Even though she knew exactly what lay in store for her when she returned, Diamond didn’t try to delay her journey back home. It wasn’t like there was anything else she could do anyway, her friendship with Silver Spoon was still a little tempestuous, so the filly wasn’t about to jeopardize it with an unannounced visit.
“Besides,” Tiara thought to herself. “I never told her about my mother, I doubt she ever even knew of her existence. She won’t be much help, and this is something I have to do on my own!”
It was just about noon when the pink filly saw the ajar gate of her family mansion, and sure enough there was her mother standing right outside the front door, flashing that cheesy grin that Tiara was still convinced couldn’t possibly be genuine.
“Is everything alright, my little Diamond?” Spoiled asked, pleasantly. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
“Well, the meeting with my new friends didn’t last that long, because they all had to go somewhere else,” Diamond lied. “Plus, I was getting kinda hungry.”
“Good thing you’ve come back then, lunch will be served shortly,” Spoiled replied, quickly escorting her daughter inside. “Please wash up and meet me in your bedroom, so we can get you diapered.”
Despite the dread of wearing another one of those absorbent and poofy undergarments, Tiara nodded her head in obedience. “Alright, Mother. But could you maybe not make the diaper so tight this time?”
“Certainly not, I don’t want it to fall off your little rump because I didn’t secure it properly,” Spoiled said in a sickeningly sweet tone. “We wouldn’t want you to have an accident on my nice shiny floors, would we?
“Already she’s treating me like I’m two years old again,” Diamond thought unhappily to herself. “I only had that one accident, and that was just because I forgot to go to the bathroom before bed. I won’t make that mistake again.” But her urge to protest faded away when she locked eyes with her mother, somehow the stern look she saw in return drained her will to resist. Just like always...
“No we wouldn’t,” the pink filly spoke up, imitating her mother a bit unconsciously. “I guess that thought never occurred to me.”
“It’s not your fault, Diamond,” Spoiled replied, her daughter’s disrespect going over her head. “I’m sure you won’t have any more accidents, but Mommy can’t take any chances. Some stains are a pain to wash out for the hired help, you know.” “Curse my child and her unbearable cuteness,” Spoiled thought to herself. “Despite my best efforts to avoid it, I’ve started to grow attached to her in this current state. Perhaps I trained her too well in the art of manipulation.”
The diapering process took even less time than it did before and in a matter of seconds, Spoiled had fastened a new diaper to her daughter’s hind-quarters and powdered it thoroughly. “I’m getting really good at this, and to think I once said ‘Rich ponies don’t do diapers!’.” Spoiled contemplated, as she helped her daughter to stand and led her to the dining room.
Once again, Diamond had a bib forcibly tied around her neck, despite the fact that she hadn’t made a mess during either dinner or breakfast.
“Perhaps if you don’t make a mess this time as well, I’ll let you eat without a bib next time,” Spoiled promised her daughter. “How does that sound, darling?”
“You’ve got yourself a deal, Mother!” Diamond agreed. “This is going to be the easiest bet I’ve won since the time Silver Spoon gambled I wouldn’t become editor in chief of ‘The Foal Free Press’!” she thought to herself, with satisfaction. “Simplest one hundred bits I ever won!”
Spoiled adjourned to the kitchen, and nothing more was said for the next few minutes. When she returned though, Tiara was quite surprised by what rested on the tray this time around. As opposed to foal food or oatmeal, Spoiled had made peanut butter and zap apple jam sandwiches. Four of them were resting on a plate atop the tray.
Relieved to finally have some solid food that couldn’t be spoon-fed, Diamond eagerly reached out a hoof to grab the knife from the plate as soon as the tray was set down. Her mother quickly reached out a hoof in protest, chastising her gently. “Ah ah, Diamond!” she cooed. “You’re not allowed to play with knives, you could cut yourself.”
“But, Mother!” Diamond pouted, petulantly.
“Don’t you ‘But Mother’ me, young filly!” Spoiled scolded her moody daughter. “I know you’re hungry, but please try to remember your table manners. I will cut the sandwiches for you, then you can eat them with your hooves. Unless you’d rather I fed them to you with a plastic fork.”
