Nothing felt right about being home again and Buttermilk was lost in her own thoughts. Her mother had given them the guest room and then she had winked. Winked. It was bad enough to make Buttermilk wonder if her mother was a changeling. Nothing felt right and her mother was a stranger… her mother wasn’t her mother. It seemed as though the dynamic had been altered and Buttermilk just wasn’t ready for such drastic changes.
She didn’t know how to feel about sleeping with Copperquick to begin with, but doing so in her parents house was almost too awkward to bear. They had slept together a few times, innocent sleep, both having fallen asleep on his couch together and there were times they had slept in his bed with Esmeralda tucked between them. Even worse, she longed for those blissful moments, the closeness, the intimacy, the affection, but everything felt so complicated. It didn’t feel prim, nor proper, and there was just something about it that felt so very… wrong.
Pressing her lips together, Buttermilk turned to look at the bassinet in the corner of the guest room where Esmeralda slept. Fetched from her old room, the bassinet filled Buttermilk with vivid memories of tucking her stuffies in and then kissing them goodnight. Not long ago, she had lain the slumbering foal into the bassinet, tucked her in, and kissed her. Esmeralda hadn’t even woke up.
Something that was almost a smile appeared upon her lips when she heard the sounds of Copperquick singing in the shower. Things had been hard for him—being evicted had crushed him—but the sounds of him singing were a sure sign that he was feeling better enough to do something super-embarrassing.
“Drink a little buttermilk, Buttermilk?”
Startled, she tucked her tail between her legs as her head swiveled around to look at her mother, who stood in the door. Her mother had some unreadable expression upon her face and Buttermilk just didn’t know how to handle her mother right now, at all. Nothing made sense. Turning about, she flicked her tail to fluff it back out and ambled in her mother’s direction while thinking about what to say.
“I am having some trouble with the fact that you seem to be encouraging Copperquick and I to sleep together,” Buttermilk confessed to her mother in a muted whisper. “You said some things… some truly terrible things… bad things about birth control and premarital sex, and you had this whole spiel about doing the right thing, and I guess none of that matters now? Is that it?”
“Things are different now. You’ve grown up. You’ve become responsible. You’ve done all of the right things and you are in a position now to keep doing the right thing. You are managing a career, a relationship, and you are fulfilling the role of a mother. You might as well enjoy the rewards and benefits of being in that position with everything you’ve accomplished.”
This response did not satisfy and Buttermilk scowled. Looking into her mother’s eyes, she saw her own bespectacled reflection and the intensity of her own discomfort. “Moomy, I—”
“Oh, come off it,” Butter Fudge whispered. “I thought you were supposed to be smart. You went off to college—”
“University.”
“Right, university and yet your head is still stuffed full of clouds. You’re killing me, Beezy. I want you to think about the fact that our anniversary and your birthday are five months apart.”
Gasping, Buttermilk’s lungs inflated with far too much air—so much so that it stung—and then everything came out in a huff. She started to say something, but the words were lodged in her throat like a salty corn nut that refused to go in either direction. Sweat poured from her wingpits and soaked into her cardigan, forcing her to wonder just how ripe she was from her travels.
“I had a farm,” Butter Fudge whispered to her daughter. “I had this farm. I had this house. I was established and secure enough that if things didn’t work out between your father and I that I could deal with the consequences. I had the ways and means to take care of you all by myself, if necessary.”
A deep breath was taken, then another, and then more deep breaths were required. Buttermilk closed her eyes and focused on breathing while her heart pounded inside of her throat and the roar of her own blood rushing through her ears made everything else sound distant. The only conclusion that she could reach was that her mother knew what she was doing, and wasn’t the out of touch mare that Buttermilk believed her to be.
“I protected myself and I protected you. It’s a right shame what happened to Ripple Rusher, but I kept it from happening to you. She brought it on herself—”
Eyelids fluttering open, Buttermilk looked into her mother’s eyes once more and replied in a low, hissy whisper, “How is this her fault? What sort of backward thinking is this?”
“What did she tell you?” Butter Fudge asked and she reached out with one foreleg to steady her trembling daughter.
It seemed the upsets of this day would be unending and Buttermilk continued to focus on breathing as the back of her neck grew unbearably hot. She wanted to tear her cardigan off and she now worried about the foul miasma that must surely lurk in her wingpits. Was this rage? Anger? Buttermilk didn’t know. Whatever this feeling was, it was gross and unpleasant.
“Little Ripple Rusher, she got herself on the pill and then she went on a spree.” Butter Fudge backed up into the hallway and dragged her daughter with her. Pulling Buttermilk close, she continued, “One day, she gets her sights set on somepony and she has the brilliant idea to stop taking her pill. It didn’t take long before the consequences manifested. She told her father and expected her father to make a nice little marriage happen, but he didn’t. He tossed her right out and disowned her. The colt she was seeing dumped her and was so scared that he skipped town to go and live with his aunt. Her bright idea caused a lot of upset… ripped apart the community. When she got desperate and scared, she accused Mister Tartan of propositioning her. His wife, Mrs. Spool, very nearly lost her mind and chased Ripple Rusher halfway across the delta threatening to kill her. After that—”
“Okay, I get it,” Buttermilk blurted out, unable to bear hearing another word.
