//------------------------------// // In Scentsational Style // Story: My Little Skoney - Or - Tabu in Scentquestria // by Le Marquis de Carabas //------------------------------// The day started in a very similar way to the last time Tabu had woken up. A fluttered opening of the eyes, abject confusion at a giant, very fancy bedroom -with a terrace bed goodness- and a quick scan over all that had happened to him in the past two days. He remembered Lavender marching him through Skonieville on a literal cloud. Her tail was stronger than it looked, the fluffy puffball of an appendage hefting him like a doll, his hooves hanging over a lilac loop that gently cinched against his barrel. He hadn’t known what to do with his limbs. She was just…touching him all over in satiny skonie fluff, and the only response to it he could muster was a gentle kind of panic as she took him where she wanted to go. Lavender ignored the various skonies whose gazes followed in her wake. Tabu was, frankly, mostly hidden from sight, but his striped, poncho-less head cut an odd figure. His impromptu audience seemed to know better than to stop a Lavender on the move, and the fading crowds milling about in the evening light parted around her like a fashionable knife through butter. Eventually, they reached a building that looked like a beautiful fairground celebration ride. The words ‘Carousel Bouquet’ were spelled on a sign above the door in looping cursive script. Lavender unrolled him from her plush grasp onto the floor. His orders had been “Get some rest, we start early!” Swept off into the bedroom like a dust bunny caught up in the world’s purplest, most pleasantly scented broom, the door had been closed, and he’d been left to his own devices. In the morning Tabu was swept right back out, spring cleaning style, at the crack of dawn. Now he sat in the center of a dressing room, surrounded by mirrors and feeling incredibly vulnerable. He kept shifting in attempts to casually cross either set of legs. Lavender shuffled through the fabric closet at the other end of the room as he eyed himself. Tabu did not make an overly large habit of looking in mirrors. Most of the time when he saw his reflection he was half asleep, or looking at a beaker. He also usually had his poncho. New clothes were the one part of the coming activity he wasn’t nervous about. Sweet, precious coverings. The zebra’s eyes strayed to his Kusudi, the zebra equivalent of a cutie mark, where his stripes swirled and bent into a sigil. His in particular, with its curving, occasionally jagged lines, looked a bit like lines of text from a book. Roughly It meant ‘Discovery’, and had set him down the path he now found himself on. He hadn’t expected Discovery to involve so much nudity and haute couture. “Ah, perfect, perfect, perfect!” sang Lavender from the fabric closet. She trotted primly out into the dressing room, a large basket pulled behind her in the curl of her tail’s tip, beyond its massive fold. The basket was full to bursting with fabrics of all colors, every roll shimmered with a quality thread count. “It's not every day you get to design for an extra-dimensional client!” She pranced in place, perfectly peti’d foreclaws clicking lightly against the blue and white checkerboard floor. Lavender’s tail frizzed as she caught herself. “Oop! Dear me, one must control one’s self.” She put one foreclaw in front of the other, striking a lovely figure as her tail plumed behind her. “My apologies.” Most of Tabu’s meetings with the Skonies had been fast, worried affairs with six of them all vying for his attention. In the rainbow cloud of distraction, taking in their individual fine details had been rather hard now though, in isolation, it was difficult not to be a little shocked at how pretty Lavender was. Her mane fell into a perfectly quaffed curly Q, a gem like a sapphire in the middle of her head slightly obscured by the flowing hair. Her fur was pristine white and tended to lag when she moved, her fur so light and fluffy it obeyed newton’s law in tandem with her mane. Unlike Pinkie, Lavender’s underbelly was the same color as the rest of her. The pure white was only broken by her diamond cutie mark, and the twin, perfectly combed purple stripes that cut lines down her back. They stayed purple until they got to her tail, which was perhaps the largest, plum-colored object Tabu had ever seen. There, the color scheme inverted, purple becoming the main color as pale streaks, like trails of rich cream, cut through the periwinkle plume, arcing up