Necessary Love

by Zurock

Chapter 38: Wild

Warm sunshine, like a blanket. And warm sand beneath a towel, like a bed. The ocean lullaby sang in gentle rolls and heavy drags—now in, now out—rocking in perfect rhythm like the soft sways of a baby's bassinet. There James laid, his mind in that indeterminate place between wakefulness and sleep, where the world remained about him but no thought had any coherent bridge to another, unable to fall into full sleep but unconcerned about staying awake.

None of his friends had been interested in joining him for another morning on the beach. He hadn't taken any personal affront, nor had he tried very hard to recruit them; a nap had always been his plan anyway, after all. At least without them around he had no shame in wearing his embarrassing summer outfit.

He hadn't found Prism either. She had seemingly vanished off the face of the island after his quick wake-up call earlier. There were a bare handful of other island ponies out enjoying the beach though, none of whom he had recognized. None had spoken to him either as he had found a nice spot halfway down to the waves, laid a towel, removed his shirt, dressed himself with sunscreen, and set himself to rest.

And so time had passed. He drifted through a five-minute hour, or a five-hour minute; he had no way to tell.

The morning was flawless.

God bless Celestia's sun.

Yet he didn't sleep. Not even as tired as he was from his night of unusual tossing and turning. He couldn't sleep.

Flashes of an unremembered dream occasionally hit him, but they weren't what was keeping him up. Nor was he disturbed by the unnamed longing he felt inside to return to some supernatural peace he was dimly aware of having experienced, the absence of which made the idyllic beach feel like a pale imitation of paradise. All the magic was gone, and only its imperceptible echoes remained in the background of his mind.

He was held awake only because his body had no more hunger for sleep. Certainly not after a full night of it, agitated or otherwise.

A disturbance roused him. His mouth stretched into a yawn which never quite started or ended, and his eyes blinked against the white crush of sand and sun. Blind, he heard only little swishes of shifting sand heading his way, until in a sudden instant the world's light was outshined and she was revealed in full.

It was Prism, floating a small beach bag.

Her approach was uncharacteristically hesitant, and she stopped five full strides from him; a continent's berth given her audaciously intimate nature. There wasn't one word in greeting from her.

James was still stuck between wakefulness and dreaming, his mind floating like a heavy waterfall's mist. He blinked more, tested another yawn, and then, using nothing more than momentary whimsy, reached a hand out towards the pony and gave the sand besides him a few pats.

Prism thawed, and quickly. Her bag plopped down onto the sand and a towel flew from it. For one final moment the towel hesitated, frozen in the air, but then gladly it swooped down and stretched flat, corner to corner, a few inches from where the man had gestured.

Next the bag produced a bottle of sunscreen. The loud pop of the cap did more than anything prior to snap the man with a small spark of alertness.

When he looked this time he clearly saw the beautiful, sunbathed Prism as she magically coated herself in sunscreen. She was like a pony enjoying a shower, her magic reaching along every part of herself, though instead of a cage of glass and tiles there was free and endless blue sky, and instead of raining water there was a gleaming rain of Celestia's sunshine brushing down her body.

The mesmerizing sight fit naturally into James' dreamy state, and his neck softened until his ear was again resting against his towel. His eyes fell to rest on Prism's towel, rolled out a polite distance from his. But in his jellied vision the tiny reach of sand appeared as vast as a canyon; a desert gulf which would take a trek of blistering days to cross.

That was no sweet dream.

So, no different than any dreamer unhappy with what they saw, he instinctively reached out to mold the scene more to his pleasure. His drowsy fingers found the edge of her towel and dragged it closer, until its fringe overlapped that of his own. As best he could he straightened out the rest of it, drunkenly stitching the towels together, obeying only the bent geometry of his reverie.

When not one speck of sand was left between them, he again invited the pony down with a few soft pats to the empty half of the single bed he had created.

His adjustments caught Prism off guard, and for a long moment she also found herself inside a dream. Not one of her muscles had moved, body or magic, while watching his sloppy work bringing the towels together.

Yet the second he patted her towel—a plush touch which resounded louder than the rumble of the surf—she embraced the dream. She tossed away the sunscreen bottle without a care. Her magic snapped her towel straight and she eagerly threw herself down upon it.

There was a sound she made. The man couldn't recognize it at all despite his months of experience now with being around ponies. It was new. Some sound which her whole body produced.

Some sort of... happy horse noise.

James peeked past his drowsiness and saw her stretching herself out in delight. Her head was against her towel, weighed down by her blissful smile. Her legs were lifted in the air, jingling with her jewelry. Left unobstructed and open was her trim, smooth, upturned belly.

She was a fantastic sight...

... but still too far away.

He wriggled. First his center, then his ends, then his center again, and so on. His whole body squirmed in tiny three-legged steps, journeying towards her, even crossing a little onto her towel. When he was at last so close that he couldn't have jiggled an elbow without bumping her, he finally felt satisfied with his dream. He stretched himself out fresh, letting the happiness run down his legs to his toes, and up his arms where it guided his hands into becoming a pillow behind his head. Lastly it collected in his spine, arching his back and pushing out his chest. Then it left via his lips, emerging as his own imitation of her happy horse noise.

There was another empty moment of stillness from Prism.

But then the man, eyes pleasantly shut again, heard the soft sound of sand grinding underneath a towel. Against his chest he felt the touch of a hoof, so gentle that it didn't provoke a shiver, and so tentative as if in fear that the treasure once touched would crumble and vanish. But he remained, as real and warm as the sun, and tenderly if also indulgently the hoof rested fully on him, rubbing in circles slow and small. Another leg settled against his waist, close and snug.

The softest breaths came from somewhere so very close to him, more sounding to his ears than the passing ocean air above. They delicately massaged the hairs on his body.

He started to melt.

A powerful sleep began at last to take hold, overcoming easily his body's natural reservation.

Inside of his quickly emptying mind, a last question bounced and spun around the funnel which drained into pristine sleep: to what degree exactly did this moment count as a bucket-list item, laying on a beach in paradise next to a gorgeous woman?

---

The hard backwards stumble almost put Gallowayo on his tail. His cheek was already swelling, and he rubbed it as he cowered.

Vesuvius hesitated. The moment was strange; a freakish and peculiarly empty tick of a clock in which his instincts expected familiar noise but felt only silence. He even took a step closer as if he should have been stopped but still heard nothing inside.

And nothing still, when he raised his hoof to strike Gallowayo again.

"Suvi! Control yourself!" Venus suddenly shamed him.

But the island lady didn't wait for him to obey. Lassos of pink magic grabbed his hoof and brought it safely to the floor. Then right away she was at his side, comforting him by rubbing her whole body against his.

