//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 // Story: Princess Cadance's Lonely Hearts Club Land // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// The first sign of impending doom was a squirgle sound that came from deep within Crop Duster’s innards. That is to say, a squishy-gurgle sound of terrifying, epic proportions could be heard, like the territorial utterances of a frustrated cave troll. This made her come to a sudden, abrupt stop, and panic could be seen upon her face. Not only did she stop, but so did most of the crowd around her. Many eyes blinked with terror. “What are y’all looking at?” Furious asked. “Ain’t a one of y’all done been learnt that it’s rude to stare? What’d yer mothers say? Go on, get, afore all of y’all have to learn how to eat corn on the cob with no fronkin’ teeth!” This got the crowd moving again, and Furious too, kept going, pulling his bride along with him by wrapping his wing around her neck. She stumbled a bit, still startled by the crowd’s reaction to Furious’ scolding, and it took her a moment to recover enough to follow her husband. But follow she did and she pulled in close to his side, slipping her back beneath his protective wing. His sudden movements caused his satchel to slap against the base of his neck and he hurried his mare alongside him to get through the worst of the crowd. His goal was the telegraph office, because both he and Crop Duster had some good news to relate. Not much scowled like an irritated dustpuncher; coyotes ran, vampiric jackalopes considered their next act carefully knowing that weaker prey could be found elsewhere, and most of the prairie apex predators suddenly remembered that they had pressing business to attend to in distant regions, or perhaps a family reunion that they had forgot to mark on their calendar. Keeping pace beside him, Crop Duster said, “I don’t know if I should say something about you being mean or if I should kiss you for what you’ve done… you’ll probably never understand what that just did for my confidence. Thank you, Furious, I mean that.” “Don’t mention it,” Furious replied as the crowd cleared before him like magic and ponies scattered like chastised chickens. “After we get done at the telegraph office, I’d like to go back to my hotel room for a bit, if you don’t mind. I’m starting to cramp up pretty bad and I’m going to need a little downtime so I can rest. I hope you can be patient with me.” “It’ll be fine.” Furious grunted response was somehow reassuring and relief could be seen on the face of the mare sheltered beneath his wing. “Are you gonna make it to the telegraph office? We can skip that if’n we need to.” “I should be fine, but if the lines are super long, we might want to skip it.” “Sounds like a plan, Dusty.” The telegraph office wasn’t anywhere near as busy as Furious expected it to be and he reasoned that most of the newlyweds were still celebrating. He was a bit worried because Crop Duster had a distressed look about her, a mix of panic, fear, and doubt. She lived in fear of the dragon, and it’s dreadful shadow could be seen in the expression on her face. When she got busy writing, so did he, and he scratched out a message to Braeburn first. Braeburn, I done got myself hitched to a looker. She likes my mustache. I done lucked out. With that one done, he started another. Cloud Cusser, Ma, I done quit dustpunching and got married. She’s a looker and quite a bit smarter than I am. Don’t get killed. And then, the last. Tempest Tirade, Auntie, I done quit dustpunching and got married. She’s a looker and quite a bit smarter than I am. Send help, in over my head, need that talk about mares you kept threatening me with that I kept running away from. Don’t laugh. I’m right confused and I need help. Straightforward and to the point. Furious nodded, approving of his own actions, and then watched as Crop Duster scrawled out many tiny letters on her message slip. From the looks of it, she was writing out her whole life story so it could be sent by wire. She still smelled good, but Furious wanted a better sniff. Hesitating, he wasn’t quite sure what to do, but then realised that she was his to sniff. Leaning over, he pressed his snoot into the wild, riotous curls that graced her neck, and drew in a long inhale, filling his nose with the scent of something flowery and feminine. Like almost everything else, this made her giggle and she turned to scold him with a wide smile. “Stop that! I’m trying to write and what you’re doing is distracting! That mustache tickles!” “I’ll keep that in mind when I sniff other places,” Furious remarked. Crop Duster’s eyes went wide, her mouth dropped open, and she stood in shock for a short time, that was until she began to chortle. Her mouth closed, her lips pressed tight, and she sniggered while a powerful blush turned the olive pelt of her face and neck a ruddy brown. For a moment her lips puckered in a most flirtatious way, her cheeks drew tight in an inviting suggestion of suction, and then she said, “Behave yourself, Mister Mustache.” “Only if it suits me,” he replied and he leaned in again for another sniff. Stomping her hooves, Crop Duster was forced to write out her message while enduring dreadful distraction. The hotel room was a modest, respectable room and Furious stood just inside the door to have a look around. It was a single occupancy room by the looks of it, with a bed that would be a tight squeeze for two. Beside him, Crop Duster groaned and then pushed past him. Unable to help himself, he watched the gentle sway of her hips as they rocked from side to side. “You okay, dear?” he asked and his words held a sincere warmth that surprised him. “Having a rough go at it,” she replied. “Sometimes this happens when I eat something after not eating for a day or two. The cramping is getting pretty bad, but I have a lot of practice with hiding it.” She made a slow turn and faced Furious, who still stood by the door. “Well, I suppose I should say make yourself at home. I’m really nervous right now, and scared, and I keep thinking about what my mother said about never going to a room alone with a stallion that’s a stranger, and I’ll be honest, the entire walk through the lobby and up the stairs and down the hall, I was terrified about being in a room with you, but I feel really bad about being so scared because so far, you’ve been a perfect gentlepony, except for when you distracted me while I was trying to write that telegram.” “You think I’d do something bad?” Furious blinked and then his head cocked off to one side. “You know