//------------------------------// // Chapter 14 // Story: Princess Cadance's Lonely Hearts Club Land // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Looking down at the floor, Furious watched as his wife pressed the side of her face against the cool, pale green tiles of the bathroom floor and remembered those moments where he had been in a similar spot. Well, similar to some degree: Appleloosa was a hotter, drier, dustier place and you didn’t want to rub your face against the wooden planks of the outhouse floor. She was sweating, shivering, and whimpering on the floor while clutching at her head. With a groan, she rolled over onto her back and then kicked her hind legs wide open. With one half-extended wing, she began to fan her crotch while squirming. “Everything is too hot down there,” she whined while making a halfhearted effort to wave the heat away. “It’s too hot everywhere. Why do ponies do this to themselves? Why? I’m never drinking again… my mother was right, I have an itch down there and it’s making me feel slimy.” Furious allowed himself a good look down there, a long, lingering look full of longing. She had the goods, alright. Content with only a look, he blinked a few times and then sniffed before he had this to say in a low voice: “I done reckon that drinking must be a bit like making love. The first time, it can be pretty awful, it can hurt and be terrible and ponies might swear off of it forever… but two things are true.” “And what are those?” she asked in a whine while squeezing her eyes shut. “The liquor industry prospers and ponies keep making little ponies.” Furious gave his statement a moment to sink in and then added, “The Mockingbird is a mean one and sometimes don’t play nice. I have experience with that first hand. Now, I ain’t done been bred yet, but I’ve heard powerful embarrassing stories about how it can go wrong and how things can hurt.” When Crop Duster’s parched tongue slid over her dried out lips, she let out a whimper and her eyelids fluttered open. “I’m so hot and I’m kinda thirsty. Help me, Mister Mustache.” “What you need is rain… it’ll set any ailing pegasus straight. Hold on, I know just what to do.” The water sprinkled down from the showerhead in a light, steady stream, and Crop Duster lapped at the cool water as it came down. She was sprawled out in the tub, right where Furious had plopped her, with her back resting against the sloped back end opposite of the faucet. The tub was certainly big enough for two, but Furious was perched atop the toilet seat at the moment, watching as his wife made funny faces while trying to get a drink. “I don’t understand what happened,” she murmured, “I was feeling so good.” “The ‘Bird took a turn on ya and flew south for the winter.” “Well…” Crop Duster panted a few times and then a sharp report of flatulence echoed against the sides of the massive enameled cast iron tub, which provided impressive acoustics. “I was having a marvellous time with you… thank you. Even if we got in trouble. I’ll tell my mother it was all a big misunderstanding so she doesn’t try to kill you.” “Shit,” Furious drawled, stretching out his uttered profanity like taffy and it came out sounding like ‘sheeeeeeeeeit,’ with two distinct syllables. Grimacing, he realised with some dismay that the number of dangerous, life-threatening mares in his life had been doubled. There was a wet slurping sound as Crop Duster peeled her back away from the tub and shifted how her body lay. Spread-eagled, she slid down along the floor of the tub until her crotch was beneath the direct flow of water, and then just lay there, moaning and sighing while clutching her head. Once more, her orange tongue slipped out from between her lips, and she tried catching the falling drops from the shower. It was at this moment that she was perfect, beautiful, and Furious stared from atop the toilet where he sat. The tequila was already wearing off for him and his wisdom made him realise that his bride was going to have a waking hangover, meaning that she would be exposed to the worst of it, rather than sleeping it off. He pitied her, but there wasn’t much he could do except remain by her side. Perhaps that is what Princess Cadance needed to do to encourage newly-wedded couples to get along—have one nurse the other through a hangover. It seemed like a good idea to Furious, but something in the back of his mind—perhaps the crippled and busted up remains of his common sense—nagged at him and suggested otherwise. “Pain scares me,” she whimpered, and the sudden blurting out of her words startled Furious, who was lost in his thoughts. Heaving with effort, she raised one hind leg and rested it against the edge of the tub, leaving herself spread and exposed. “I’ve always lived in fear of it even though I have quite a lot of it. I feel stomach cramps coming on and the anxiety of the pain to come is somehow worse than the cramps themselves. I’m really scared of what my first time with you might be like, because there is so much talk about how it can hurt.” Closing her eyes, she added, “I’m terrified of the pain of foaling even though I would really like to have one. It seems like so many of the best parts of life have pain that comes with them, and I fret over it a lot. I even freak out when getting my hooves trimmed, because I got quicked once and oh goodness, did that hurt and I was lame for half a summer and tender for the rest of that year.” Furious blinked, but didn’t know what to say. “Every time I look at that leg of yours, I cringe. What happened, Furious?” He sighed, then