetie,” Rarity says evenly, turning and resuming her leisurely trot through town.

Meanwhile a disembodied Sweetie whispers harshly, “I think she heard me!”

Rarity doesn’t pause, but I’m certainly not answering. While there may be a soft, forest green, cottony saddle blanket between me and her pumping torso, that’s definitely not enough separation for me to trust my whispering not to be heard. And I don’t think Rarity would be okay if I started whispering to myself. Sweetie Belle seems to disagree though, because she continues to whisper tensely,

“Psst! Um, other me creature! I think she heard me!”

“Boy it’s nice to be out here in public,” I say to Rarity in a melodramatic demonstrative tone. “So many ponies around here who can hear us, and anything we say.” There, that should convince Sweetie to be quiet.

“Do you have something you wish to say to me in private, Sweetie?” Rarity asks, without missing a pace.

“No,” I tell her, “But if I did, I sure wouldn’t say anything about it here, or even whisper!”

That gets the other Sweetie to shut up and stop verbally prodding me to respond. But now Rarity changes course, turning right into a small alleyway between two of the houses that ends in a ...stand of trees. This is an oddly designed town. She stops then, and looks around, then turns her head back to me saying, “I believe we’re out of the crowds now, so we should have relative privacy. Is there something you wanted to say to me?”

Oh no.

“I... um...” Darnit! Why did I say it that way? Now I gotta think up something private to say to her, but it can’t be about me being a body snatcher, but what else do I know, that I wouldn’t want to tell other ponies?

“Can stallions...” shoot that question is almost worse! I can’t ask that! But I already started. “Mustard... um...” I mumble trying desperately to think of a way to redirect my question to something innocuous. But it would make sense to ask her if I was really Sweetie Belle, wouldn’t it? I wish I could ask Sweetie Belle herself, but she’s not going to talk while Rarity is here, and I’m not going to ask her while Rarity is here.

Finally I just give up and say “Can little fillies have feelings for stallions?”

Rarity stiffens underneath me because of course she does. Because it’s totally abnormal for fillies to have that kind of feeling and I’m just some kind of fillynapping succubus um, loser person. Demon. It sounded better in my head. Shit, this is in my head. Am I really that confused?

“Well I daresay anypony can have feelings for just about anypony,” Rarity says with deliberate emphasis. “It really depends on what feelings to which you refer.”

“Well um,” I mumble face buried in Rarity’s mane, “I mean, He’s a stallion. So...”

“You feel like making him your special somepony,” Rarity says flatly.

“No!” I protest, “Yes,” I admit, “Um,” I have no idea, “What does that even mean?”

“The doctor spoke with me,” Rarity mentions seriously, “About your behavior during the sessions.” My gut goes cold as I think about what the doctor could have said about me. Did he notice how much I wanted to touch him? How hard set I was to resist finding my way under that waistband?

“Sweetie, what you’re feeling is not love,” Rarity says frankly, hesitating before adding, “Your feelings are completely natural. Many little fillies will feel just as you do around a big, strong, strapping stallion.”

help

Rarity goes on saying, “But I’m afraid you are simply not ready to devote yourself to affairs of the heart.” What about below the heart? Like way below? Wait, would ponies call it behind the heart, since it’s not below it anymore? Behind the belt? Help!

“What you feel is...” Rarity taps her chin, “The doctor makes you nervous, does he? The mere fact that he is a stallion makes you lose trust in your own feelings, because you have seen how other mares act around a gentlecolt, and I admit I am no exception there, and you see that you are a filly, one day to be a mare. You must be wondering how you will ever come to act that way, when you have no reason to in the present moment.

“But no mare is compelled to act that way,” says Rarity with quiet certainty. “As you grow and mature, you will gain certain... abilities that may make acting that way most advantageous, and even fun! But no mare has to be slave to her feelings, and I assure you that outside of season, no mare will be compelled to swoon over some hot hunk of stallion, did she not know a very good reason for doing so. You feel like your feelings are controlling you, but really Sweetie,

“What you feel is not love for him,” she says seriously, “But fear that you will feel love for him. The sooner you relax and open up to him, and stop worrying about what your feelings are, the sooner you’ll stop feeling like you’re falling for him. Just pretend that you simply cannot possibly make him your special somepony, and then I believe that the feelings that trouble you will vanish all on their own.