“No!” Tiara shouted, before realizing that she was overreacting a bit. Clearing her throat she said with noticeably more decorum. “I mean, no thank you. I can eat them by myself.”
“Alright then,” Spoiled nodded her approval. “I just have one question I need to ask you.”
“What might that be?” Tiara asked nervously. “Is she going to ask if I had any ‘accidents’ while I was with my friends, and that’s why I came home early?” she thought to herself. She knew that wasn’t true, but that didn’t mean her mother wouldn’t suspect such a thing had occurred.
“Crusts or no crusts?” Spoiled asked her daughter, innocuously.
Tiara shook her head, had she misheard? “What?” she puzzlingly asked her mother.
“I said ‘Crusts or no crusts’?” Spoiled repeated her question, a bit more impatiently this time.
“Oh,” Diamond replied, breathing a small sigh of relief. “No crusts, please.” she informed her mother.
“Very well then, no crusts it is, dear.” Spoiled replied sweetly, before adhering to her daughter’s request and carefully sliced the sandwiches so that the crusts were removed. She then cut them up again, this time into small pieces, before offering them to her daughter.
Without any further hesitation, the pink filly grabbed the slices off the plate individually one by one and stuffed them into her mouth. It was great that she was allowed to feed herself this time, unlike the last two occasions. “At least I still have some independence left.” she noted, in between bites. She’d almost forgotten how delicious peanut butter and zap apple jam sandwiches could taste. Yum!
In a matter of minutes, every last crumb of the sandwiches had been devoured. This time, Diamond knew for sure that her mother had intentionally gone over the portion limits for her meal, but strangely enough she didn’t mind. “I don’t understand why I always have to have such small helpings all the time. I’ll bet even Silver Spoon gets more to eat than I do.” She thought, suddenly jealous of her friends. At least they were allowed to have proper sized meals, and receive snacks and treats on a regular basis (Spoiled never gave Diamond any treats, it was always left to Filthy to take his daughter out for ice cream or candy).
Spoiled, for her part, seemed to be resisting the urge to giggle. At first, Diamond didn’t know why, but she soon realized when she got a good look at herself. The filly’s face was caked with smudges of peanut butter and zap apple jam, some of which had found their way onto her bib, which at least had done it’s job. “I’ll bet Mother knew this would happen.” Tiara seethed, only now remembering how much of a messy eater she was when it came to those sandwiches (but in her defense, they were delicious).
“It’s a good thing I put that bib on you, Diamond. If that stuff had gotten all over your coat, instead of your bib, it would’ve meant a one way trip to the bathtub. It wouldn’t have been a bubble bath either,” Spoiled said, once the urge to giggle had died down. She then got up from her spot at the table, and went to fetch a rag. “Just sit tight, Mommy will be back shortly.” Indeed she was, in a matter of moments she returned and set to work on cleaning her daughter’s coat.
Spoiled was quite thorough with the cloth, and within seconds she had removed every smudge of leftover sandwich filling. After washing off the plate and setting it in the dishwasher, Spoiled removed her daughter’s bib and allowed her to leave her place at the table.
“Thanks for lunch Momm…. Mother,” Diamond said, despite feeling a bit unhappy that she’d lost the bet. “It was yummy!”
“I’m sure it was! I only serve the best of meals for my little filly,” Spoiled replied, with some pride. “Now then, why don’t we head back to your bedroom together so you can play with your toys?”
“Sounds good, I guess.” Tiara shrugged, she was still not entirely certain if she liked the idea of acting like a foal. A part of her enjoyed it, but another, more mature section of her mind was thinking. “Why do I relish the idea of wearing a diaper, playing pretend with my old teddy bear, and interacting with rattles and alphabet blocks? I should find such things far too childish for me. After all, I outgrew them years ago. So then, why am I suddenly so eager to play with them again?” She shook her head (something she’d been doing a lot of lately, her neck was beginning to get a bit stiff) to clear her thoughts. She’d agreed to go through with this, and like it or not, there was no turning back now. That’s the advice the Crusaders had given her, anyway.