over its fold. Where the waterfall of fluff bent into its pristine curl, the diamond patterns of Lavender’s tail appeared between the stripes. Perfect, geometric shapes. At the end of the pattern, her stripes met into a final diamond, the effect was a bit like a quill nib that had just finished writing the most elegant cursive. “Your mouth’s open darling…” Lavender gently nudged. Tabu’s jaw flapped shut with a click. “I-I’m sorry!” He bowed his head. “Truly my gawking isn’t lecherous!” He peeked up hopeful she believed him. “It’s just, I’ve been researching skonies since my encounter with your kind before. There’s barely a handful of detailed sketches, never a full picture. To be among you like this is…” He wobbled a bit. “I’d never fainted in my life before yesterday, but I’m afraid the number might double.” Lavender smiled with a laugh. “It’s quite alright, Tabu…” She waved a foreclaw. “I don’t look this fabulous for people not to take it in.” The slight dewlap of fur that pillowed amid her collarbone puffed noticeably as she preened. “Besides, if anyone cannot throw stones in this glass house it’s me…” She closed the distance between them at a perfect trot, putting her foreclaws up on the dais in the center of the dressing room. Tabu was reminded once again of how large she was. It was easy to forget, with the silk curtain of her voice and mannerable ways, that she was two heads higher than him standing, and more on her haunches. Lavender looked down at him with an apologetic smile on a muzzle the width of a small school desk. “I’m sorry for staring at your stripes, and getting a little obsessed last night.” She flipped her curly bang from her eye to look at him fully with both. “You are a scientist?” She went on without him answering, the words more of a gentle reminder she’d been paying attention than a genuine question. “Well perhaps we are similar.” Tabu blinked. “Are we?” Still awestruck and off balance words tumbled out of the zebra like a badly balanced cereal cupboard. “Because compared to you I think I’m wet garbage.” Lavender gave a laugh of surprise. “Do not undersell yourself, darling!” Lavender hopped easily onto the dais beside him. Tabu felt the blanket of her tail curl its heat across his front. The fresh scent of lavender made itself softly familiar with his fur as she sat. “Your stripes are fabulous, skonies only get a few, complex stripe designs are lauded and praised for their beauty…” Her eyes lit up. “And your whole body is one!” Her voice teetered on the edge of mania before seeming to fall back onto a couch of etiquette. “Forgive me darling. What I mean to say by similarity is that we are both interested in our topics to an extreme degree, hm?” The light hum at the end of her sentence was a pleasant chirp that gently vibrated against Tabu’s side. “Hm.” Tabu matched the note without thinking. “O-oh I mean yes! Arts and sciences are more similar than people assume! It’s really a matter of taxonomy…” “Indeed!” She nodded. “So, I will forgive your staring, if you will forgive a lady’s overzealous nature, yes?” Tabu found a genuine smile slipping onto his face. “Sounds like a grand proposal.” Lavender chuckled and gently flowed away from the zebra back to her basket, her tail drew along his side, buffeting to the sway of her haunches. Tabu found himself leaning against it as it left, letting it comb under his chin and stumbling in lavender’s violet wake as the striped landing strip left. “Now darling, do you have a favorite color?” Lavender asked, eyeing the basket, before turning back to him with a playful bat of her lashes. “I’ll forgive you if you don’t say purple.” Tabu swalloed. “Well, red…deep red, would burgundy be a better word?” “Oooh, fabulous choice…” She nodded in approval. Tabu smiled. “Thank you, how long have you been a seamstress by the way?” The plum banner at Lavender’s rear frizzed as her face spread into an unreadable expression. “Oh I’m sorry! Is that not the proper term? Designer?” Tabu lifted a hoof in apology. The expression on Lavender’s face unfolded into a laugh. “No, no darling it’s fine…” Her smile crinkled her eyes slightly. “It’s just that I’m rather famous in these parts, if I may ‘Toot my own horn’ as Cattleya might say. It’s been a really long time since anyone called me a Seamstress.” She sat back on her haunches. “I must say, it is perhaps a bit refreshing. Hm!” She gave a pleased little shrug before her gem began to glow. Tabu gasped. “Oh wait!” The light fizzled. “Pardon?” The zebra had stopped himself on the edge