"Such an ugly display," she whispered to him, laying out her tenderness as if it might have smothered the violence he had brought on Gallowayo. "Why would you bring that to our island of love?"

The island master's veins pulsed visibly. His nostrils burst so wide they might have torn his nose apart.

"This worm has jeopardized everything!" he snarled quite viciously. He was speaking to Venus, but the words and flecks of spit were still shot at the frightened Gallowayo.

"Shhhh...," the lady purred.

And again there was a moment marked by its sense of absence. A blink of unusual nothingness. An impossible void.

Then, again, Vesuvius blew through it, only very briefly flinching like he had tried to push through a wall but found nothing solid in his way.

He harshly shoved aside his lady's softness, almost throwing her to the floor, and barked furiously at Gallowayo.

"You have the most important task of all, and you've screwed it up! Bungler! Broken-minded pony! Worthless waste of breath! You're destroying everything we have been trying to build!"

Poor Gallowayo fancied himself many things: a singer, a scholar, a poet, a concierge, and beyond. But then and there he wasn't anything more than a child confused and terrified by a thunderstorm loud enough to quake the earth. Each punctuated scream hit just as hurtfully as the blow to his cheek all over again. He shut his eyes, cringed, and tried to restrain the sobs.

Venus again used her magic to capture Vesuvius, this time by his joints, locking him stiff, though nonetheless he vibrated, and foamed, and growled.

"Suvi, say no such thing! He's made a terrible mistake, yes, but nothing is over. Love can't be stopped."

She interposed herself between her quivering employee and her explosive lover. She planted her nose to his, feeling the flames on his breath. She held his cheek, sensing the grinding of his teeth. She stared straight into his open, enraged eyes.

Despite how disastrously alight they were with fury, somehow the deep crimson color of his irises had lost all of their luster. There was no bright glow like magma.

Just... a dull and dry red. Washed out. Empty.

Venus gazed into the desaturated color.

"Your passion still paints your eyes. Look into me. Do you see how passion still paints mine? My love. My Vesuvius. My love... Why would you soil this passion with anger?"

"My love..."

The island master tried to heed her – to wash out the fire eating away at his bones and see only his lover.

But no focus came. She filled his eyes but he couldn't see her.

He saw through her. Through beautiful eyes, through soft coat, through sensitive, electric, gorgeous skin. All the way through, to that miserable, worthless, execrable, garbage dump of a pony hiding behind her. That embarrassment to life.

Veins rose up his throat like cracks in a breaking dam. The muscles in his legs bulged with blood to try and snap the magical bindings.

And then Venus wrapped her lips over her lover's and jabbed her tongue down his throat.

The kiss paralyzed Vesuvius at first, briefly leaving him wide-eyed as her tongue greedily searched the inside of his mouth. But her familiar, irresistible taste quickly condensed his boiling fury into a tsunami of raw passion. The fire inside flared hot still, but now as lust instead of rage. Venus's magic dissolved and frantically the island master pushed himself back into his lover, tongue and all.

Things got rather sloppy from there. The ponies staggered around as if drunk and glued together at their lips, moaning and heaving through the seal. When for any single instant there was a smack of their lips breaking apart, they only redoubled themselves into each other. Their moist voices rose and rose, even well beyond what the most salacious of ponies would have considered odd. Oversold even, like a reclusive, amateur foley desperately trying to figure out the soundscape of their first love scene.

Gallowayo's red, throbbing cheek didn't bother him anymore. Not with his every last instinct redirected into forcing him to avert his eyes from the obscenity before him. It was the same restraining sensation that came if one tried to walk straight off a cliff or to drive a nail straight into their own hoof, only overwhelming beyond belief. No worldly force, no matter how ancient or powerful, could have pried his closed eyes away from the floor.

It was so odd, though. His reaction was perfectly natural, except that he himself had by now become intimately familiar with the behavior the island masters were indulging in. He had experienced it himself many times. In an altered state of mind he would have felt nothing but envy for Vesuvius. But right now...

Eventually a few loud, clear gasps from Vesuvius broke through.

"Oooh! My love! My love!"

Venus suddenly pulled away, though not without teasing him by offering a final, unobtainable kiss, out of reach no matter how far he stretched his neck.

"Shhh...," she cooed as she planted a hoof over his still open lips.

At last he was pacified. Gently he kissed and licked the bottom of her hoof.

"Oh, my Suvi," squeaked Venus in delight, "you're so energetic for having shared your love once already this morning! Mm, that's why I love you: you always give me more..."

She sobered in an instant however, yet kept her flushed face.

"... But let's sort out this serious business first, hm?" She let her hoof drift down into his chest where she punctured his dream with some playful sternness. "And I don't want anymore grouchy growling from you."

Vesuvius was still vibrating tip to tail, almost in pain. But, breath by hot breath, he got himself back under (enough) control.

He nodded to her.

"Good," Venus smiled. "Now then, Gallowayo..."

As she turned back towards their mortified witness she put some extra effort into cleaning herself up. Magic tucked back in all her hairs which had been thrown awry, and it picked up her lava-lava in the places it had started to slip off. She dedicated an extra calm into slowing her racing heart.

The flustered Gallowayo wobbled as he tried to stand at attention, still frightened, and teary-eyed, and with a red light on his cheek. He opened his eyes as haltingly as a peek at the midday sun.

"Y-Yes, Ms. Venus?"

The island lady came at him with nothing harsher than a parent's stern sympathy.

"Why did you yell at Twilight?"

"I-... I don't know..."

He winced a little, either afraid of his poor answer or simply in fear of another outrageously pornographic tryst.

"Gallowayo," Venus still showed no anger, though her authority was absolutely clear, "that is not good enough. You're the one who's supposed to bring her into our fold. All of our success is riding on you. How did your outburst help?"

"I'm s-so s-sorry, Ms. Venus," Gallowayo hung his head. "I just-... I didn't mean to. I couldn't believe that... she was more interested in the island's forgotten history than in-... than in everything that ponies can be and feel. She said she was a student of everything, and the essay she wrote-... I thought for sure she'd understand! That she'd care about everything I've worked so hard to explore. But she didn't even listen to one word of my songs! She didn't care at all! I thought she-... I thought-..."

He slumped in selfish heartbreak.

"... I thought she was going to be somepony different," he said.

Venus stepped forward to comfort him.

"Dear Gallowayo, you have a good heart, but you're projecting your own desire a little too much onto-"

However, the instant her hoof came up to touch him tenderly, he flinched hard. The clap of his backwards step on the stone floor was piercing even to the back corners of the room.