shuddered, not liking the memory. “This was just a few years afore Mount Maud happened… I done reckon that the magic from that area was getting worse, a sign of what was to come. A real big storm blew in from that direction, the kind of storm that can scrub a town off of the map. I was the only dustpuncher in town at that point… and I knew I couldn’t fight it alone, but I was gonna do it anyway. Braeburn and Silverstar was going to get everypony into the mines just outside of town, and I flew off into the storm to buy them the time they needed. To be honest, I didn’t expect to come back.” Wide-eyed, Crop Duster lay in the tub and stared up at her husband while she trembled from pain and fear. “They called that storm ‘Celestia’s Breath,’” he continued and he closed his surviving eye. “That’s how it went down in the history books. It was a witching wind, a perfect storm, a dragon of storms.” While he spoke, his bad leg twitched when the muscles started jerking. “It made it as far as the edge of town and that was where we did battle. It tore up trees, houses, shacks, and it carried a lot of sand… but I wouldn’t turn tail and run away. We fought, butting heads together, and it fought dirty… it picked up the train and started tossing it around.” With a low moan, Crop Duster covered her mouth with both hooves. “I got clipped by the coal car.” Reaching around with his wing, he began to rub his bent leg. “It was only a glancing blow, but it crippled me pretty good. The bones were busted and my leg flapped around like a windsock in the storm. I honestly don’t know what happened after that, my vision got real red-like and I had me a powerful case of the angries, the kind of angries that my dear ma warned me to not get… the kind of angries that my ma told me to never let get the best of me. Well, I done reckon they got the best of me. I dunno what happened, but I woke up in the Las Pegasus hospital. Braeburn said one of the townsfolk found me in the crotch of some tree. The storm was gone, busted up I done reckon, and most of the damage was kept to the edge of town. Nopony knows what happened.” “Oh my gosh, Furious, that’s awful.” Crop Duster’s words were a pained gasp and she moved her front hooves from her mouth to the sides of the tub to grab it. She started to sit up—a titanic effort in her condition and position—and her efforts caused a ringing blast to go reverberating though the cast iron tub. Grunting, she managed to rise into a sitting position and both her eyes squinted from pain. With a startled huff, Furious found himself marehandled by his mare: her hooves dug into his sides, grabbed him, pulled him in just a little closer as she slid him over the smooth surface of the toilet seat, and then she clamped her forelegs around him when he was within reach of doing so. With a flatulent tug, she hauled him from off of the toilet seat, banged him into the hard edge of the tub, and then he spilled over the top and into the tub with her, his joints banging into the enameled cast iron with the sounds of ringing bells. When he tumbled on top of her, the sudden squish caused a thunderous peal of crepitation to go tearing out, and then both of them lay there, breathless, being sprinkled upon by the showerhead. She recovered first and gave him a hug hard enough to make him wheeze; after which, she let him go and helped him to sit up in the tub beside her. Overcome by her efforts, she fell back against the tub, went limp, and then went still. There was a bit of squirming as she situated her legs, placing one on each side of Furious, and then in a moment of realisation, she looked towards the space between her legs. This lasted for but a moment until her eyes raised like two dusky, violet moons, rising slow until she was looking into her husband’s eye. She was vulnerable in this position, and she knew it. Reaching out his hoof, Furious held it out, and it trembled as he positioned it over Crop Duster’s somewhat swollen stomach. As he drew closer, her flesh trembled in anticipation of his touch and she bit her lower lip in expectation of his intimate caress. When he stroked her, both of her hind legs jerked, trying to close together, but with him sitting between them, she was left vulnerable and exposed. Furious too, looked a bit shaky when his hoof began to move in slow circles, kneading Crop Duster’s taut tummy, and he continued to look her in her eye, trying to gage her reaction to what it was that he was doing. His hoof made laps around the cleft of her navel and nowhere else, it did not stray, going lower, but remained where it was. He applied a gentle pressure and his mane began to spill down his face as it became saturated with water. Heaving a huffy sigh, Crop Duster relaxed and went limp, her wings fluttering against her sides as she settled. In reaction to such intimate tummy rubs, her eyes crossed, then closed, and then she sighed once more while a high pitched squeal could be heard escaping from her nethers. Furious’ hoof never faltered and kept making its slow, continuous laps around her navel. “I haven’t given much thought to settling down,” Furious said as he tried to make more conversation, and his words were like flint striking steel in hopes of making a fire. “But I think I’d like that. I’d like to come home to a warm, willing mare and a hot just-cooked supper.” His weatherbeaten eyebrows waggled for a moment, as if they were unable to decide if they wished to go up or down, and then he added, “Of course, I can cook just a little bit myself, and I don’t reckon I’d mind too much having