of the dais before barreling off. “Skunicorn magic!” He looked as though he wanted to hop off the platform, but it was just a bit too high. “I theorized that you might use it slightly less than your full-equine counter parts since you have fairly usable digits on your forlimbs…” “I…uh…” Lavender blinked. “Sorry I-” Tabu finally chanced the leap and landed mostly well in front of the dais before scrambling in her direction. “It’s just there’s never been a recorded instance of its use in Equestrian records!” His eyes darted to his choker, then to her gem. “My magic, and your magic are different! I’m extremely curious I just uh-” He froze, before his face screwed up and he said something in a language the Skonie wouldn’t have recognized. “I forgot my notebook in the crystal tree I-” The torrent of words was stoppered by a single, large padded foredigit. It was incredibly soft. “You know, Tabu dear, you remind me of a friend of mine.” “Eh doh?” Tabu muffled. “Quite…” With a chuckle Lavender removed her claw. “There’s no need for a fuss, you’ll be here for at least a few days. Jasmine or I will be happy to give more demonstrations, just enjoy the show.” Tabu looked unsure, but saw the sense in her words and nodded. “Back on to the dais please, my dear subject?” She made a playful shooing motion with a foreclaw. Tabbu walked, somewhat embarrassed, back to the dais, before realizing that the stairs to get up to it was in a different direction entirely, making up a catwalk like construction, and unlike a skonie, he was too small to jump. He turned sheepishly towards his host to explain his error, only to find Lavender had turned around with a playful roll of her eyes. Her tail gently shoved its fold up under his surprised, fidgeting legs like a soft snow shovel. Lavender slowly hiked her hinds and Tabu fell onto his side at the slow change in elevation. The lush lilac and cream down swallowed half his body before the fold rose and gently rolled him off her tail onto the dais like a blushing hay sausage off a spatula. After a moment’s surprise laying there, Tabu said, “Thank you…” “You’re welcome dear, now, magic remember?” Tabu was on his hooves at the edge of the dais in a moment, watching with rapt attention. Lavender giggled at his excitement and gently closed her eyes, striking a bit more of a fancy figure than she might have without an audience. The gem on her forehead lit up lightly, and before Tabu’s eyes, a nebulous halo of light began to flow from it. The light flowed down her purple stripe in a smooth rush until its colors inverted. The glow spread to the streaks of white along her tail where it cast the room in a brilliant, clean, soft light. From Lavender’s stripe, a sparkly purple plume of scent rose, the smell of the fresh flowers increasing in the room as her scent concentrated into the shape of a hand, it reached into the basket with a slight shake of her voluminous tail and retrieved some of the deepest red fabric Tabu had ever seen. Smaller tendrils of scent drifted off from the main stream like splitting smoke, wrapping around a spool of golden thread and a sewing kit. Tabu watched, fascinated as another tendril of scent undulated from Lavender’s tail, reaching for a large pair of scissors. The skonie seemed to do some internal calculations before some of her scent wrapped around the end of the red spool and pulled, reeling out more than enough fabrice to cover the zebra before the hand construct holding the scissors cut a smooth line along the material to separate it from the spool. Task done, the scissors were replaced. Lavender’s construct hands, holding the now separated fabric, ran together, fusing until the entire square was covered in an undulating halo of scent, translucent purple gently pouring off anything the magic surrounded. The red fabric was placed on a work table. Lavender’s scent released it before retrieving a measuring tape. “Construct magic!” Tabu vibrated on the dias. “Scent constructs to be precise. Tell me, if your scent is altered does it affect your casting ability?” He paused before more queries tumbled from his lips. “Is it considered impolite to use magic on others because it would leave your scent on them?” Lavender opened her mouth, but Tabu kept going. “Do different spells smell different I-” The scent of purple flowers inundated Tabu’s senses as a construct claw covered most of his face. “Darling, remember when I said Jasmine and I would give more…” Lavender groped for a word. “Education..focused displays later?” Tabu nodded, the