"... I'm sorry," Gallowayo mumbled after a frozen moment passed.

"You don't-," the island lady started, but never finished. Her hoof stayed hung in the air and she neither retreated nor approached further.

Vesuvius advanced however. His fury was safely contained, if only barely.

"Nevermind why you had your pathetic outburst. How are you going to fix things?"

"I don't know," Gallowayo cringed.

"Not good enough," warned the island master.

"Suvi. Temper."

Vesuvius snorted but checked himself.

Venus implored, "You must do something, Gallowayo."

With his eyes often darting in fear towards the explosive island master, the cowering pony begged Venus, "I was hoping, maybe, that-... I mean... There's this other girl who was really interested in my songs, and maybe... instead of Twilight, I could-"

"Absolutely not," the island lady said. "If this were any other group of guests I would let you have Fluttershy instead, but Twilight is too important. If needs be we could forget all the rest of them just to get Celestia's pupil."

"But Twilight is never going to forget how I blew up on her." Gallowayo touched his swollen cheek and looked at Vesuvius again. "Besides, I don't know how I'd even-... I'm... not so attracted to her anymore..."

Despite her desire, Venus restrained herself from trying to touch and comfort him.

"You're going to have to dig deep and find some attraction," she sighed and told him.

Vesuvius said quietly to his lady, "What if he can't? This louse will have cost us our best chance."

"He doesn't perform better with your name-calling, Suvi."

"Hmph. I apologize, my love. But still, if Twilight is too resentful of him? What then? And if we assign another pony to her, she might be too suspicious; it might take too long to open her."

A light came to Venus's eyes, and a crafty smile to her lips.

"Maybe not so long as you might think," she said.

Both stallions gave curious cocks to their heads. Gallowayo even stopped cringing.

"What do you mean?" Vesuvius asked.

"Prism caught them. Twilight and the man. They were speaking to each other about their passions in some detail, she said. A student of everything indeed, Gallowayo. She's already curious, if not directly knowledgeable."

Vesuvius was nearly flabbergasted.

"But how could that be? We're the first. If she already-..."

"It's something to do with the man, I'm certain," Venus replied. "He's different somehow. His passions might not be the same as ours. But it's worth exploring him; Prism is being kept on him."

She looked back at Gallowayo, himself standing awash with unresolved confusion.

"This gives you an opening, Gallowayo. Try to hold back your indulgences. Guide Twilight into exploring her own passions. Deliver her to us."

Gallowayo stammered wordlessly for a moment, but settled and nodded.

Vesuvius, unpolished and grim, confided to his lover, "Several things are coming apart. We should've seen how difficult introducing this many ponies at once was going to be."

He heaved, letting a weighty thought settle.

"We should open them tonight," he determined.

"So soon?" Venus questioned.

"Yes."

"We've never opened a pony's passion so quickly. It's so enormous a matter for a pony to take in all at once."

"But the princess's pupil might already have some glimpse of the truth. Maybe that's our best chance to lean into. And, as you said, she's the only one who matters. The rest we'll catch if we can, and once Twilight is with us we can hold them all here on the island until they join us too."

Venus shook her head, uncertain but dark, saying, "We're no prison. We're freedom from the prison that's always held us. Love is not forceful."

"Only as forceful as necessary to see us through this critical moment. Tonight, my love. Tonight will be the beginning for all of Equestria."

Venus sighed thoughtfully and then turned her gaze about the room, stopping again and again to look over Gallowayo's paintings hanging on the walls. Every painting had two ponies somewhere in them, showing love or sharing love, or preparing for love, or presenting love. All the depictions were crude and experimental, risking imperfection to reach towards an ever greater truth.

"Alright. Tonight then," the island lady smiled and drew close to her lover. She said further, speaking into his mouth, "Love is destiny..."

Gallowayo uncontrollably closed his eyes and then tried blindly to edge his way out of the room.

---

"No quesadillas? Really?"

"Uh-huh," Pinkie Pie assured Hulahoof. "Too cheesy."

"Crazy-interesting."

He diligently copied the pink pony's remark into his file on Twilight, already a few pages thick thanks to Pinkie Pie's sharing. A pile of incredibly similar folders were stacked at his side, one for each of the island's current guests. In the end they would all be deposited into the file cabinet he had wheeled out (still resting on the trolley!) from his secret party laboratory. Every drawer was dedicated to some segment of the alphabet, and a label affixed to the very top read ‘Guests’, appended of course by a very happy pony face.

This was all separate from the other file cabinet he had brought out, dedicated to all of his fellow island ponies. Many of their folders were out also, spread on the floor like a fan.

Pinkie Pie for her part had out her travel case; it was unbelievable exactly how such a large desk could spring from the unfolded suitcase, but there it was. Many of the umpteen drawers were opened all the way, hanging out by their very last ball bearings, and her most critical friendship files were likewise on the floor of the hotel common room the two ponies had chosen for their little party-particulars-pooling-powwow.

"So," Hulahoof casually continued the conversation as he scribbled, adding a tiny, crossed out picture of a tortilla monster foaming at the mouth with delicious cheese (just to make the note extra clear,) "when did you find that out?"

"Pretty quickly, actually! Before her first Nightmare Night in Ponyville. She didn't have a costume ready yet, so I offered her a surprise quesadilla costume to use; homemade, real cheese and everything! Anyway, after the doctors got her breathing again she said, ‘No thank you.’ So that took care of my lunch for the day."

Her tongue still tasted the wonderful flavor on her lips.

"Anyway," she said, and then her every molecule vibrated in excitement, "now one of yours!"

Hulahoof cast an open hoof over the spread of islander folders.

"Pick a pony! Any pony!"

After a full cycle of seventeen thinking-faces, Pinkie popped a hoof forward and proclaimed, "Prism! Let's do Prism again!"

Aside went Hulahoof's folder for Twilight, and out came Prism's.

"Prism party factoid number three hundred thirty-two:" the blue pony announced. Dramatic pause. "She has a very mild allergy to jelly beans; only the red ones. Yeah. Gotta pick'em all out."

"That poor pony!" Pinkie Pie added the note to her file, complete with diagrams and a wave function which precisely described the complex relationship between red and non-red bean-states.

Hulahoof agreed, "We live in an inequitable universe."

"And sometimes it isn't fair, too."

"Like when the foil star falls off the party hat before you put it on."

"Or when the ice cream shop has every flavor except double strawberry."

"..."

"..."

"Next?"

"Next!"

For her turn, Pinkie again dexterously shuffled the deck of her most decorated folders and then held them forward in a spread.