“Now she tells her sob story to anypony that will listen.” Butter Fudge pulled her daughter even closer—doing so until their snoots bumped together—and Buttermilk let out a foalish, fearful squeak as she cowered beneath her much larger mother. “Beezy, I love you more than anything, but I had to keep you safe until you were big enough to look after yourself. This world is not kind to mares, not at all, not even in the slightest. The whole game is rigged against us. Right now, you are free… free to pursue Copper. Not because you have to, or because you are desperate, or because you need him to survive, to work for you, or to provide for you, to keep a roof over your head and keep you fed, because you are capable of doing all of those things for yourself.”
Butter Fudge took a deep breath and with her snoot still pressed tight against Buttermilk’s she continued, “I raised you to be free as a bird, little Beezy. You are beholden to nopony but your own whims and desires. You are free to pursue Copper because it makes you happy. A lot of mares don’t have that luxury.”
“Moomy, I—” Buttermilk’s words were squeezed out of her with a crushing hug and no other words lept up to replace them.
“You have a little filly that calls you ‘Mama.’ That’s the best thing in the world, Beezy. One day, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to pass all of this along to her, and she’ll be a free, independent mare, and the world will be a little better for all of your hard work. But that is your choice to make and I’m not going to tell you what to do.”
Buttermilk wrapped her forelegs around her mother’s neck, squeezed her, and was grateful for all that she had been given. She didn’t care that she might be stinky, at the moment, all she cared about was clinging to her mother once more like she had done when she was young. Her mother was still so big and Buttermilk was still so small, so it was easy to almost imagine that she was a foal again, seeking comfort from her mother.
The hot shower was just what Copperquick needed to set him straight. He pushed his way into the guest room and found Buttermilk standing next to the little decorative bassinet where Esmeralda slept. A quick inspection revealed that the bed had fresh bedclothes and this gave him pause as he took a moment to consider the things that might be done in the bed that might soil the sheets. Not that those things would happen, but Copperquick tried to be polite and he had no idea what the proper etiquette for this situation was.
“You don’t seem like your usual, perky self,” Copperquick whispered.
To this, Buttermilk nodded and replied, also in a whisper, “I am not my usual perky self.”
Lowering his head, Copperquick brought his jaw to rest upon Buttermilk’s back, and then just stood there, feeling the rise and fall of her spine as she breathed. Having just come out of the shower, he couldn’t help but notice that she was just a little stinky—but she had been far, far stinkier, so this was okay. Esmeralda was frequently stinky too, and he didn’t love her any less, but there were times he questioned his own sanity, like when he was faced with a poo-bomb.
Poo-bombs: the terror was real.
“When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to leave home. My parents were stupid and out of touch. This place was a backwater, filled with backwards ideas, and I longed for a more enlightened place, like Canterlot.” Buttermilk sighed and backed away from the bassinet, causing Copperquick’s jaw to slide along her spine.
When her tail brushed up against his forelegs, it was difficult to contain his emotion, his excitement, and he could not deny it: he wanted to feel her back against his belly. It was more than a casual need though, something about it was complicated and more than a little scary. While it had something to do with scratching his own itch, it actually had more to do with making her feel better, communicating and expressing his desire for her while making her feel good at the same time. It was a language that his body understood and he wondered if it was because he was an earth pony or just because he had gone without for quite a long time now.
“Canterlot is just as backwards,” she whispered, shaking her head. “And I wish I had spent more time listening to my mother and what she had to say. I wish I had spent more time searching for the values that I admire in this place instead of dwelling on everything I hated about it. I’m in a weird place, Copper.”
He began to slide his head up along her back, over her withers, her neck, her crest, but she was on to his sly moves and sidestepped away. Now, she was looking up at him, almost smiling, her ear flickering even though he hadn’t chuffed behind it. Not one to be denied, he advanced with scalliwag eyebrows and a hooligan’s look upon his face, which gave away his intent.
Buttermilk suppressed a giggle and then mouthed the word, “No,” while shaking her head from side to side. A little sadness lingered upon her face, but it was fleeing from Copperquick’s goofy expression. Trapped in the corner with the bassinet behind her, there was nothing that she could do.
The kiss—not unwanted—still caught her off guard even with Copperquick revealing his intent. It was the best—and worst—sort of kiss, because he made silly faces and crossed his eyes while doing it, and Buttermilk’s scarcely contained laughter made it almost impossible to get a good lip-lock. Good, delightful, tail-flicking, ear-twitching friction remained elusive and out of reach.
But that didn’t mean that the kiss wasn’t satisfying.