construct at his lips felt a bit like a ‘Mochi’ desert he had tried in the Kirin kingdoms, but more pillowy. “Good, then save your questions for after the fitting…” Lavender chuckled. The scent construct shushing the zebra dissipated, Tabu inhaled on accident and got a slight drag of lavender for his trouble, twin streams of purple exited his nostrils in a small snort of surprise. As Lavender’s chuckle turned into more of a giggle, he scented something else under her usual smell, his face clouded in confusion. Lavender seemed to pick up on this. “Oh!” She put a claw to her lips in consideration, before rolling her eyes and pressing on. “Well alright, one academic explanation, then we stick to fashion hm?” Tabu’s confusion vanished as he nodded enthusiastically. “You smelled something besides my namesake just now?” Another nod. “Yeah…it was…fuzzy…” Lavender’s tail gently swayed behind her. “Well, you’ve probably just gotten a sample of my true scent. Everyskonie has one.” “True scent?” Tabu tilted his head. “Yes, it comes when we get our cutie marks, a scent under the one you’re most known for, that only comes out either in times of high emotion or when a skonie is being her truest self!” She gave a happy little shake, gathering up her dewlap with her foreclaws. “I must be having fun.” “That’s fascinating!” Tabu desperately wished for his notes. “What’s your true scent?” Lavender barked a laugh of surprise, before recovering with a claw at the end of her muzzle. “Dear, that is not the most polite of questions.” She headed off Tabu’s apology by raising the same claw. “It’s alright, you can’t have known, but between skonies, figuring out another’s true scent, and stating it accurately is a mark of closeness.” “I see…” said Tabu, lightly chastised. “Well thank you for telling me, I won’t ask, but I will try to figure it out!” Lavender smirked at the challenge. “The game’s afoot then, though in the mean time…” Two scent constructs stretched a measuring tape between them with a gentle snap. “Are you ticklish?” -- As it turned out Tabu was in fact very ticklish. Measuring his limbs hadn’t been the worst, a gentle mix of the massive fashionista bending forward to get a view of the tape’s reading, and artful use of constructs. Though Tabu squirmed regardless, having such close eyes on his body. This was nothing compared to the squirming that was generated when Lavender went to measure Tabu’s barrel, the mochi-soft scent constructs drawing silken measuring tape across his striped hide sent the zebra into hysterics. This was only rectified after Lavender’s patience at clenched and folded limbs had been exhausted. With a huff of frustration, scent had risen from her tail and gently trussed the zebra up in wafting ribbons, tying either leg firmly to the ground, and offering him little option but to wiggle as she walked around him and got the numbers she needed. “Are you sure you want something so drapey as a replacement?” She asked converastionally, walking around to his hinds, as if she didn’t have him strung to the dias like a pinned butterfly. “You have lovely haunches.” Though the compliment was almost approvingly academic, pink was introduced to Tabu’s color palet. Once again several things raced to his mouth, the one that escaped was, “You too…” A momentary silence settled over the pair, before Tabu squeaked. “Sorry…” Lavender chuckled. “No need to apologize darling…” She flowed back into the process of getting all of Tabu’s measurements, she stood on his right, her tail curled around the back of his entire body to his left to gently tap his chin up with the light curl at its tip. “ There are few bad compliments in good company.”Head up, collar measurements.” Tabu tried to ignore the warmth of the mauve mass immersing his form and did as he was bid. “But really I-” “We’ll chalk it up to a healthy interest in science.” Lavender laughed. “Besides, I just brushed them today, they’re very fluffy besides.” Tabu was unsure what to do with this information, so opted for a change of topic. “You said you were famous around these parts,” he hazarded. “Jasmine said she was a princess of some sort, are you one as well?” Lavender positively glowed at the assertation, pausing in wrapping the measuring tape around his neck in an smooth, flat line. “Oh you gentleman.” With a giggle, she fluffed her tail and took a moment to do the same to her dewlap with her claws. “While I wouldn’t turn down the position, no, Jasmine is the only princess in Skonieville, the others live off in Aromalot and the