Hulahoof's thinking cap went on; not an imaginary one but a legitimate one he always kept available for just such occasions. And in the middle of his ruminations the light bulb on top suddenly blinked with a new idea.

"Let's do the human guy!" he said. "We haven't done one for him yet!"

Pinkie Pie giggled, entirely at ease, and she recollected her folders into a single stack.

"We haven't done him," she said brightly, and then spread the folders again, this time like a chain of paper snowflakes, revealing all of them fully, "because I don't have a file on him!"

There were six uniquely stylized folders: Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, and Twilight.

"Oh," Hulahoof said.

The light bulb guttered and then fizzled out with a final click.

He tossed the cap aside and asked, "Why not?"

"Because he's not my friend."

Pitch perfect Pinkie Pie. Crystal clear, high-as-the-sky voice. Round, open, glittering blue eyes. Happy, eager, energetic, laughter-filled smile.

"Oh," Hulahoof said again. "Really?"

"Nope! See?"

She played the folder-chain like an accordion before tossing them like pizzas, catching them in a pile one at a time, demonstrating distinctly again that there were only six. She then showed the blue pony the open drawer of the travel case/mobile desk where her dearest files were usually kept while on trips. Several folders for other non-present ponies remained inside, but none of them were marked ‘James’.

Yet Hulahoof's attention for detail did silently take notice of one thing: there were all the signs of a recent disturbance—a file removed—right between ‘Gummy’ and ‘Limestone Pie’; none of the files she already had out would have fit there.

"Well, right on then," Hulahoof chirped, off guard but not otherwise uncomfortable. "I guess hit me with another Twilight."

He brought out his folder for Twilight again, and tossed down Prism's folder back to its place with the others, though when it landed it hit the floor with a bit of a wind under it. A smaller, red folder kept within it drifted out a visible inch or two.

Pinkie Pie read aloud her next Twilight party fact (she “believes light blue frosting tastes better than all other kinds” despite it having been scientifically disproven by Tasty Cakes over two hundred years ago) and Hulahoof again copied it down faithfully (“honey-bees-with-vinegar-knees weird.”). But while her island friend was busy copying, she eyed the fallen folder and the hint of vibrant red peeking out.

It wasn't the first time that screaming color had caught her eye. A few, though far from all, of the other island ponies' folders had the exact same kind of red subfolder inside. They had been easily noticeable whenever Hulahoof had been handling his files.

Seeing as they had been trading their knowledge freely all morning, she casually reached for Prism's folder, picked it up, and flipped it open. The red folder had no label or any other identifying information on the front. Shrugging, Pinkie Pie opened it and began reading the pages within. There were only a few, and every one presented nothing more than line after line of simple, albeit confusing, statements.

Her eyes went increasingly wobbly as they read through the contextless, bizarre items, one by one, one per line, until finally she cocked her head, squeezed her brow, coiled her tail, and read the next entry openly in a dubiously loud squeak, "‘Favored snuggle: from behind, hold her across belly, attention to ear – no more than nibbling’?"

From his ongoing notation, Hulahoof responded without looking up, "Yeah, and like no whip cream or—!!!!"

A blast of pages erupted from his hooves, and in the midsts of the paper blizzard Pinkie Pie found Prism's folders ripped from her grasp. The outer folder sailed up into the air and added its contents to the storm. As the last pages flipped and flopped onto the floor Hulahoof was revealed again, now seemingly a pony so red that the red folder he clutched tightly to his chest blended right in. He had a liar's smile, like a crooked diamond stamped over the front of his face, and it held frozen towards Pinkie Pie as his extra hoof fumbled about the floor for Prism's manila folder. When at last he found it he didn't bother to recover any of Prism's wayward files; he sleeved the red folder away and continued to awkwardly hug it, chittering an uncomfortable laugh.

Pinkie's empty hooves dropped to the floor with two gentle clops.

"What kind of party is that for?" she asked.

"N-Nothing! A nothing p-party! Eheh!"

"Is it for cuddle parties? It kinda sounded like it, but I don't think ponies cuddle in some of those positions..."

"Well it's r-really sort of bigtime-impossible to ex-explain."

"... Or with any of those body parts."

"I can't really, uh, t-tell you about-... Well... You see... T-There's a v-very special kind of party, uh, on this island, f-for just two p-ponies, and-"

"A ‘very special’ party?"

Anypony who looked deeply into those wide, shimmering blue eyes at that very moment might have caught a glimpse of the beginning of all creation.

Before the bumbling Hulahoof could stop her she ground her whirling hooves through his pile of folders for all her friends; a hurricane whipping about papers. Applejack, Fluttershy, some human guy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike; all were ordinary files devoid of any red insets. But at the very bottom: Pinkie Pie.

And inside?

A partylicious red folder!

With a hoofful of currently empty pages, sure, but that was expected.

The folder was already there though! And that meant...

"We're going to have a party!!"

The pink pony became an old-fashioned Las Pegasus slot machine hitting the jackpot. Lights, flashes, sirens, whistles; the brightness of a billion bits gushed from her as she started to skip around the room, large leap after large leap, each one high enough to fully contain one chorus of her simple song.

"We're going to have a party! We're going to have a party! We're going to have a party! We're—"

"Y-Yeah, w-we are," Hulahoof said.

"—going to have a party! We're going to—"

"Eventually."

The blue pony tried to regather and reorganize his scattered notes.

"—have a party! We're going to have a party! Come on, Hulahoof!"

The papers exploded in another geyser as Hulahoof was seized and forced to join the merry-go-round, though less as a galloping horse and more as a fallen rider with one leg caught in the stirrup.

"L-Later! The special party can't be right now! It needs some of the-! Pinkie!"

He might as well have been trying to stop a stampede of wild partybeasts.

Yet before long the happy carousel got to him first, and he giggled. And the further and further his mind traveled from the profane specifics of ‘special parties,’ the more at ease he felt laughing. Soon each bounce was popping a cheerful laugh out of him, making him light enough to turn himself right and bounce about under his own power.

And there the two ponies sprang together, pogoing about the room and singing their single refrain in unison.

---

Applejack couldn't shake the feeling that the other ponies had been staring at her a lot. The dutiful, productive island ponies assigned to work under Till's direction plainly weren't dutiful or productive at all if they had so much time to stop and grope her with their eyes. It was always when she had been in the thick of it as well: carrying, pulling, heaving, ho-ing. The more sweat she had thrown at a problem, the more attention she had gotten from the ponies who should have been offering her their help instead of standing about idle, eyes all ogling like mice mesmerized by a mystical self-slicing cheese.

That was some mighty fine appreciation, seeing as she was the guest who had been doing their job for them!