“What would you like to do first, my little Diamond?” Spoiled asked her daughter enthusiastically, once they had reached the pink filly’s bedroom. “I’ve got plenty of toys you can have fun with, or I can fetch some of your other stuffed animals so you and Theodore can have some company! Heck, we could even throw a tea party with Theodore, and just have it be between the three of us! Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I think I’ll try my luck with the alphabet block tower.” Diamond replied, reluctantly crawling over to them. As she did so, she could’ve sworn she heard her mother let out an audible “Aw”. When she spun around to look however, she couldn’t see any signs that this was the case. “I’m probably imagining things,” she concluded, as she quickly gathered up the various blocks and began to stack them. “Since when does my mother ever ‘Aw’ at anything? Even as a foal when I did something cute, at best she’d just said ‘That’s nice, dear.’ or at worst, just plain ignore me.”
But Diamond hadn’t falsely heard things, her mother had indeed been unable to resist letting out a slight “Aw” at the precious sight that lay before her eyes. “I still can’t believe this is happening to me,” Spoiled thought to herself. “The only reason I even did this was so that I could prove to Filthy I deserved a second chance with our child. And yet, when I look at Diamond now, I can’t help but feel guilty for not letting her cherish her foalhood as much as she could’ve. I tried to make her grow up too fast, probably because I never had a proper foalhood myself.”
And it was true, Spoiled’s recollections of her own past (at least prior to meeting Filthy) were not very edifying at all. Her parents had been incredibly strict and harsh, always placing incredible demands on their daughter, and constantly reminding her that they expected her to marry into a wealthy family and move into the upper echelons of society.
Filthy had been the first good aspect of Spoiled’s life, having been a childhood friend of her’s during a period when most ponies refused to come near her. The few equines willing to try and befriend her had been driven off by her pomposity, but not Filthy. “You may not believe it, but I know there’s a good pony inside of you, somewhere,” he’d always told her. “Just because your parents are putting lots of pressure on you, doesn’t mean you have to always act so snooty.”
Yet Spoiled hadn’t listened in the end, she’d convinced herself that the only thing that mattered was the approval of her mother and father. To that end, she had married Filthy Rich as soon as possible. That did the trick: On the day of their wedding, her parents finally told her how proud they were of her for “fulfilling her destiny".
“Was I really so mad at myself and my parents, that I allowed my personality to become just like theirs?” Spoiled pondered. “Am I really only doing this to prove a point to Filthy, or am I attempting to make up for robbing my own daughter of the opportunity to experience what I never got to enjoy?”
Spoiled was snapped back to reality when her daughter called out “Look, Mother! Look what I did!” Spoiled’s eyes widened, and her jaw nearly dropped open in shock!
Tiara had managed to stack all of the alphabet blocks together neatly, creating a small tower. Despite leaning a bit, the construction looked quite sturdy.
“That’s amazing!” Spoiled commented, with real surprise. “And you say you did this all by yourself?!”
Tiara nodded with pride. “It wasn’t easy, but I finally realized what I did wrong last time. However, now that I’ve built it and shown it off to you, there’s just one more thing I have to do...”
“Oh, and what would that be?” Spoiled wondered out loud.
“Rawr!” Diamond bellowed in a deep voice, pretending to be a monster. “Diamond Monster smash puny tower!” Stomping her hooves and swinging her front ones as if they carried a weapon, the pink filly made short work of her creation. Alphabet blocks had one weakness in what was otherwise a good building material, they could be easily toppled over. Tiara continued to make monster noises, as she scattered the blocks all over the floor, occasionally giggling in sheer delight.
“Oh no, Alphabet Block Tower has been destroyed!” Spoiled said with exaggerated worry. “Everypony run for your lives, mares, fillies and colts first!”
“Rawr! Run all you like, nopony escapes Diamond Monster!” Tiara roared once again, continuing to stomp her hooves about. She kept the pretense up for a little while longer, only finally halting her “rampage” when the clock struck the hour mark.