Emerald kingdom. “Ah!” Tabu’s excitement to learn about Skonie culture was somewhat hampered by the fact a construct was still holding a measuring tape around his neck with just enough pressure to make him very aware of his breathing, his glasses twitched as he wiggled his nose. “So it’s similar to my world then. Two main princesses with auxiliary semi-monarchs! Where I’m from these main bodies are called Celestia and Luna.” Lavender’s brow quirked. “Well, darling, that’s similar but not quiet. Here their names are Scentlestia and Chamomile.” Tabu gulped past the measuring tape. “Facinating…I so wish I had my notebook!” The measuring tape tightened around his neck slightly. “You’ll just have to make do with my company in the meantime.” The fashionably fragrant skonie chuckled demurely before leaning a large pink nose close to Tabu’s throat and taking the reading. She removed the silk from the zebra’s neck with an appraising noise. “S-somehow I’ll manage…” Tabu fidgeted, glancing down at his scent-bound limbs, ropes of slowly undulating, smoke-in-sunbeam scent trails connecting him to her voluminous perfume puff with slightly worrying ease. “How many more measurements do you need?” The measuring tape, held at her side in a magical grasp, rolled into a perfect circle with a soft snap, though she did not remove herself from the small equine’s bubble. “That’s all of them!” Tabu wiggled in her hold. “Oh! Well then…” He made a polite gesture with his head towards his bound hooves. “Can I move now?” “If you want…” Lavender’s voice held a solicitous question like a bouquet of flowers in a pretty basket. “However…” She leaned in a little closer still and Tabu pinkened as he felt her eyes combing over the stripes on his neck. Her muzzle was very close to him as her breath panned over the side of his jaw to his ear. “I wouldn’t mind a little examination…” The squeak this assertation wrung from the zebrican scientist was hardly audible. Lavender ignored this and pressed on, walking past him on the dias and beginning to examine his back patterns along with his curly, close-spun dreadlocks. “As I said, we are similar, you are the first ‘Pony’ I have encountered and I’m very curious.” Her tail curled in a close C in her wake, its fluffy bulk covering Tabu from chin to hooves in a living plum duvet. Lavender’s scent was still magically visible, holding his hooves to the ground. It began to curl and break around his muzzle as Lavender’s fresh laundry fragrance filled his senses. Were it not for her tail’s zebra swallowing volume Tabu might have fallen over. “Head straight darling, I want to see your patterns.” Tabu’s makeshift shawl flowed upwards until it buried his chin amid its cream-colored stripe enough to actually move it, correcting his posture. Curious lavender scent trails were pushed from its volume in twin puffs from the pressure, before it split and curled about his dreadlocks, just magical enough to be felt as a wispy touch. “I-I uh well…I-I mean I…uh….I-I’m glad you have such an interest!” He peeped. “Quite…Darling?” She prompted. “Would you mind if I shared a Skonie custom?” Tabu felt the familiar pressure of too many words crowding around the exit door of his mouth. He really needed to get that particular method of egress up to fire code. Several words had to fuse to get past. “Notatall.” A prim giggle, the curly cue tip of Lavender’s tail curled until it almost met her nose, Tabu caught in its crook as the luscious fur luxuriously pressed into every surface it met like a liquid. “When two skonies become friends in our culture, they snuffle…” Her tail pressed insistantly against his nose. If it weren’t for the zebra’s glasses he would have been utterly blinded in mauve, as it stood it simply dominated most of his vision. “How would you appraise my scent?” Lavender’s voice fished for compliments with the quiet surety of someone who regularly won prizes at the bass weigh in. “I uh…w-well I…” Adjectives, verbs, nouns, and more scrabbled for superposition on Tabu’s tongue. “It’s…” One won out, and it was the word that had crossed his mind whenever he looked at her in a quiet moment. “Exquisite…” The word chased puffs of purple out around his mouth and nostrils as they humidified Lavender’s fluff.” He felt the pluming appendage puff out with pride at the compliment, it’s volume doubling in a way that vanished him from sight beyond a few stray duochrom dreadlocks. “Eehe~ Oh you sweetheart…” She said, mostly to her own fluff, before her cashmere curl relaxed a bit and let him slump