"Where's Applejack?" It was the end of the week, and Rarity was filling in forms for her college application. She looked over the top of it every now and again—at Sonata—and couldn't help but smile.
Fluttershy was likewise working on forms. "H-Have you tried her family's farm? They might have something happening that needs her."
"Let me text her and find out." Reaching to her handbag, Rarity pulled her phone out and quickly began punching in a message, then she erased it when she remembered Applejack's problem understanding perfectly good emoji.
Looking at her phone for nearly a minute in anticipation, Rarity felt a tickle of worry and punched the call button instead. Of course the phone answered immediately and Applejack's voice apologized for not being able to answer. Rarity quickly hung up and looked across the table. "Something's wrong. I just know it."
"You were hiding this." Aria held Applejack's phone in one hand, turning it over and over. "I don't think I've ever had a dog I've had so much trouble with, or that I've enjoyed breaking so much. Defiance is born of anger, and you know what that does for me." Leaning forward, Aria Blaze licked along Applejack's neck and over the steel collar around her throat.
In three nights Applejack had managed two full hours of sleep in total—broken up into 10-min naps. Just as she'd start to drift off, someone would purposefully wake her up again, and it was starting to take a toll on her focus.
Adagio's game had been simple, she'd introduced Applejack to a young man and woman, and their two children, and then had commanded both parents to kill their children if Applejack escaped. But Applejack's forbearance had ended.
Reasoning that Adagio would kill and maim regardless of her being in the sirens' clutches, Applejack stood up and reached to the collar at her throat. "Ah'm done with this crap, Aria. Take your collar and—"
It was time, Aria decided, to test herself. She'd been feeding and feeding on Applejack's anger, and now was the tipping point. "Stop, you know you like it. Give in, don't have to fight it."
The words hit Applejack's weakened mind like a hammer. She stared at Aria, fingers curled around the heavy collar, and her mouth worked but no words came out.
Aria's magic came to life. She felt the too-light choker around her throat gain its old weight, and her song continued for the rapt Applejack to listen to. "Your life's been hard, but I'm here to save you. Let me do the thinking, AJ, I'll remake you."
Swaying slowly, Applejack's eyes focused down to pinpricks as the siren-song worked deep into her mind. She watched Aria Blaze's wings spread behind her, and rejoiced at hearing more words. Something inside her seemed to ball up in a corner of her mind, but that was a tiny part of Applejack.
"Just let me in, and hear me sing; and girl—I'll be your everything."
Looking at the four big kettles, Rainbow Dash tilted her head to the side. There were things she could be doing instead, but here she was in the overgrown back garden of a house on the edge of the forest—naked—watching another naked woman pouring her own breast milk into one of the kettles.
"Is this really how you make cheese?" Rainbow asked.
"Like, yeah. I make a fresh batch every week." Tree leaned over the side of the big pot and scooped a cup of the milk out before tipping in a little jug of water and acid. "Go on."
Pondering the implications of drinking someone else's milk, Rainbow tossed caution to the wind and took the glass. Bringing it to her lips, she took a sip, then another. "It's sweet—like sugar-sweet that is. Is that right?"
"Definitely makes for some awesome cheese. You might want to stand back, I need to light this." Leaning down, Tree Hugger shoved her hand into the dry wood under the kettle and focused her chi. Purple-red flames flared to life from her hand, and when the wood had caught she stood back up to find Rainbow had finished half the glass. "You know, there's a certain amount of karma exchanged when you provide sustenance for someone, and like, this is the most basic and pure way to do it."
Rainbow snorted and, for a moment, considered that everything Tree spoke about might be real. "Does that mean I get negative karma?"
"There's no such thing as negative karma. It's like, imagine it's like the air you breathe, man, it's all good, but what is around you affects how it smells. Doing good stuff for the world makes you soak up the goodness of the karma." Putting her thermometer in the heating milk, Tree stirred it and watched as the heat slowly climbed. "But you know all this. It's like everything you do has this gnarly way of making people happy."
"Well, it kinda helps that I'm surrounded by people who I enjoy making happy." Rainbow felt obliged to down the last of the sweetest milk she'd ever tasted. "Is it meant to boil or somethin'?"
"No, man, just warm up to ninety. Gotta stir it some." Using a long wooden spoon, Tree Hugger did just that. She wanted to make a comment on Rainbow Dash's body, but the truth was Tree was comfortable with the conversation just how it was, and didn't want to press on anything that would make any bad vibes.
Watching the milk swirl in the kettle, Rainbow felt relaxed with Tree. The complete lack of sexual tension had been a big plus in her book. "It's going to take a while with all this, right?"
"Yeah. My fire makes it go faster, but still not, like, instant." Stirring the milk, Tree pondered her new friend. "You're all about speed, right?"
"Thought I was. I guess I am. The rest of the world isn't, though, so I have to be careful what I'm using speed to solve, ya know?" The words would have been horrible to contemplate a year ago for Rainbow, but being in such a large and complex relationship had changed a lot about her outlook on life. "I mean, you can't exactly bake a cake faster, or—make cheese faster, right?"