a hot meal waiting for you when you came home after work.” “What can you cook?” she asked and her head rested against the rounded edge of the tub. “Oh, beans mostly,” he replied with a nod. “I can make cornbread and I’m told my apple cobbler is passing fair. I’m used to cooking around a campfire with a cast iron pot. That’s the thing, being a dustpuncher… there’s lots of time when there ain’t no storm. Nothing going on. Just waiting, and the waiting gets right boring. So you do other stuff, at least, us good dustpunchers with respectable reputations, we do other stuff. A bit of everything, really, but we’re always ready to fly off at a moment’s notice.” “That’s so strange to me.” Crop Duster almost sounded sleepy because she was so relaxed and she folded her forelegs over her barrel. “Back in Sterling Gulch, everypony is encouraged to specialise as much as possible, so we spend more time at what we’re good at so we become better at it. Everything is all about maximising yields… everything… it is all about improvement and increased returns. Farmers farm. Carpenters work wood. A farmer is not to help the carpenter, but is to leave him to do his job, so he can become more skilled. If a farmer helps a carpenter, that is work taken away from the carpenter and skill return for labour is potentially lost.” “And that sounds strange to me.” Furious applied a bit more gentle pressure to Crop Duster’s distended tummy, not caring about the consequences. “In Appleloosa, everypony does a little bit of everything.” “Lord Sterling Standard is very strict.” Crop Duster opened one eye, but not the other, and Furious could see that she was trying to focus on him. “He’s been very good to us, but he is also very, very strict. When he came to the valley, it was broke, from what I understand. Bankrupted. This was before I was born. The previous lord had mismanaged the land to the point of criminal neglect. Lord Standard turned everything around and he has a plan. From what I understand, Princess Celestia is watching our community with a critical eye to see if Lord Standard’s ideas will work long-term.” “Huh.” Furious made a half grunt and tilted his head to one side so the falling droplets would land on the sore side of his neck. “It is part of the reason why I needed to find a husband.” Crop Duster’s other eye opened and now she focused on her husband, peering down the length of her muzzle. “It’s all about maximising returns and increasing yields. I have a job already, but now that I have a husband, I’ll start getting a share of the profit generated from the Sterling Gulch Collective Resource Allocation Management Bureau. It will help motivate me to give my all for the greater good of Sterling Gulch, and help me provide for my family, should I start one. I grew up in the system, with parents who benefited from it, so I think it’s pretty great.” Reaching up with one sodden foreleg, she began to rub her temple and her lips pursed from pain. “I don’t understand a word of what you just said.” Furious muzzle contorted in confusion until deep wrinkles appeared above his nose and in the corner of his eye. “The Lord makes a share of his profits available to every married couple. Everypony gets the same amount, no matter what they do, from the street cleaners to the bureau officials. Just about every year, this sum of money grows a little bit larger because of all of our hard work.” She winced and paused for a moment as she rubbed the side of her skull, and squeezed both eyes shut. “My mother and father say we’ve all come together as a community because everypony benefits from cooperation. Good ponies do good, but good ponies that get paid for doing good, do more good than those who don’t.” “A’ight, that makes sense, I reckon. I guess I do better work when I know I’m gonna be paid fair for it.” Furious shifted his weight, but there was nowhere for his hind legs to go, nowhere to spread out. He was trapped doing belly rubs, with no means to get comfortable. Sighing, he settled in for the long haul, determined to do right for his mare. “Oooh, my head's splitting,” Crop Duster whined through her nose. “I wish I had a nice, soothing cup of tea, maybe with a bit of honey and some lemon.” At this, Furious squinted. Tea? Tea? His weatherbeaten lips pressed together into a crinkled line and he suspected that the worst had come to pass: his wife had had one glaring imperfection, it seemed, and he suspected that she was a drinker of tea. He prefered his boiled bean water and this came as quite a blow. Still, she was pretty, he liked her, she was perfect in every other way, and he supposed that he would be able to live with this dreadful drawback, as awful as it was. Perhaps couples counseling was in order, so a tea drinker and a coffee drinker could learn to live under the same roof without squabbling over their choice of hot beverages. It wasn’t too late and no doubt, Princess Cadance would come back to check up on them come morning. For now, he would have to play it cool and hope for the best. Tea was all about drinking flowers and sweetness, while coffee, well, coffee made a body bitter, and Furious liked it that way. “Hang on, Bubble Britches, I’m gonna go and stick my head out the door and ask if I can get you a cup of tea. Hopefully Princess Cadance ain’t there a waitin’ for me to open up the door again. On the odd chance that she is, it was nice knowing ya and I hope that I was a good husband for the short time that we had together.” When he got up to leave, his bride began to giggle while she clutched her temple in pain.