She had supposed at first that their gawking had been only natural: a surprise newbie on the team was perhaps owed a discerning look or two. But that explanation quickly hadn't held up to how frequent and lasting their unmannerly stares had eventually been, which had turned out to be, respectively, often and all morning.

Yet... oddly enough...

Their discourteous curiosity hadn't been the strangest thing about her volunteer work.

Not in the least.

Till had woken her and brought her out to the corcandeo orchard at sunrise, as he had promised, but then she had immediately been put under the direction of his deputy manager while Till himself had gone back to the Passion's Embrace to meet some other duties of his. From there, very little of the work Applejack had been asked to do had involved the orchard in the slightest!

They had asked her to assemble a few things, so some of the morning had been piddled away on knotting lengths of rope, binding wooding beams, and bolting together sheets of corrugated metal, among other things, all in service of building up more of the shoddy sheds which littered the hotel's back lot. She had worked on one of the more finished structures as well, to no better joy: over an hour had been lost patching up some poor piping in the sauna while many lazier ponies had come and gone for their mid-early-morning break, watering the stones and keeping her work environment polluted with sweltering steam. The one item of true constructive productivity she had gotten done all morning had been convincing (with great tail-twisting) some of the islanders to build a small outhouse to her superior specifications instead of their slipshod standards.

More than anything else though, Applejack had been directed to carry things. ‘Bring this here.’ ‘Put that there.’ ‘Take these up that way.’ ‘Lug all of these way, way down to that place.’ Sometimes short distances, across a room. Sometimes great distances, like a lap from the orchard all the long way to the dock. Her back had gotten ten times the workout any other part of her had.

By far the most troublesome item she had carried—bar none, and in no small part because of all the spineless gawkers who hadn't lifted a hoof in help—had been a hefty wooden crate maybe about one and a half times her size, covered on top in a bound tarp. The task had been to drag it from just outside the Pleasure Gardens all the way up to the largest storage shed in the back lot. Alone and with a half-split hitch tied to a wheel-less pallet, the job had been a real drag but, tenacious as termites, she hadn't quit until she had gotten it done.

Whatever had been inside had really rattled around unsecured though. It would have been worlds smarter to have moved it all individually, but she hadn't been allowed to do that because...

... well, because no dang good reason at all, honestly.

The other ponies had been adamant that they never take the tarp off those crates because it was ‘Island Society stuff,’ whatever that meant, and Vesuvius would ‘destroy’ them (their word, not hers) if they had peeked inside.

Nuttier than a squirrel convention in fall.

Anyway, none of it had been exactly what she had in mind when she had offered her services to Till. She had hoped for a bit of farming paradise, or at least farming in paradise, or maybe any kind of farming at all.

Fortunately by the later morning Till had returned and things had begun at last to turn around. Where the brown pony had been, beyond preparing breakfast, he hadn't said even when pressed; an uncomfortable knock to Applejack's good sense of honesty, but nothing that hadn't been easily patched over by his sincere promise that he had been up to nothing more than uninteresting, private business.

With him around, actual work in the corcandeo orchard had followed, but only after Applejack had informed him that his team wasn't just a chicken without a head, but several chicken without heads all recklessly piloting the individual renegade limbs of a gigantic robo-chicken also without a head. Till, in reply, had dropped more apologies than an apple tree in high harvest season; the island just wasn't getting the ponies with the expertises needed for all they wanted to do, so everypony had to sort of improvise as best they could, making the best of the worst of a bad situation.

With respect to all the staring Applejack had endured, his apology for that had been given much less qualification.

That is to say, it had been given none at all.

"So, can I finally give Bucky and Kicks their chance to shine? They've been itching for a taste of this new wood," Applejack waggled her respective hooves and stretched her hind legs.

"Maybe," Till answered slowly. He kept his eyes in the branches and on the vines of corcandeo.

"Still?" the orange pony complained. "We've been up and down the orchard taking notes on each and every tree ya got, and sure as sunshine it's been a fine lecture, professor, you've learned me plenty on your magic fruit, but some things come best with good old-fashioned practice."

"I just want to save every piece of corcandeo that we can, and-"

"Ain't gonna be any from this tree, Brown Sugar. I've seen composts with better looking fruit."

Indeed, if an apple tree at Sweet Apple Acres had fruit which looked as withered, twisted, and shrunken as the corcandeo in the tree before her, she would have ordered young Apple Bloom to look away while she dragged the tree into the barn for a tearful goodbye before mercifully putting'em down.

She continued, "If ever there were a tree where you had nothing to lose, this'd be it."

Till insisted, "I'll say again—"

"—‘Looks can be deceiving.’ Yeah, I know," Applejack completed the phrase he had oft repeated that morning. She glanced again, hard, at the hanging-dead fruits Till was still diligently scribbling notes about. "Pardon if I have a hard time believing just yet."

"Usually for fruit that looks this bad, you're going to be right," Till said. "But sometimes you still get one or two perfectly serviceable fruits out of it, despite appearances. There's so little total yield from the orchard, so... we have to be judicious."

"I hear ya," Applejack relented.

The tour through the orchard had proved true a lot of the things Till had told her about yesterday. There just hadn't been any rhyme or reason behind the state of the trees. Some looked like the ideal she easily pictured in her mind while others, seemingly at random, were crooked or clinging to life. The corcandeo fruits themselves fit the same pattern of arbitrarily healthy or sickly, though bizarrely they weren't always matched to a given tree: sometimes strong trees had awful fruit and sometimes sick trees had healthy fruit.

Everything else about the orchard, from the state of the earth to the care of the trees, met Applejack's rigorous requirements for good stewardship. (At least, when Till was present to give direct orders to his underlings.)

Day to day Till had somepony or himself inspect every single tree, charting their individual history, health, growth... anything they could think of to track. He was meticulous about it, too; Applejack had never seen a shed with more filing cabinets than tool racks. According to Till all the data hadn't been much use so far except to clearly demonstrate that no two trees fit the same patterns.

They were all unique individuals.

Something Applejack had likewise felt while there.

Just as Till had told her, she had felt intimately watched in the orchard. She had been especially keen to that sensation, given her morning of being so watched by the island ponies, but only her and Till had been there for the orchard tour, and Till had kept his nose down in the notes or up in the trees.

It had been the most unplaceable sense of nakedness she had ever felt, like being caught on the unplowed fields of a haunted farm without her hat.

"Still," Till broke into her thoughts, "I don't think we'll be at a loss if you want to give this guy a buck. He's the grumpiest and unfriendliest of all the trees. He despises us and has never dropped even one good fruit."

"There you go with them personality words again. (One to talk, but still, you know what I mean.)"