"Right on."
Tree and Rainbow stood in relative silence for a while, the former stirring the milk and the latter watching it change a little. When the gauge finally read 90, the two worked together to lift the pot off the fire.
"Now for the rennet. I make this myself from thistles." Tree Hugger tipped in a little jar of what looked like water. "Just a bit more stirring annnd…" Reaching down, Tree put the big old lid on the kettle.
"More time?" Rainbow asked.
"Yeah. More time. You want a puff?" Reaching behind her ear, Tree Hugger pulled out one of the little hand-rolled joints that she seemed always able to produce at a moment's notice—even when completely naked.
With a shake of her head, Rainbow reaffirmed her earlier decision not to partake of Tree's little habit. "Nah. I'm good."
Shielding her lips with one hand, Tree flicked her finger to produce a little lick of flame. Just two short, sharp puffs and she had the joint lit. Her first drag of the magic-enriched smoke made her tingle in all the right places.
"Spicy said Thunderbolt lights them sometimes. Does the type of fire matter?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Yeah. It does. Thunderbolt's fire has more spice to it. If you take a hit from a pipe he's lit, you will know it right away. The weed comes on hard and fast and drags you along for the ride of a lifetime." Tree used her hand to light a fire under another of the kettles. "Mine is mellow. The smoke comes in when you want it to and slides up into you like a lover. Like, I almost orgasmed the first time I smoked weed with my own fire. I wonder if it will make the cheese taste different?"
"If there's one thing I've learned about magic, it's that it will affect everything." Nibbling at her lower lip, Rainbow Dash finally let out a sigh. "Alright, I'll try it, but only because I'm eating myself up about your description of it. Is it really that good?"
"For your first time? Maaaan, it'll be way better. Okay, the secret is to hold it in, try not to cough, and only let the breath out when you need to. You sure you're good with this?" Tree held out the joint for Rainbow.
"I've been sorta making a point of trying anything once. I can't say I'll take it up all the time, but—" Rainbow reached out and took the joint between two of her fingers, lifted it to her lips, and inhaled.
For a moment nothing happened. Rainbow was just standing there naked with two lungs full of strangely magical smoke. Then, slowly, the smoke delivered its payload to her body. The first thing Rainbow noticed was that the world sped up. It was like the perma-speed-up her life had been slowly drifting into stopped, and she was blinking in surprise.
Rainbow Dash knew how long she could hold her breath for. She was nowhere near her max time when her lungs started to itch. Opening her mouth, she exhaled a plume of blue-tinted smoke that seemed to make wisps of purple-red around its edges. The effect that'd slowed her down spread, searching through Rainbow's body and making her shift and squirm in place.
Barely noticing the green arms catching her, Rainbow didn't protest being set down on the soft grass. Reaching down between her legs, she began to work at her body without any toys or instruments. When her orgasm came, Rainbow arched her spine and squealed aloud at the joy that washed through her.
"Yeah. That's totally what it was like for me." Tree Hugger kept stirring, her eyes tracing Rainbow Dash's body openly now. It wasn't that she was window shopping, just enjoying the view.
It felt like forever for Rainbow, as her body and mind floated in a sea of smoke and flames that didn't harm her. Where the flames licked along her body, Rainbow felt pleasure follow them. She was down from the immediate high that caused her to lose control, but there was part of her mind for which this was the perfect state to exist.
For an instant, she felt like there was two of her in her head. She stared up at the sky and each of her eyes tracked a different cloud. Unlike her racing buddy, however, she was consciously aware of the details of both.
Then the flames faded and left her with only smoke in her head. The smoke was what kept the world moving at normal time, so Rainbow was not about to try clearing it out early. "This is…" She took a slow breath. "… Amazing."
Lifting the joint to her own lips with the hand that wasn't stirring, Tree asked, "You want another hit?"
"I wouldn't survive another, uh, hit. Thanks for the offer, though." A stray thought filtered through Rainbow's head. "Is this why you said we need to do it naked?"
"Honest truth?" Tree asked as she checked the temperature of the water.
"Y-Yeah. Does my voice sound funny?"
"Your voice sounds, like, as normal as usual." Checking the temperature of the water, Tree found it almost just right. "As for why we need to be naked, there's a few reasons. First is that I enjoy being naked. Second is it's much easier to clean up if we make a mess. Third…" Tree turned to look back at Rainbow, caught the other woman's eye and smiled. "You look cute."
Both halves of Rainbow's mind seemed to split and chase the idea around before colliding with a huge impact of eh. Closing her eyes, Rainbow returned her focus to her perception of time. "Ever since we put our amulets on, I felt like the world was going slowly around me. The more I focused on it, the slower it got, and the faster I got. Normally I can bring it almost down to normal, but right now it's like I don't have that power at all."
"Mellow."
When Rainbow opened her eyes, it was to see Tree standing over her and looking down with a grin. This afforded her a clear view of the woman's chest and crotch, but Rainbow managed to focus on the offered hand enough to reach up to it. "Yeah. Mellow is a good name for it. So what's next?"