“You must be thirsty after all that playing, my little Diamond,” Spoiled said sweetly, once the clock had finished sounding. “Since it’s tea time, why don’t I have Randolph boil us a nice kettle of hot water, and we can have a tea party with Theodore?”
“Really? You’d do all that for me?!” Tiara asked, perplexed.
“Well it’s either that, or you can take an afternoon nap. After all, foals get cranky if they don’t take their naps.” Spoiled cooed again in that irritating voice.
“But I’m not tired.” Tiara folded her hooves and pouted.
“Then it’s settled, tea it is,” Spoiled replied, highly amused at her daughter’s expression. “You get Theodore and yourself ready, and I’ll have Randolph start making the tea, okay darling?”
“Okay.” Diamond agreed, and waddled across the floor of her bedroom to fetch her teddy.
Theodore was quite surprised when he learned about the tea party. “Are you sure your mother said I could come? I don’t really drink tea, and I didn’t think she even liked me.” he said to Diamond.
“Somehow, I don’t think Momm… Mother will mind,” Diamond replied, matter-of-factly. “In fact, she’s been acting pretty weird lately, almost as if she were a different pony.”
“Well she is your mother,” Theodore commented. “Mothers are always weird.”
“But I’m talking really, really weird,” Tiara emphasized her point to Theodore. “So weird, I don’t think there’s a word that describes it. The worst part is, I’m actually starting to enjoy it.”
“What’s so wrong about that?” Theodore asked in his usual gruff voice.
“Because what if all this is all just Mother’s twisted sense of revenge? Last night, I had a nightmare in which her acting sweet and innocent was just a front to get me to lower my guard, so she could shrink me to a foal and brainwash me.” Tiara explained, with real concern.
“You said it yourself though, it was a bad dream,” Theodore tried to calm Diamond. “Perhaps your mother has turned over a new leaf, and just wants to prove that to you?”
“And what if she’s still the same mean old Mother, and this is all an attempt at getting back at me?” the pink coated filly asked agitatedly. “What then?”
Much to her surprise, Theodore said to Tiara in reply. “She’s had plenty of occasions to get revenge on you since this whole thing started, and she hasn’t taken any of them. Even if her change in heart isn’t completely because she’s doing it for you, you shouldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth. You agreed to give her a chance, and you still have all of tomorrow to find out if she’s sincere about all of this. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like your help getting everything ready for our tea party.”
Against her better judgement, Tiara conceded defeat. “I guess you’re right, Theodore. I’ll worry about Mother later, for now we have a tea party to prepare for.”
Since the tea party was “fancy dress only” Tiara reluctantly put her new pair of pajamas on, even though she wasn’t planning to take a nap until after the party had run its course (at least, not until she had a chance to use the bathroom. She wasn’t about to risk having any more ‘accidents’ in her diaper). Then, she put a top hat and a tie on Theodore, making him look like a true gentlebear.
When Spoiled came trotting into the room with the tea kettle and some miniature cups, Diamond had to blink and rub her eyes just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Her mother was wearing one of the many lavish dresses she usually wore when entertaining company. It was an elegant alternating shades of white and yellow affair, complete with a small crown for the head. “Mother only wears that outfit for special occasions,” Tiara realized. “Why would she put it on for a pretend tea party?”
Spoiled didn’t seem to be aware of her daughter’s confused look, as she carefully poured the tea from the kettle into the three small china cups, each with a flower pattern of blue, yellow, and pink. She then set the cups and the kettle on top of a small but solid table in a corner of the bedroom, before she sat down in the seat closest to the door. “Well, shall we start this tea party or what, darling?” Spoiled asked her willing daughter.
Diamond opened her mouth to ask her mother why she was wearing such an extravagant and expensive frock, but quickly shut it. “You did say it was 'fancy dress only',” a part of her mind told her. “That may have just been the first ‘fancy dress’ she could find.” Just about resisting the urge to ask a question, Tiara sat down in the seat adjacent from her mother, while Theodore occupied the chair off to the left of Diamond, and to the right of Spoiled.
