//------------------------------// // Chapter 13 // Story: Spring Broke // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Getting Lost in Equestria: An Essential Slice of Equestricana was a short novella necessary for Copperquick’s passing grade. It was a good book, extolling the virtues and values of small-town Equestria, all of the little places that could be found off of the beaten path. Part travel guide, part history book, part treatise on Equestrian culture, the book was considered a hallmark of unique Equestrian philosophy, enough so that it was required reading in most schools. As vital as it was to read this book and understand it, Copperquick was distracted. Buttermilk was churning butter and it was the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. It was glorious. She had removed her cardigan so it wouldn’t get sweaty and her mane had fallen out of its bun. Up and down she moved, pushing and pumping the shaft protruding from the churn barrel. Brown-black tendrils of her mane clung to her damp, sweaty neck and her fetlocks—which had a tight grip around the wooden shaft—glistened with the moisture caused by her efforts in the springtime sun. For Copperquick, who already fetishised pegasus ponies, this was the sexiest thing he had ever seen. It was the manifestation of a masturbatory spank-bank fantasy that he wasn’t even aware of wanting; a hot, sweaty pegasus farm filly straining away at a device that was in no way phallic. Nope, not at all. All of Buttermilk Oddbody’s frantic, manic energy was being expended with her frenetic, aggressive working of the shaft. Esmeralda too, seemed equally fascinated by Buttermilk’s activities and sat on the porch, watching while gnawing on her hoof. When Buttermilk paused for a moment to wipe her sweaty brow with her foreleg, Copperquick held his breath without even realising that he was doing so because it was the single most captivating thing he had ever witnessed in his short life. She was a perfect, beautiful creature, and it wasn’t just her raw sex appeal that attracted him, but also her joy, the sheer happiness with which she worked. Buttermilk was doing the very thing that she had been marked for and now, it was as if some mysterious, mystical force was rewarding her with ridiculous happiness for doing what she was best at. Overall, it was the most satisfying thing that Copperquick had ever seen. “Like what you see?” “AH-GAH!” At the sound of Butter Fudge’s voice, Copperquick’s forelegs flailed about and his book went flying. Buttermilk, who had no doubt heard his outburst, turned her sweaty head in his direction to have a look and he saw something of a smirk on her face. Copperquick turned his own head to look at Butter Fudge, who had somehow manifested out of the nothing in total silence beside him. “I’m flattered, really,” Butter Fudge said in a low voice. “I worked hard on that. I take a lot of pride in all of the things that I do right. I don’t mind you looking because it seems that you’re willing to do right by her.” “My intentions are good!” Copperquick blurted out as a cold sweat began to trickle down the back of his neck. “Sure they are.” Butter Fudge let out a knowing, husky chuckle, reached out, and gave Copperquick an affectionate poke. “Look at how little Esme watches Buttermilk. It feels a bit a funny to me that Buttermilk is… well, it feels right funny that Buttermilk is that filly’s mum. Now, don’t get upset, it’s just something that it is going to take me awhile to get used to. I like it though, it makes me happy that she found a way to get what she wants in life without compromising her goals.” Copperquick tried to process everything that had just been said and his mind lingered upon the issue of pregnancy, which could really throw a wrench into a mare’s life. He spent a moment trying to comprehend what had been done to Cielo del Este—what he had done to Cielo del Este—and with these thoughts came a stabbing pang of guilt. Not a second thought had ever been spent on the consequences because for him, after having his fun, he had walked away while Cielo del Este had endured eleven months of unpleasantness. What fears might she have had? What doubts? How might she have worried about her own future? Anger—fury—rose in his mind and he thought about Esmeralda. This anger, this fury, it pushed the guilt for what he had done from his mind, but he still felt conflicted in a way that he could not comprehend. Now, everything was muddled in such a way that right and wrong felt like nebulous, unknowable concepts. “There was a time where my intentions might not have been so good,” he confessed in a low whisper to Butter Fudge. “I made a dreadful mistake and the evidence of that is sitting over there watching your daughter. There is no way that I can make things right. I’ve done things that I am no longer proud of, a feeling made worse because of Esme… she’s a filly… and one day, somepony like me might come along and do the things I used to do to her, and that’s how the world is, and I don’t know how to protect her from that, and it scares me, and I lay awake at night thinking about it, and there are these moments that I feel like I am a right shit and I get angry but I don’t know what I am angry with, but I think it is at myself, because I’ve become a hypocrite.” “That’s a mouthful.” Butter Fudge clucked her tongue, then added, “Mmm, mmm, mmm.” The bitterness that welled up within Copperquick could be tasted. “I need to know...” Butter Fudge whispered these words, and there was something dangerous in the soft way she spoke them. “Do you plan to marry Buttermilk?” “I want to,” Copperquick replied without a second’s hesitation, “but I can’t.” “Why not?” There was no anger, no upset in Butter Fudge’s reply, just calm curiousity. Sighing, Copperquick thought about all of the complicated reasons, and began to sort out which ones were most relevant for making a meaningful answer. “For the system to change, and it needs to change, I have to stay single. It’s complicated. I have to appear to be in dire straits… single, homeless, jobless, struggling to get by. These are all conditions that can be exploited—” “So to fix the rules, you have to bend them first?” Butter Fudge asked, and from the way she spoke them there appeared to be no judgment, just curiousity. He nodded. “Yes, I suppose. I find myself in an odd position of having to do contemptible things in order to make things right. I don’t know how I feel about… all… of this just yet. There are so many who try to exploit the system in a bad way for personal gain, I’ve witnessed that. There are those just trying to get help and they are in danger of falling through the many cracks in the system. And now, I am involved in an effort to actively