The orange pony tipped her hat up and looked at the tree another time.

And if it wasn't the darnedest thing, the tree was staring right back.

Or it felt like it. For just a moment she shivered from the cold.

"I'll give it a shot, so long as you're sure," Applejack said.

"Maybe just a gentle hit," Till gestured to the gnarled roots and loosely clinging bark. "I'd like to keep him around if only for more experimentation. The lovebirds didn't work to bring him around at all—he detested them more than anything—but maybe something else will finally make him useful."

"Alright then."

Applejack turned herself around and backed herself into bucking position. But then she stopped, stayed thoughtful for a pause, and suddenly flipped forwards again. In no small amount of courteous caution she grabbed her hat and held it politely to her chest, then spoke to the tree.

"Ain't nothing personal, sir. Only like a fruit or two, if you'd be so generous."

Hat atop and turned around again, the orange pony let go a shallow breath to keep her strength low and then tucked her legs.

Buck.

She gave the easy hit to just Kicks (Bucky had been a little sapthirsty last harvest season and still needed time to mellow), and it was hardly a tap more than pushing open the barn door.

Two weak snaps came from above as the buck popped free some fruits from their vines. A third vine jostled loose from the branch it had been so ambivalently clinging to, and at the bottom of its swing there was a flicking crack; yet it held. The corcandeo fruit at the end dangled by its split stem, and its ugly skin sagged enough to let it slosh about like a wrinkly water balloon. The two fruits which had dropped immediately turned into a sour smelling mush when they crashed, splitting apart and spilling their insides over the grass.

"Soft as summer cream," Applejack clicked dismally.

"Yeah, no surprise," Till sighed. "A good fruit has all the heft and strength and bounce you would imagine. This is an ordinary failure. Shame you didn't get to see one of the spectacular ones, like when the skin boils."

Applejack grimaced quickly in response and then moved on and brought her nose low to one of the piles of pulpy goo. She sniffed.

"Don't taste it!" Till quickly warned, popping with a spontaneous urgency.

"I'm curious, but I ain't that curious," the farm pony raised an eyebrow at her islander friend.

She returned to the ruined fruit and gave a few more sniffs. There was nothing unfamiliar. It smelled the same as any rot. Though by the height of the sting in the scent she might have expected it to have fallen days ago, not moments.

She poked her nose just a bit closer to try for one last big sniff when a sudden small splash came from the goop pile and caused her to flinch.

Two flies burst from the remains and buzzed off right past her face, ramming each other constantly as they flew away.

"Fruit flies got in, I reckon."

But, in a doubt so serious it was absurd, Till mused, "Probably."

A buzzing sound shortly returned and Applejack tossed her head about, ready to swat as soon as she could lock onto the target. But the buzz fast rose to a roar which was much too loud to be any fly, and more clearly sounded from behind her. She turned just in time to see a streak of rainbow come in low through the lined trees of the orchard and air-brake hard only a short toss from her and Till.

"Hey, you made it," Till greeted Rainbow Dash, stepping towards her.

"Huh?"

The pegasus was startled out of wherever her head had been just moments before, and she looked back up into the sky. Another pegasus—one who had been tailing her in a race—floated gently above, having not followed her down. He was none too far but well enough out of conversation range.

Till looked up at Nosedive also and gave him a thank-you wink.

"I'd hoped to get you out here," he then said to Rainbow Dash, welcoming and casual.

"Uh... Yeah... Alright..."

The pegasus landed and brought in her wings. Every slow step of it was cautious, and she took in her surrounding suspiciously.

It didn't take her long to spy Applejack, and immediately her wings came back out.

"Whoops. Made a wrong turn somewhere," she muttered bitterly.

"No, wait, please stay," Till pleaded. He invited Applejack over as well.

Reluctantly Rainbow Dash folded her wings.

"Alright. But what's this about?"

Applejack wasn't any more enthused, and as she stepped into place across from the pegasus she moaned to Till, "Why do I get the feeling you're about to tell me something I ain't gonna like."

The chocolate pony, feeling like a referee between two fierce-eyed players in a face off, explained, "I'm just trying to help. I promise. I want everypony to have a happy vacation, and beyond."

"You set this up then?" Applejack asked.

"Yeah."

Rainbow Dash groaned.

"Super," she swirled a hoof in mock celebration. Then she dropped Till a flat stare. "Seriously, why do you care?"

"I mean it," he insisted. "I just want to make everypony happy. Applejack: you helped me out by encouraging me to try harder to mend things with my dad. I realized just how right you were, when I was inside working on a letter to him today. I realized how much I miss him, despite everything we always disagreed about, and for the first time I think I really grasped how it probably felt to him when I decided to stay here, like I was abandoning the family and everything he had always hoped for in me. And while maybe I can't live the life he planned for me... I can plan my life with him still in it. If I don't close him off."

He gave a heartfelt bow of thanks to the farm pony.

"I want to help you in the same kind of way. So I got a little bit of help from a friend so I could have you both here to try and work things out."

Applejack was genuinely moved, but nevertheless she sighed, "That's sweet and all, Brown Sugar... but like I said, ain't nothing to work out. Just got to wait for Rainbow here to get right."

"Me? As if! I'm the right one! You're the one whose... uh, you know... left!"

"There's that stellar intellect at work, as always, Rainbow."

"Well, you're-!"

"Ladies, please," Till intervened. "You both need to speak your piece, but you won't be able to if you're always at each other so quickly. Let me mediate. Is that alright?"

He looked between them for approval but didn't get much more than dour glares and cold shrugs.

"Right." He took a hopeful breath. "Why don't you go first, Rainbow Dash? I haven't heard the story from your side yet."

"What's to hear-," Applejack began to gripe, but held her tongue when Till politely hushed her, giving an earnest look.

Rainbow Dash skewered her counterpart with a much less courteous look, but then she actually did stop and think about what she wanted to say. She looked about. She stamped the ground lightly. She unfolded and refolded her wings.

At last she opined rather wearily, "Applejack used to be a lot more awesome."

This time Till preemptively motioned for Applejack's respectful silence, catching the farm pony as she already had her mouth halfway open.

Leading Rainbow Dash, the chocolate stallion asked, "And what changed?"

"She just doesn't want to hang out anymore," said Rainbow Dash, and she turned openly hurt and sour, "and she lies about it, too."

That affront was too far, and Till didn't have any power to stop the farm pony from boiling over.

"Now just wait a cotton-pickin' minute! Don't you go spreading lies about my behavior!"

Any injury Rainbow Dash had been showing flew right out the window, and she snapped back, "Oh, I'm the liar now? So what, are we just here for another round of I Know You Are But What Am I?"