“Thank you both for coming to my tea party, and remembering the dress code,” Theodore addressed his guests. “I hope you'll both enjoy the hot drinks. It’s a special tea, my speciality. Get it?” That prompted everyone at the table to have a good chuckle, much to Tiara’s shock as she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her mother laugh that heartily, especially at such a woeful joke.
The party passed in relative silence for all three of its guests, even if Theodore preferred not to drink his beverage and simply let his guests enjoy theirs. Only the occasional comment such as “More tea, please.” was spoken, as the minutes slowly ticked by.
At last, Diamond asked her mother “Can I drink Theodore’s tea for him, please? He doesn’t really like it.”
“Certainly,” Spoiled nodded. “Waste not, want not. That is, if Theodore agrees.”
“Oh I know he will,” Tiara beamed, but still asked anyway. “Theodore, do you mind if I have your tea?”
“Go right ahead, Diamond. I don’t mind at all.” Theodore told his devoted owner.
“Thanks, Theodore, you’re such a good friend!” Tiara replied excitedly, hugging him tightly, before helping herself to his tea. She downed it in the blink of an eye, reveling in the wonderful taste it left on her tongue. “Not nearly as satisfying as a bottle of milk though. Wow, I never thought I’d say… or rather, think that!” Tiara concluded.
“So, did you enjoy your little tea party, Diamond?” Spoiled inquired, as she got up from her spot and began to clear the empty kettle and tea cups.
“I sure did, Mommy!” Diamond said eagerly, then she gasped! How had that word managed to slip out so easily?!
“Ah, I was wondering when you were going to say that again,” Spoiled replied with a knowing smile. “You didn’t really think I wouldn’t hear it the first time, even when it was muffled behind a pacifier, did you?”
“Um… yes?” the pink filly hopefully said.
“Incorrect answer,” Spoiled said with a fiendish smirk. “And a wrong answer demands a penalty. I’ve been waiting a long time to get my revenge for the humiliation you inflicted upon me at the school! And now I’ve finally come up with the perfect idea.”
“Mother, please, don’t!” Diamond pleaded, fearing all her nightmares were about to come true.
“Too late, ready or not here I come!” Spoiled grinned, as she tackled her diapered daughter, took off her pajamas, and rolled her onto her back. “Say hello to my little friend, The Tickle Monster!” Spoiled declared, before she took a deep breath and blew a raspberry onto her daughter’s exposed belly.
“Stop, please!” Tiara pleaded with her mother in between fits of laughter, as she was tickled relentlessly. She kicked all four legs rapidly in a vain attempt to break free.
“Oh no, I’m not about to stop now!” Spoiled replied, before she continued her barrage of tickles and the occasional raspberry.
Diamond continued to laugh and kick her legs, until an all too familiar sensation struck her. “Mother, stop, I’m gonna…” she shouted, but it was too late. All of a sudden, a loud hissing noise filled the air!
Spoiled finally stopped her assault, as she realized what she’d done. “Oopsie.” Was all she could say, as her daughter’s cheeks immediately flushed the brightest shade of red possible.
In a matter of seconds, it was over. Diamond looked down at her diaper, not surprised to see how damp it was. The padding had acted like a sponge, readily absorbing the urine, yet it still felt very soggy. “Two accidents in less than 24 hours, I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she bemoaned. “But at least this time I didn’t mess in it as well.” She hoped she wasn’t tempting fate by thinking that.
“My goodness, that tea went right through you, didn’t it? My tickles can’t have helped either...” Spoiled confessed, as she carefully stepped over to her daughter and helped her to stand. “Come on, we’d better get you changed again.”
But just then, the bedroom swung open, and who should come trotting in, but Filthy Rich? “Daddy’s home!” he greeted. “So tell me, Diamond, how was your we…” The rest of his sentence was cut off forever, as he surveyed the scene that lay before him. His daughter, his pride and joy, was standing in a soaked diaper. While his wife was holding his daughter’s hoof, all the while wearing the most lavish dress in her collection. That’s not even to mention the baby toys everywhere...
“Just great!” Diamond thought to herself. “Now my father’s seen me in a used diaper, surrounded by foalish things. How am I supposed to explain this to him?”