turn the system against itself to see what breaks and it leaves me troubled.” “As it should.” Butter Fudge eased her bulk down to the wooden floorboards of the porch and had a seat. “Any time we take drastic action, we should feel a little antsy about it. We should feel cautious, worried, and anxious. If we don’t feel these things, then perhaps we shouldn’t be the ones taking extreme measures.” “I don’t understand.” Copperquick shook his head, then reached up and brushed his mane out of his eyes. “It’s like… it’s like being a parent… and having to discipline your foal after they did something wrong. You should feel worried and anxious about giving them a spank or any kind of corrective action, really. It isn’t something that you should want to do, and the same can be said for your situation, I think. The law is something that you should care about, so you should feel apprehensive before taking corrective action. Beating a foal senselessly and without feeling is abuse and abusing the law without remorse is hooliganism. I can’t abide hooliganism.” “So, under normal circumstances, you’d be disgusted by what I am doing.” Copperquick glanced over at Butter Fudge, trying to read her face and gauge her reactions. “Yes. Without a doubt. But, I trust my daughter’s canniness and if she says something is wrong, then something is wrong. She’s dumped too much time and money into her education and it would be wrong and disrespectful of me to just dismiss everything outright. So, I find myself in an odd position that I’m not real comfortable with… I have to somehow support her… support the both of you, even though I don’t fully understand everything. I’m not keen on it, but, I’ll confess, I’m keen on the two of you, and I might get a grandfoal out of this, so I’m going along with it.” “That’s…” Copperquick trailed off, not knowing how to finish. “Practical.” Butter Fudge grinned and gave Copperquick a hearty slap on the back that very nearly disconnected every vertebra from one another in his spine. “I’m a practical mare and I look at every single situation and I think about what I might get out of it. Now, that foal over there, she’s cute. I don’t care much where she comes from, so long as Buttermilk loves her, that’s good enough for me. I just want somepony I can spoil rancid now and again.” “So that’s it then… that’s all you care about?” Copperquick asked and he found that he was quite shocked by Butter Fudge’s words, her confession of being out to get whatever she could. “Well, there are hopes and dreams, and then there is what is possible and attainable. I have hopes and dreams of Buttermilk becoming a pretty alicorn princess—I’d like that, I would, I think it would be great. She could be the alicorn Princess of Foal Services and that would suit me fine. I’d go to her coronation and I’d embarrass her in front of everypony. I’d be the hick mother that’d talk too loud and tell funny stories about what she did when she was little.” The big mare’s eyes became misty as she stared over in her daughter’s direction. “Now, as for what’s possible and attainable… odds are good that she’ll have a husband someday soon. This is something I want for her and her having a family seems likely. I want her to be good at her job, and it seems to me that she shows a lot of promise. I want her to be worshipped and adored in the same way that I’m worshipped and adored by Mighty Midge, and that seems like a perfectly reasonable desire that is possible and attainable.” Turning his head, Copperquick focused upon Buttermilk and tried to see her as her mother saw her, and as if by magic, he saw a very different mare working the butterchurn. She was more than a bit of eye candy—more than a hot, sweaty, sexy pegasus that he wanted to do unspeakable things to—more than the object of his desire. She was a vessel of hopes and dreams, a container full of the best laid plans. Buttermilk was a time traveller, prepared and sent out to explore a future that Butter Fudge might not reach. “I think I’ve said enough,” Butter Fudge said as she stood up. “There’s still work to be done. For both of us. You get your nose back into that book and do what needs to be done or you’ll catch a lecture. I’d hate to add that to my to-do list.” Hearing this, Copperquick thought about what Butter Fudge had said about disciplining foals and after a few moments of reflection he came to the conclusion that the big mare—a relative stranger really—must have some sense of affection for him. It confused him, baffled him even, but it also made him feel good. She cared, and it showed. As the big mare strode away, Copperquick’s eyes fell upon Esmeralda, and in much the same way that he had seen Buttermilk in a new light, he now studied his daughter. She too, was a vessel of hopes and dreams, his hopes and dreams, but what hopes and dreams did he have? He didn’t know. Esmeralda was his gift to the future, his time traveller that would brave an uncertain future that he might not see. Within an eyeblink, Esmeralda became infinitely precious to him, a fragile, wonderful, priceless bit of treasure. Copperquick now had a profound understanding of the value of life, and it floored him. It also depressed him, because he realised that others—others such as the pony that he had once been not all that long ago—were cretinous, lecherous perverts that would only see his daughter as something to stick their willies in. He shuddered, overcome with some unidentified emotion from the radical shift in perspectives. He would only walk beside her on this journey for so long, a short precious time. At some point, she would pull ahead and he would be left behind. She would go out and blaze her own trail ahead and he would watch her from a distance measured in a span of age. If all went well, she would find just the right pony to walk with her, and the distance would grow even greater. At some point after a considerable trail had been blazed into the future, old age would slow him down and each step would come slower than the last, while Esmeralda would be picking up speed. She would see a different horizon than he would, she would have the advantage and be able to peer ahead, to peep at a promising future that was beyond him, beyond his reach. Some dreadful day, his step would falter, and advancing the horizon would become impossible… he would have to face a fixed horizon, a finite horizon that would mark his end of days. At some point, he would have to stand in place and watch as those he loved became tiny dots in the distance, and eventually, they would venture so far ahead that he would transition into memory, something discussed and remembered in past tense. This realisation was sobering and Copperquick’s stomach dropped down into his groin.