"That was your line last time."

"There you go again!"

Till beseeched them both, "Wait, wait! Please! I know there's hard feelings, but you both need to tough it out and listen."

"I'll listen when Applejack does!" Rainbow Dash sneered.

"She did! (For a little bit, anyway)," Till reminded her.

The farm pony crowed, "There! Ya see!"

"Oh, yeah, what a champ listener! ‘Applejack wins again,’ huh? And you call me competitive."

"What now?! I ain't on my high horse like somepony here!"

"Coulda fooled me!"

"Please, please!"

Desperately Till begged them for peace, and he had to hold Rainbow Dash back from marching up into Applejack's face. As soon as the pegasus relented, still growling, he had to turn and give the fuming farm pony the same restrictive treatment.

He implored, "Both of you! Settle! Please! And Applejack, I can't believe how clearheaded you seemed about all this last night! But now Rainbow Dash has been here for only a minute and you can barely control yourself!"

She scowled.

"I'm fed up, is all, and frankly I ain't going to take it no more."

"Yeah," Till argued, humble and polite and sincere and hopeful and caring as he could possibly be, "but she is one of your best friends, right? Even if it's difficult, it's worth-"

"I respect ya for what you're trying to do, but I didn't ask for your help, Brown Sugar."

There was enough careless acid in her words that it stung the chocolate stallion into silence.

Applejack felt some of her own venom also, and the bad taste nudged her into a slack concession, "She is one of my best friends. I don't enjoy being at loggerheads one bit. That's why I wish she'd get over this quicker and jus' apologize."

Simple words, like dominoes.

Rainbow Dash furiously moaned, "What? You're the one who should apologize to me!"

"Like hay! For what?!"

"How about avoiding your friends, spoiling their vacation, and—oh yeah!—not being honest with them about it!"

"You winged weasel! You're the one what's causing all the trouble! Beanstalk's got you all riled up and it's intolerable!"

"James? What?! Oh, wait, I get it! Of course it has to be somepony else's fault somehow! No way could honest Applejack be the problem!"

For not enjoying being “at loggerheads,” both ponies didn't hesitate to grind their foreheads into each other. This time Till was too despondent to get in their way.

"I didn't say nothing like that!"

"Uh, yeah, you did! Like, right now!"

"No! I'm saying you're a bucking bronco and he ain't helping!"

"Yeah, that's totally not blaming somepony else at all!"

"Gr! Well maybe it ain't my fault! Ever think about that?!"

"Only every time you've lied to me!"

"Thick-skulled ninny!"

"Stuck up hat-head!"

"Blue brat!"

"Orange farmer!"

"Slouch grouch!"

"Lame brain!"

The back and forth, increasingly playground-grade verbal fencing, complete with pushing this-way and that-way into each other like a metronome, escalated rapidly into a shower of shouted spit for the grass below. At fever pitch it was finally Applejack who had enough. She suddenly backed away, leaving Rainbow Dash to almost tumble, and she pulled her hat on tight enough to almost rip the brim from the top. With a small, dismissive kick of dust from the ground she turned about and angrily hiked away through the orchard.

"If I don't see you again on this vacation it'll be too soon!"

"Suits me!"

Rainbow Dash turned around as well and popped her wings, but then she slumped for a moment.

"... Whatever...," she mumbled.

And off she flew. Quickly she linked up with Nosedive who had been waiting for her in the air and she didn't hesitate to snort steam about the whole affair to him as they glided away, no race this time.

Till ambled a few weary steps about, head down, until in sad frustration he dashed a hoof hard through one of the rotting piles of corcandeo fruit. He gave a hot sigh.

His eyes were still sunk into the grass when he heard a hard plunk.

A healthy looking piece of corcandeo rolled to a short stop just a step away from him. It was full and heavy, not at all like the sagging fruit which the disagreeable tree had always grown. The pony looked up to see the hanging vine from earlier, which had almost rewarded Applejack's buck with a third fruit, and it was now empty, swinging softly with the breeze.

But more spectacular than that, all of the fruits in the tree looked a little firmer and hardier than only minutes ago.

Aghast, Till glanced nervously at Applejack's backside and the harsh stomps she made as she blew past tree after tree, and also at the departing silhouettes of the pegasi as one of them flapped their wings with claps of storming thunder. And after a few curious, neck-jerking looks between them, he stared again at the tree.

Pondering.

Mystified.

Serious.

Till took several more steps around the immediate area, peeking past the other trees, watching Applejack disappear, and verifying that he was totally alone.

"Stupid tree!!"

He suddenly rammed a shoulder right into the trunk of the troublesome tree, and he clawed at the bark with one of his hooves, tearing some off.

"You're such garbage! Do you know how much trouble you are?! You're worthless! I wish you were never planted in this orchard!"

More tearing, both hooves this time. Harder strikes with his body.

"I'm so tired of putting up with you! You're the worst tree here, you make everypony furious, and I don't think we're going to bother keeping you around anymore! You stupid—"

Bam.

"—useless—"

Bam.

"—waste of wood!"

Bam!!

Teeth clenched and fire now pouring from his eyes, Till turned his tail to the tree trunk.

"I hope you fall and rot!!"

BOOM!!

He wasn't sure he had ever delivered so hard a buck in his life. It actually cracked the trunk, if only a little.

For what was only an experiment, he was impressed with how well he could trick himself into being so genuinely angry. It was easier with this tree, a real source of some of his frustration. All the trick took was opening the valve a little and shutting out the many voices of his better angels.

He had worn such a true mask of fury that he would have needed several minutes to cool and ease out all the tension he had built up, except the rainfall of corcandeo shocked it right out of him.

Scores of fruit fell, more than he could immediately count at a glance. The entire tree might have emptied. None of them—not a single one—smashed into the earth. They all struck with hard thuds and small bounces, each surviving intact.

Trepidatiously Till approached the nearest fruit and, not daring to pick it up, he rolled it about the ground to get a good look at it.

Not a bruise anywhere. The skin was colorful and healthy, not to mention shining and tight. Normally he was very happy, and more so lucky, to collect a piece of fruit that looked half that good.

He pressed his hoof down, pinning the corcandeo tightly to the ground.

He gave up one nervous breath.

Then he quickly used another hoof to rip the fruit open.

The seeds inside were vibrantly pulpy, glistening in beautiful colors he didn't even have the words to describe.

It was the single healthiest, juiciest corcandeo he had ever seen.

The shock was enough to make him jump back, and he stared at the fruit with one leg up before his face as if he needed to protect himself. The leg didn't drop, not even when his mind finally came back to him and he looked around to see if anypony else had seen him.