“He’s just a pony, Sweetie,” Rarity reassures me with a gentle smile. “Stallions are ponies, just like the rest of us.”

I don’t know what to think about that mare. I can’t bear to make some snide comment or crack a joke, or summon up some trope or catch phrase, because it would belittle what Rarity said. She... how could my sister be this way? She doesn’t even expect me to answer, just leaving me stunned, and trotting under me out of the alley, back down the main causeway toward the hospital. I just blurted the worst random question bouncing around in my head to ask her, and she responded with both tact and grace. She really is the best p–... best p–...

She really is the best pony ...to go to, for relationship advice.

Carried through a storybook village, up to a hospital framed by a sunlit forest, a hospital that’s full of attentive ponies caring for your every need, and not a health insurance form in sight... and I think it’s already starting to become routine. I even manage to wave shyly at Nurse Coldheart, when Rarity walks me in the door. She forwards us to Ace’s office this time, and it’s the same comfy room with the cushy couch, the cherry wood desk, and the big window, that Rarity trots us right into.

“Hello, doctor!” Rarity says brightly, as I try to avoid seeing him, and... smelling him.

“Rarity! Hello!” he returns jovially, “Oh hey, it looks like you got a little filly growing on your back. You should see a doctor about that!” And just like that my avoidance is canceled, and Rarity titters underneath me, while I turn my head back to glare at the doctor with a hot blush.

“I could have walked here!” I claim defiantly.

“Perhaps, if you started yesterday, dear,” Rarity says dryly.

Dr. Ace stands his golden body up, hooves on some papers on his desk saying, “Hey, hey let’s not understate the lil’ lady’s accomplishments. I wager she was walking every chance she got yesterday!”

“No,” I correct him trying and failing to not blush at his compliments saying petulantly, “I was not. I was just thinking about it, like you said.”

“Em, well except for when you insisted upon walking into the boutique once we arrived,” Rarity points out. “As well you were quite pleased to walk in and out of the bathroom, and down the hall to your bed, and up to your mirror, where you insisted upon brushing your own hair this morning, oh but you did need a bit of assistance with the stairs.”

This is my punishment for calling God a big asshole isn’t it? This is divine retribution. I’m a quivery tickly pink white unicorn girl who can’t walk or read, or say one thing without sticking her foot, that is to say hoof, in her mouth, because God got tired of my bitching and sent me down to chill with Pangloss in the best of all possible Hells. That’s got to be what’s going on. There’s just no other explanation besides God did it. What an asshole.

“We’ll stop teasing you, Sweetie,” Ace says consolingly. But Rarity has to say in a sing song voice,

“No promises~ I am her sister, after all.”

“It’s fine,” I mumble with my face in Rarity’s shoulder blades. Lifting my head up I add, “So, can I get walking now?”

“A filly after my own heart!” Ace says enthusiastically, “Wants to get started right away. I have to say it’s gonna be a scorcher out there though, so we’ll probably do our exercises inside today.”

“Heh, well,” Rarity laughs, “I knew when I walked into your office that it was going to be a hot one today.” She pauses, and then adds, “I have a friend on the weather team,” all innocently. Did she prepare that one beforehand?

“Rainbow Dash is still in the Badlands,” I chirp to her, with a grim sense of self satisfaction.

“Oh, haha!” Rarity says, unceremoniously dumping me into the evil filly eating couch. “Such a little charmer, she is. Well, I had better let you two be, and take my leave, aha...”

“Sounds like a plan, Miss Rarity,” he says with a small smile, adding in an lower tone, “But don’t think I can’t handle a little... heat.”

Wow, is Rarity blushing. “Yes, um!” she says backing up, “Have to boutique the shop you know, haha, day... good day, gentlec– sir, gentlecolt oh my,” then closes the door in her own face. There’s the sound of hooves retreating... hastily.

He doesn’t say anything in regard to her further, just gives a little satisfied nickering Hmph. Then he turns to me.

“Alright Sweetie, how are you doing? Ready to go to the exercise room?”

I ponder a moment,before saying from my position half swallowed in the couch’s embrace, only visible by the bangs on my forehead, and my four feet sticking up into the air, “Soon as I can get out of this couch.”