forwards, almost tripping as his hooves were still pinned. She completed her circle around him and Tabu squeak-choked as a pink nose the size of a tea saucer pressed into the side of his jaw just under his ear. “I’ll have to work a bit harder to get your scent, pardon my proximity.” He felt her nostrils flair against his neck and suddenly Tabu was extremely self conscious of his scent. He was a cleanly zebra, bit what if he smelled of dimensional portals, or alchemical ingredients. There were more than a few unpleasant scents in the latter category and half his mind whirred off listing the possible trace elements on his coat, while the other half sputtered and smoked. “HFfdbufzarbadu!” The words queuing at his mouth gave up and decided to revolt in a jumble of letters. “Let me know if I’m being overbearing…” Her breath was warm against his ear. “Skonie culture is very close and affectionate. “She was casual in her occupation of the grand majority of his faculties. “You are hard to smell, particularly in a room of excited skonies. I need your scent to truely capture you in fabric and thread.” She took a deep inhale, the air rushing into her nose froze the back of Tabu’s neck for a moment before an exhale soothed it with slow warmth. “Jasmine was right, you do smell like books…and something…” A short series of snuffles. “Medicinal…” “I-I’m sorry Iworkwithchemicalsan-” Lavender’s foreclaws draping over Tabu’s back clamped his mouth shut with a welding torch. “It’s fine darling…” She hugged him to the fluff of her chest, it had a slightly more cottony texture than the luxurious, long strands of her tail. He was reminded of being tossed into a pile of freshly lauded blankets. Her scent surrounded him, he could feel it gently clinging to his mane and tail. “You smell how you smell, if you didn’t smell like yourself, it wouldn’t be right. The whole bouquet must be appreciated.” She gave him a gentle hug. “Thank you for letting me help to welcome you to our etiquette.” “O-ohnothankyouI-” A prepared paragraph fell out of Tabu’s mouth as he managed to loosen the rivets. The effect was like a burst dam. She shushed him with a little squeeze before letting her foreclaws slumph from his shoulders to pad over to her work table, climbing off the dias like a high-fashion snow leopard as her tail buffeted his side gently, her scent finally loosened from his hooves, forming diamond and jewel patterns as it dissipated in her wake, the curled tip flicked one of Tabu’s dreadlocks. “Mutual thanks then, my dear Tabu.” She eyed the fabric on the work table. “It’ll take me a day to make your new cloak. I noticed some runes on your old one. If you can get me some reference material by the end of today I can work them into the new one too.” Tabu stopped staring at his now freed legs, the golden rings in his mane and on his tail clinking as he came to attention. “That would be wonderful!” Lavender gave an approving nod at his excitement. “So it shall be then!” She declared as some scent trailed off her tail, gem glowing, it grabbed a pen and a sketch book. “I’ll begin post haste.” “Fantastic!” Tabu felt like jumping, his excursion into another dimension was going swimmingly. In his wildest dreams he’d never expected to be so welcomed. The lack of hiccups over the course of events was startling. There was a knock at the door. Lavender stiffened with a slight hum of annoyance. “Now who could that be?” She mused aloud, before recalling yesterday. “Oh, probably Jasmine here to make sure I don’t keep you too long…” She rose from the corner table and flowed towards the main room. Tabu eyed the jump from the dias, making it at a clumsy leap before following behind as she opened the door. The guess was correct, Jasmine stood in the door, but instead of the lilac skony’s usual demeanor, her face was lined with worry. “Jasmine?” Lavender’s voice was weighted with concern. “What’s wrong?” Jasmine glanced towards Tabu, then back to her friend. “I don’t think Tabu was the only thing to come through that gate yesterday…” There was a distant sound like a horrible engine failing to start, all three gathered creatures stiffened. “Follow me…” Jasmine said seriously, before turning and sprinting out the door. “Oh dear…” Lavender pouted. “I guess designing will have to wait…” She lifted a foreclaw, turning to Tabu. “Come, this concerns you too.” She trailed out the door, Tabu only hesitated for a second or two, before following behind, hoping against hope that whatever was making the sound in the town square was benign.