He left without bothering to have gathered up any of the corcandeo. It stayed right where it had fallen; every piece, including the one he had torn open. He had many backwards glances for that one especially as he briskly walked away, terrified.

---

Warmth. Even, snug, wholesome. Warmth over every limb and tucked into every fold.

From sun.

From sand.

The first touch to every part of his body was pure warmth, and it roused him slowly. Almost imperceptibly, the man found himself awake again, steeped in a bath of easy, simmering joy.

He was still on the beach. By the position of Celestia's timely sun it was close to midday but couldn't have been past noon yet. And in taking in the world, at last other feelings broke through to him besides the massage of warmth: the moving breezes, the salt of the sea, the brightness pressing on his eyelids, the stiffness in his back...

Then another particular sensation, right on the top of his hand resting on his chest:

The soft, gentle strokes of a hoof.

More subtle touches awoke: down his side, along his other arm.

Prism was still besides him, closer than ever. One hoof rested on top of his hand, the bracelets dropped against his chest but delivering not one tickle of cold. Much of her body was pressed up to his side. And for his part James had at some point dreamily draped his other arm loosely around her, as if she had fallen accidentally into his sleeping embrace.

Each tender breath of hers moved into him through every place where they touched, and the lowest whispers of her napping voice spoke louder delight than any words of celebration.

Earthly paradise.

Though not quite heavenly paradise.

The flavor wasn't like the magical aftertaste of the bizarre night he had experienced. Whatever his unremembered dream had been, in it there had been so much... perfect harmony... that it had left him exhausted.

Softly he turned his hand over and held Prism's hoof, and he sent a small shake up her leg. She woke quickly and easily, perhaps having been no more asleep than he had been.

"Almost lunch, I think," James said.

"You're hungry?"

"No. But maybe I will be by the time it's ready."

She smiled and with a shift of her body reminded him of her closeness. It was only several seconds, but a whole happy day passed.

At last she reluctantly disentangled herself and stood up, rolling and twisting out the few kinks the nap had put into her.

Looking up at her now, James saw something entirely new. Physically she was all the same as before; all the same as every pony he had ever seen before: a cute critter of an almost silly build, pulled straight from the imagination of a child; a little girl's lifelike toy which walked and breathed. But this time... this time... all those lines, and those shapes, and those motions...

She was a woman.

Of a different form undeniably, but strip away the insignificant and there it was: the undefinable, organic beauty of a woman.

Even the bed head on the side of her mane was now beyond adorable and into beauty.

She invited him up with just a look.

Her eyes. The color in her cheeks, joined together across her nose.

"Give me a minute," he said, and he did roll himself up into a sit and start to stretch.

"I'll get things ready," she offered.

He nodded and promised to be right after her, and away she went, too excited to have remembered to grab her towel and other things. Her body bounced all the way, and many times she looked irresistibly back at him.

And he, of course, watched her the whole way, too excited to have continued his stretches. Frozen, gripping his elbow pulled incompletely across his chest, he watched every effect her steps had on the whole of her: the floating of her bracelets, the churning in her hips, the swipes of her tail...!

The man didn't rightly know what had changed. He wasn't any different than he had been before. There wasn't anything left behind in him from the colorful, queer episode he had maybe-experienced over the night.

But nonetheless it had provided him with a new perspective. One which had him easily questioning his overly cautious defenses. One which had him easily doubting his overthought fears. One which had him wondering why he had ever clung to such ridiculous and painful restrictions.

And, feeling that new freedom, taking full control of all his faculties better than he ever had in his entire life, he watched the mare walk away and he made a simple and solid decision in his head. In fact, it didn't seem to surprise him at all how swiftly and simply the choice came to him. How suddenly and completely he settled on it. There wasn't even the tug of a flea in regret.

He was going to kiss her.

If the right chance arose then, by Celestia, he wasn't going to wait and was going to kiss her.

Comments

[Zurock]

You look and, like that 1/255 item drop at the end of a battle, you unexpectedly find a new chapter!

Just a quick thank you to everyone who reached out through private messages during the long break where I wasn't doing much writing. It was good to talk to you! Hearing from some of you was indeed encouraging with respect to getting more Necessary Love done. There's a lesson: just because you won't always get your way, never let anyone tell you that your voice and your words aren't important. The things you say have meaning and worth, for good or for ill, so say them and say them well!

[KnightOfZaku]

9010590
You're quite welcome. I admit that for a while I didn't review new chapters on my favorite stories when they were updated. I believed that it didn't matter what I thought and that simply liking and favoriting the story was enough. However after seeing so many great stories cancelled because their authors believed no one cared. I now make sure to let them know that great stories like yours are loved and that there is always someone eagerly awaiting the next update.

[DnDBrony]

Hey, very happy to see a new chapter of this story. You're a very talented writer, Zurock.

[paladinwolf]

This story updating always makes me smile

[Neverborn]

Yay, an update, and a good one, thank you!

[Mr cold ghost]

Thanks for the update!

[Truthseeker]

An interesting development to say the least. Not something I was expecting and the ramifications are puzzling. I am not yet certain enough to discern what these developments could mean, but there is obvious significance here in this chapter. I eagerly look forward to reading more.

On a different note, this story needs a LOT more Likes, Faves, and views.

[Zurock]

9043905

On a different note, this story needs a LOT more Likes, Faves, and views.

Thank you for the kind wishes! And thank you for reading! Very interesting to hear your thoughts and interpretations of things.

[KvAT]

By all accounts, this was (is, if you're still planning on continuing) a glorious series. The psilosophical discussions, the side plots, the introspective moments, the fracture in friendship and subsequent attempts of duct taping it back together, and that sax discussion. I love how it's not Princesses-centric like a lot of HiE/isekai fanfics turned out to be, and how the problems discussed are actually quite realistic as far as depression and castaway-related psychological changes go. A quite a few chapters, especially in NL, is a bit padded and drug-out like dough under a rolling pin, but otherwise entertaining. Though I still like the conversation-log thematic from the previous two better, the cultish love hotel whatevers' story is really good too.

So, are you on hiatus?

[DnDBrony]

10328687
I think we can safely say this story is abandoned, since the author hasn't logged on since October 2018, almost 3 years ago. That's a shame, because this series has been one of my favorite, and the latest story I really wanted to see where it went. I particularly liked the scene where the human breaks out two dozen euphemisms for sex and the ponies slowly catch onto what he is referencing with growing horror. Oh, and the scene where Twilight finally works up the courage to talk about the subject, as her curiosity wars with what sure seems to be some sort of magical compulsion to evade the subject.