what, don’t answer that. I’d rather that you be cautious. You were right to be concerned.” While he spoke, his mustache quivered and his surviving amber eye held a focused intensity. “I don’t really know what happens next,” she admitted, and then for a moment, she chewed on her lip once more out of nervousness. Ears perking, she shook her head a bit, looked Furious up and down, and then her eyes settled on the floor. “I’ve only ever read about, uh, marital relations and what not in bad bridle ripper books. Did a lot of reading about ravishing and all of the standard fare of what happens in those books… about how it hurt and how awful it was at first but then the mare was made to like it even though she didn’t want it to happen at first and… and… and the point is my head is probably all filled with nonsense and to be truthful I really don’t know what to expect from a stallion.” “Uh-huh.” Furious heaved a sigh and stared at his bride with a slack-jawed expression. “Not all that long ago, when I was feeling desperate and unwanted, I’d have fantasies about being ravished without really even understanding what it was. Furious, I was lonely. I spent my teenage years practicing making nests that I knew would stay empty. I read trashy, awful romance novels by the score and I kept them all hidden away so my mother and father wouldn’t find them.” Lifting her head, Crop Duster built up her courage until she could look Furious in the eye. “Ayup.” Also nervous, Furious popped his lips once, then twice, and then he began to nod. “I understand a powerful loneliness, I really do, and I ain’t saying that to be all patronising. I’d watch the mares get together to bathe in the river and I’d be up in my clouds just jerking off till I almost didn’t have skin no more.” Hearing this, Crop Duster’s mouth fell open and her eyes went wide with shock. After a moment of stupefied silence, she managed to say, “Wow, this is awkward.” “What, you think you’re the only one who’s lonesome and desperate? Ain’t that the point of these here blindfold marriages?” Furious took a few steps forwards towards Crop Duster and she took a few steps backwards. “Once, Braeburn and I took off to Las Pegasus. We watched one of them dirty movies in one of those disreputable theatres on a lark. Half the damn audience had to be jerkin’ their gherkin. I took off and left, but Braeburn decided to stay and watch, ‘A Day in Brownie’s Bakery.’ I know what my best friend did in there once I was gone.” He took another step forwards and she took another step back. “What made you leave?” Crop Duster asked in a voice that made her sound like a schoolfilly once more. “Well, for one thing, it stunk like mushroom soup in there.” Furious’ lip curled back in disgust and he took another bold step forwards, which was matched by the mare in front of him taking another step backwards. This time, her backside bumped up against the bed and she let out a startled squeak. “You keep backing up—” “I keep thinking about ravishing.” For a brief second, all of Crop Duster’s maturity left her and she looked like a filly lost in the throes of adolescence once more. Her tail quivered and shook against her legs, her wings jerked against her sides, and her tongue made a few quick circuits while she licked her lips. “I thought to myself how my hymen is in grave danger right now and how I won’t have it much longer, if you really want to know. At some point very soon, in the very near future, I am about to grow up and be a mare and I’ll have to put all the foalish stuff I still do behind me. My life is about to change in scary ways. I won’t be able to rub my nub in the shower and scream out all of the names of the colts that I had wished would’ve fronked me. If I read trashy romance novels, you’ll probably catch me. I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t think I’d go through with this. I was pretty certain that I would back out, but I didn’t. I was convinced to stick it out and now, there’s you…” Furious waited, silent. “I didn’t expect you to happen. You’re nothing like what I thought I wanted or expected. You… you’re everything I didn’t know I wanted… everything I didn’t know I was missing out on. I didn’t think this would work out and so I am really not prepared to give up how my life was… but…” “But?” One word repeated became a heartfelt question. “But I want to go through the trouble anyway. I want my life to change… and then… and then… and then… I’m going to do something crazy! Yeah, that’s it, I’m going to do something crazy!” “And what will you do?” Furious asked, intrigued, and maybe even a little aroused by the sounds of her heavy breathing. “I’m going to… I’m going to write my own romance novel, only it won’t be trashy! It’ll be about real ponies falling in love and there won’t be any of that ravishing nonsense in it! It’ll have feelings, and romance, and the characters will be more than the torrid, lusty representations of themselves on the cover. The mare will express how scared she is, she’ll think about how vulnerable she feels, and she’ll be a character I can be proud of creating because she won’t contribute to sexual anxiety and unnecessary fears of stallions.” “Well, yer a little firecracker, ain’t ya?” Furious took another step forwards, but there was nowhere left for Crop Duster to retreat to. “It’s silly, all of the stuff going through my mind, especially the parts about my hymen being in danger… you see, that’s all the protagonist in the romance novel keeps thinking about… she worries and she frets about it and she sweats and agonises and shivers and there is so much buildup and anticipation leading up to that moment and I’ve read so many of those filthy, smutty books that now I’m starting to think like a mare trapped in a romance novel.” “Yer silly.” “I am silly!” Nervous, barking laughter came forth like a flood along with a terrible case of the crazy eyes. “When I write my book, it’ll be about a sheltered filly from a farming community falling in love with a grizzled dustpuncher and I’ll write about all of the positive feel-good stuff and she’ll think about how safe she feels because he’s shown himself to be a stallion of good character. She won’t worry about her hymen being in danger, no, she’ll think about her hymen bursting with anticipation… wait, that… that doesn’t sound quite right.” Now blinking, Crop Duster stood there with unfocused eyes, trying to recollect and reestablish her thoughts. “While you sort yourself out, I am going to take a shower.” Chuckling to himself, Furious trotted away with a broad grin.